worthy attempts were first made; and although during that period no effort has been spared, no energy relaxed, it is to be feared that the revolting custom has become too deeply rooted in the habits and feelings of the people to be eradicated by edicts or treaties.

Not less revolting to a humane and civilised mind than the barbarities of Suttee and infanticide, is the long-prevalent and general custom amongst the Hindoos of exposing their sick on the banks of the Ganges to breathe their last within the influence of its holy waters. This they call giving them to Ganga.

No sooner is a patient believed to be beyond the reach of medicine, than, if within a possible distance, he is carried to the banks of the Ganges, and either left to die in one of the small mud huts with which its shores abound, or he will be placed in the stream itself in such a manner that, as its waters rise, death must ensue from drowning. Sometimes the relatives lay the patient on the sandy banks, and commence pouring a quantity of the thick muddy water of the river down his throat, until suffocation ensues, when they believe most firmly that the water has winged the soul to Paradise.

The scenes upon the river-banks are oftentimes most harrowing; the invalid beseeching his friends to save him; the half-drowning man strong enough in his delirious fever to struggle, but in vain, to escape his cruel fate; the mother beseeching her children to save her; the tender infant left upon the beach stretching its tiny hands to one who, in any other country, would be the last to desert it in its helpless agony, but who here, under the baleful influence of a withering superstition, stands coldly by and watches the little struggler sob out its infant life.

There is perhaps no country in which thieves are such adepts in their profession as in India. For how long a period this may have been the case, or whence their proficiency originally came, does not appear; but of the fact there is little doubt. The ordinary fastenings of houses, nay, the very walls themselves, are small protection against the depredations of these daring and practised marauders, who with the greatest facility possess themselves of the most valuable property, without the least chance of prevention or detection. So skilled are they in their art, that they have been known to remove the bed-clothes from under a sleeper, without having been detected.

One of the most formidable enemies of the public in India was the associated band of robbers and murderers called Thugs, who for a series of years committed the most daring enormities against life and property, without any effectual attempts being made to put them down. These

SUPPRESSION OF THUGGEE.

423

Thugs were banded together, and generally worked in concert by bodies of three or more. In order to effect their purpose with the greater facility and security, they travelled the least frequented parts of the country in various disguises, and when

they found a traveller who appeared to possess sufficient to render him an object worth their trouble, they waylaid him on his journey and dispatched him by strangulation, burying the body or sinking it in a well, so as to escape detection. In some cases they have been known to join company with their victim, and whilst seated together, resting beneath the shade of some wide-spreading tree and listening to a tale of adventure, one of their number approached from the rear, and slipping the fatal noose over the

head of the unwary traveller, quickly dispatched him without the chance of escape.

It has been calculated that many thousands of persons have fallen victims to the Thugs, and it is impossible to say how many more they might have immolated, had not their ill-luck tempted them to sacrifice one or two Englishmen. This aggravated wickedness at once aroused the ire and activity of the authorities, who, regardless as they had so long been of the wholesale sacrifice of Hindoo life, could not tolerate the idea of one of their own order being included in the list of victims. The mandate went forth for their suppression; and although many of them contrived to elude the vigilance of the parties placed on their track, their final extinction as a body has at length become a fact, and Thuggee is now a matter of past history.

If India has produced its gangs of desperate thieves and murderers, it also furnishes society with sects of an opposite character. The Charans and Bhats are peculiar races regarded by all ranks in a sacred light. These people devote themselves to the protection of property and often of life through dangerous tracts of country where mere physical demonstration would avail but little.7

7 Malcolm's Central India, vol. ii. p. 130.

The many sections into which native Indian society is split by the institution of "caste," are sensibly felt by the European, who finds himself

A KIDMUTGAR.

obliged, however moderate his wants may be, to maintain from a dozen to twenty domestics. The "kidmutgar" who waits at table, and has charge of the plate, glass, &c., does not meddle with the food or drinkables, which are in the custody of a higher domestic, a sort of butler.

Gentlemen are attended in their dressing-rooms by a "bearer," who enacts the part of a Hindoo valet; whilst lower still in the grade of domestics is the "mater," who sweeps out the rooms, cleans the dinner-service, &c.

The large cities in India have no water laid on in their houses, the supply of which is brought from neighbouring tanks or wells by a class

A BEARER.

of men known as "bheesties," who

carry the liquid in hogs' skins slung across their backs.

Another very necessary class of servants are the "dhobies" or washermen, who are constantly employed along the banks of rivers and tanks, beating on large stones the white garments of both sexes with a violence and disregard of stitches and buttons, which, to a newcomer, appears dangerous in the extreme. By this rude process, however, they manage to preserve the cotton and linen clothes of a delicately white colour, not attainable in European countries.

The Sindhi as a people bear a closer resemblance to their Arab ancestors than any other people of the East. In some few respects they resemble the Beloochis; but though muscular, full-proportioned men, they are much fairer than their neighbours, especially the women, some of whose countenances bear a close affinity with the Spanish features and tint. Their habits and moral bearing scarcely warrant