bordering the stream of Mother Nerbudda.  This’, said he, ’is a stream more holy than that of the great Ganges herself, since no man is supposed to derive any benefit from that stream unless he either bathe in it or drink from it; but the sight of the Nerbudda from a distant hill could bless him, and purify him.  In other countries, the slaughter of cows and bullocks might not be punished for ages; and the harvest, in such countries, might continue good through many successive generations under such enormities; indeed, he was not quite sure that there might not be countries in which no punishment at all would inevitably follow; but, so near the Nerbudda, this could not be the case.[l5] Providence could never suffer beef to be eaten so near her sacred majesty without visiting the crops with blight, hail, or some other calamity, and the people with cholera morbus, small-pox, and other great pestilences.  As for himself, he should never be persuaded that all these afflictions did not arise wholly and solely from this dreadful habit of eating beef.  I declare’, concluded he, ’that if the Government would but consent to prohibit the eating of beef, it might levy from the lands three times the revenue that they now pay.’

The great festival of the Holi, the Saturnalia of India, terminates on the last day of Phalgun, or 16th of March.[16] On that day the Holi is burned; and on that day the ravages of the monster (for monster they will have it to be) are supposed to cease.  Any field that has remained untouched up to that time is considered to be quite secure from the moment the Holi has been committed to the flames.  What gave rise to the notion I have never been able to discover, but such is the general belief.  I suppose the siliceous epidermis must then have become too hard, and the pores in the stem too much closed up to admit of the further depredation of the fungi.

In the latter end of 1831, while I was at Sagar, a cowherd in driving his cattle to water at a reach of the Bias river, called the Nardhardhar, near the little village of Jasrathi, was reported to have seen a vision that told him the waters of that reach, taken up and conveyed to the fields in pitchers, would effectually keep off the blight from the wheat, provided the pitchers were not suffered to touch the ground on the way.  On reaching the field, a small hole was to be made in the bottom of the pitcher, so as to keep up a small but steady stream, as the bearer carried it round the borders of the field, that the water might fall in a complete ring, except at a small opening—­which was to be kept dry, in order that the monster or demon blight might make his escape through it, not being able to cross over any part watered by the holy stream.  The waters Of the Bias river generally are not supposed to have any peculiar virtues.  The report of this vision spread rapidly over the country; and the people who had been suffering under so many seasons of great calamity were anxious to try anything