1 462 WHERE THREE EMPIRES MEET
2 hole in the roof, but rolls about the room to torment
3 one.
4 Meal, goats, and ghee were requisitioned for our men,
5 and the natives, in order to supply us with firewood,
6 proceeded to pull down the upper storeys of the fort-
7 ress towers, which were partly constructed of stout
8 beams. ' For now that this country is yours,' they
9 said, ' we have no need of forts. We shall have no
10 more fighting ; you will always protect us.' Consider-
11 ing that these were British subjects of only a few hours'
12 standing, they had grasped the situation very com-
13 pletely. They appeared to think that the new regime
14 would in many ways be greatly to their advantage.
15 They realized that they themselves would be subject to
16 no more oppression ; but they scarcely approved of our
17 curtailment of their prescriptive right to oppress others,
18 and thought it hard that they would no longer be
19 at liberty to support their famihes by practising the