may keep all parts in awe. They are, on hunting excursions, attended by horse and foot, to the number sometimes of ten thousand men in Durbar the prince and his brothers sit each with his sabre girt and his shield slung, and a relief of ready saddled steeds is always kept up for any emergency. The four brothers in general eat together, and, instead of retiring at night to different apartments, invariably sleep in the same room, with arms by their side, and without any lights but at the doorway. Their precautions are altogether so great as to bid defiance to internal treachery or confederacies; but were Ubdul Nubi Kalora to appear again in the country with a moderate force, it would most probably be soon augmented by the disaffected to the present government to a degree that would overturn it, without scarcely an effort. Ubdul Nubi, the last of the Kalora chiefs, ended his days in obscurity, after ungratefully requiting his old benefactor, Ibrahim Shah, by rebellion. Remnants of this tribe form a portion of the population of Sindh to the present day, and have always been looked upon with suspicion by the Talpúrs.

Such is the history of the rise and fall of the Kaloras in Sindh, with the establishment of power by the late house of Talpúr, to the commencement of the present century. The narrative has now to be carried down to the latter chiefs.

Mir Futteh Allí Talpúr died in 1801, and be

queathed his treasure and the territory of Sindh, except such portion as belonged to Mirs Sohrab and Tarrah (and which included the Khyrpúr and upper provinces), to his remaining three brothers, Ghúllam Allí, Kurm Allí, and Múrad Allí, in the proportion of two fourths to the elder and one fourth to each of the others, with a corresponding arrangement for defraying expenses of the state and providing the tribute to the Cabul throne: this amounted to thirteen lacs annually (130,0007.). From this period a new system was effected in the government of the country; the chiefs ruled conjointly, dividing the revenues and power under the title of the "Amirs (or Lords) of Sindh," and were thus acknowledged by the Governor-General on the part of the British government, and all the powers of India, with such titles as are given to the highest potentates; one Rais, or head of the whole, being always invested with additional authority, and allowed to settle family differences, as also to carry on foreign correspondence. This head of the family was the senior Mir, and on his character, of course, much of the prosperity of the country and amicable condition of the whole family depended. This division of power and consequent clashing of interests with chiefs in a state of semi-barbarism, jealous of each other, and keenly alive to individual rights, particularly of property, appeared to be an anomaly in theory, and was long considered as im

common cause and one head, on which it is based, kept the whole together, and amidst trying circumstances, when in the pursuit of vital interests or ambitious projects, individual members of the family have threatened to overturn it. The system, thus guarded, still stood firm, and the government of Sindh under the Talpúrs has undergone little alteration from its foundation to the present period. It is true the title of Char Yar, or "four friends," which was first given in consequence of the apparent unanimity of the four founders of the Talpúr government, had in time been somewhat altered, and, perhaps, could no longer be claimed, from the growing family discords and dissensions which arose at court; yet, notwithstanding these, in reality there was always with the majority a strongly-rooted bond of amity, and, indeed, of affection between the Sindhian Amirs, which times of trial and difficulty have fully proved, though, in periods of peace, they were almost childish in their constant disagreements, and professed, long after the period of the firm settlement of the government, to hold each other in the greatest distrust. The Kalora influence gradually diminished, or at least was suppressed, after the fall of that house; and though it is doubtful if the Talpúrs were at first, or have ever after been so popular with the mass of the people, from their extreme short-sighted system of avarice, and old recollections of the Kaloras as a sacred stock, they yet governed the country tran

quilly, and the general peace and apparent unity of the whole system became the theme of astonishment and panegyric of other states.

Ghúllam Allí, the next brother of Futteh Allí, died in 1811 (from a wound inflicted by a buck when hunting), leaving a son Mir Mahomed. Futteh Allí had also a son named Sobhdar. These princes, though claiming to a participation in power, were for some time excluded, and the two chief Amirs of Sindh were considered to be the two remaining brothers, Múrad Allí and Kurm Allí, who ruled the country and were thus acknowledged. The latter died without issue, but the former left two sons, Núr Mahomed and Nasir Khan; and the government at Hyderabad consisted, up to 1840, of Núr Mahomed, as the head, his brother, Nasir Khan, with the cousins Sobhdar and Mir Mahomed. Núr Mahomed died in 1841, and left two sons, Mirs Shadad and Hussein Allí, who shared their father's possessions under the guardianship of their uncle Nasir, who became the senior Mir nominally, though, in fact, the connection just formed (in 1839) by treaty with the British government aimed a direct blow at the supreme authority of any member of the family, and destroyed it by substituting its own influence instead. This will be more fully explained hereafter; but, as a matter of history, this period of the death of the senior Mir is marked by this particular change

that the peculiar system of one distinct head, to whom questions affecting the interests of the whole, individually or collectively, were referred, was destroyed; and the Talpúr house left in the hands of the British authority, who was alone competent to ultimately decide their questions of dispute and disagreement, foreign or social. The participation in power of the late Mir, being divided between his children, in common with his property, the influence of their uncle was diminished and the authority scattered, instead of, as heretofore, concentrated in the fewest possible number. Mir Ghullam Allí, (the senior of the three princes then ruling,) his sons took the lowest grade below their uncles. Núr Mahomed's sons, on the contrary, ranked equally with Nasir Khan; at least he had no power over their affairs against which they might not appeal.

Thus, on the death of

The Khyrpúr branches of the Talpúr family, who ruled in Upper Sindh, consisted of Mirs Rústum and Allí Múrad as principals, the sons of Mir Sohrab. Mir Múbarick, another son, died in 1839, leaving a large family; and Mir Rústum has eight sons. This division of the Talpúr house always looked up to that at Hyderabad as the parent stock, and was guided in its councils by the advice there given. Another member of the family, named Shir Mahomed, possessed Mirpúr (to the eastward of Hyderabad).

From the period of Shah Shujah's accepting a