AFGHANS AND SIKHS 143
wool with which they were manufactured, and a charge was made upon every shop or workman connected with the manufacture. Every trade was also taxed, “butchers, bakers, boatmen, vendors of fuel, public notaries, scavengers, prostitutes, all paid a sort of corporation tax, and even the Kotwal, or chief officer of justice, paid a large gratuity of thirty thousand rupees a year for his appointment, being left to reimburse himself as he might.”
Villages, where Moorcroft stopped in the Lolab direction, were half-deserted, and the few inhabit- ants that remained wore the semblance of extreme wretchedness. Islamabad was “as filthy a place as can well be imagined, and swarming with beggars.” Shupaiyon was not half-inhabited, and the inhabitants of the country round, “half-naked and miserably emaciated, presented a ghastly picture of poverty and starvation.” The Sikhs “seemed to look upon the Kashmirians as little better than cattle . . . the murder of a native by a Sikh is punished by a fine to the Government of from sixteen to twenty rupees, of which four rupees are paid to the family of the deceased if a Hindu, and two rupees if a Mohamedan.”
- Vigne’s description is hardly more favourable.
