with a mind somewhat relieved by the hope that this feeling of confidence might be useful.  About one o’clock I was awoke from a sound sleep by the most hideous noise that I had ever heard; and, not at that moment recollecting the proposal for the noisy procession, ran out of my house, in expectation of seeing both towns in flames.  I found that the advocates for noise, resolving to have their procession, had assembled together about midnight; and, apprehensive that they might be borne down by the advocates for silence and my police establishment, had determined to make the most of their time, and put in requisition all the pots, pans, shells, trumpets, pistols, and muskets that they could muster.  All opened at once about one o’clock; and, had there been any virtue in discord, the cholera must soon have deserted the place, for such another hideous compound of noises I never heard.  The disease, which seemed to have subsided with the silent procession before I went to bed, now returned with double violence, as I was assured by numbers who flocked to my house in terror; and the whole population became exasperated with the leaders of the noisy faction, who had, they believed, been the means of bringing back among them all the horrors of this dreadful scourge.

I asked the Hindoo Sadar Amin, or head native judicial officer at Sagar, a very profound Sanskrit scholar, what he thought of the efficacy of these processions in checking epidemic diseases.  He said that ’there could be nothing more clear than the total inefficiency of medicine in such cases; and, when medicine failed, a man’s only resource was in prayers; that the diseases of mankind were to be classed under three general heads:  first, those suffered for sins committed in some former births; second, those suffered for sins committed in the present birth; third, those merely accidental.  Now,’ said the old gentleman, ’it must be clear to every unprejudiced mind that the third only can be cured or checked by the physician.’  Epidemics, he thought, must all be classed under the second head, and as inflicted by the Deity for some very general sin; consequently, to be removed only by prayers; and, whether silent or noisy, was, he thought, matter of little importance, provided they were offered in the same spirit.  I believe that, among the great mass of the people of India, three-fourths of the diseases of individuals are attributed to evil spirits and evil eyes; and for every physician among them there are certainly ten exorcisers.  The faith in them is very great and very general; and, as the gift is supposed to be supernatural, it is commonly exercised without fee or reward.  The gifted person subsists upon some other employment, and exorcises gratis.

A child of one of our servants was one day in convulsions from its sufferings in cutting its teeth.  The Civil Surgeon happened to call that morning, and he offered to lance the child’s gums.  The poor mother thanked him, but stated that there could be no possible doubt as to the source of her child’s sufferings—­that the devil had got into it during the night, and would certainly not be frightened out by his little lancet; but she expected every moment my old tent-pitcher, whose exorcisms no devil of this description had ever yet been able to withstand.