I was one day out shooting with my friend, the Raja of Maihar,[10] under the Vindhya range, which rises five or six hundred feet, almost perpendicularly.  He was an excellent shot with an English double-barrel, and had with him six men just as good.  I asked him whether we were likely to fall in with any hares, using the term ‘khargosh’, or ‘ass-eared’.

‘Certainly not,’ said the Raja, ’if you begin by abusing them with such a name; call them “lambkanas”, sir, “long-eared”, and we shall get plenty.’

He shot one, and attributed my bad luck to the opprobrious name I had used.  While he was reloading, I took occasion to ask him how this range of hills had grown up where it was.

‘No one can say,’ replied the Raja, ’but we believe that when Rama went to recover his wife Sita from the demon king of Ceylon, Ravan, he wanted to throw a bridge across from the continent to the island, and sent some of his followers up to the Himalaya mountains for stones.  He had completed his bridge before they all returned, and a messenger was sent to tell those who had not yet come to throw down their burdens, and rejoin him in all haste.  Two long lines of these people had got thus far on their return when the messenger met them.  They threw down their loads here, and here they have remained ever since, one forming the Vindhya range to the north of this valley, and the other the Kaimur range to the south.’

The Vindhya range extends from Mirzapore, on the Ganges, nearly to the Gulf of Cambay, some six or seven hundred miles, so that my sporting friend’s faith was as capacious as any priest could well wish it; and those who have it are likely never to die, or suffer much, from an over stretch of the reasoning faculties in a hot climate.

The town stands upon the belt of rocks, about two miles from its north-eastern extremity; and in the midst is the handsome tomb of Ranjit Singh, who defended Bharatpur so bravely against Lord Lake’s army.[11] The tomb has on one side a tank filled with water, and, on the other, another much deeper than the first, but without any water at all.  We were surprised at this, and asked what the cause could be.  The people told us, with the air of men who had never known what it was to feel the uneasy sensation of doubt, that ’Krishna, one hot day, after skying with the milkmaids, had drunk it all dry; and that no water would ever stay in it, lest it might be quaffed by less noble lips’.  No orthodox Hindoo would ever for a moment doubt that this was the real cause of the phenomenon.  Happy people!  How much do they escape of that pain which in hot climates wears us all down in our efforts to trace moral and physical phenomena to their real causes and sources!  Mind! mind! mind! without any of it, those Europeans who eat and drink moderately might get on very well in this climate.  Much of it weighs them down.

      Oh, sir, the good die first, and those whose hearts (brains)
      Are dry as summer dust burn to the socket.[12]