LETTER CXL.
To MAHOMMED GHYÂS and NOOR MAHOMMED KHÂN; dated 7th
ZUBURJUDY. (16th October.)

WHAT you write, on the subject of having made up and delivered new flags and banners to your people, is understood and approved. You and Noor Mahommed Khân must reside together in the same place, and display your zeal in our service on all occasions. What more? You must see, that your men regularly perform their exercise, but without using gunpowder.

OBSERVATIONS.

This letter is nearly a transcript of letter CXXXIII, written only four days before. Other instances of the like repetition occur in the course of this correspondence.

The injunction against expending powder on the field days of the escort, may have proceeded either from an economical motive, or from an apprehension that the use of it, in the city of Poonah, might have given umbrage to the Mahrattahs. There can be little doubt, that this would have been the consequence of such a military display, in the present humour of that government: and as, notwithstanding all his orders to the contrary, it is very certain that he wished his agents to remain at Poonah, it behoved him the more to beware of furnishing the ruling power there with any fresh ground of complaint or irritation.