1 76 POPULATION, MANNERS, AND CUSTOMS.
2 finer muscular development, and a more robust
3 appearance, arising from the superiority of their
4 climate, and the use of a more generous diet than
5 the people of British India allow themselves.
6 Their costume consists of a jacket and trowsers,
7 the latter extending to the ankle, and worn
8 tighter than is customary with other orientals,
9 who keep the leg covered. Turbans sometimes
10 form the head-gear, but shawls and scarfs are
11 more commonly used, because the ends admit of
12 being spread over the neck and shoulders as a
13 protection from the sun. The women wear very
14 wide trowsers, with an upper garment not very
15 dissimilar to a frock coat, with the addition of
16 the shawl or scarf in the cold season.
17 In their diet the Sikhs are extremely simple.
18 Rice and attah, a coarse kind of flour, constitute
19 the staple of their food, to which they add the
20 flesh of fowls, fish, condiments, and spices, milk,
21 vegetables, and fruits. Beef is interdicted, and
22 mutton sparingly used. They are much given,
23 however, to the use of intoxicating liquors, and
24 can resist ' potations, pottle deep,' of a fiery spirit,
25 a very small dose of which would overthrow an
26 Englishman. Runjeet Singh was remarkable
27 for his excesses in this way, and in his latter days
28 jocosely declared that there was only one British
29 oflSicer who could approach him in the copious-
30 ness of his libations to Bacchus. This habit,