The town of Jubbulpore contains a population of twenty thousand souls,[6] and they all believed in this story of the cock.  I one day asked a most respectable merchant in the town, Nadu Chaudhri, how the people could believe in such things, when he replied that he had no doubt witches were to be found in every part of India, though they abounded most, no doubt, in the central parts of it, and that we ought to consider ourselves very fortunate in having no such things in England.  ‘But’, added he, ’of all countries that between Mandla and Katak (Cuttack)[7] is the worst for witches.  I had once occasion to go to the city of Ratanpur[8] on business, and was one day, about noon, walking in the market-place and eating a very fine piece of sugar-cane.  In the crowd I happened, by accident, to jostle an old woman as she passed me.  I looked back, intending to apologize for the accident, and heard her muttering indistinctly as she passed on.  Knowing the propensities of these old ladies, I became somewhat uneasy, and on turning round to my cane I found, to my great terror, that the juice had been all turned to blood.  Not a minute had elapsed, such were the fearful powers of this old woman.  I collected my followers, and, leaving my agents there to settle my accounts, was beyond the boundaries of the old wretch’s influence before dark; had I remained, nothing could have saved me.  I should certainly have been a dead man before morning.  It is well known’, said the old gentleman, ’that their spells and curses can only reach a certain distance, ten or twelve miles; and, if you offend one of them, the sooner you place that distance between you the better.’

Jangbar Khan, the representative of the Shahgarh Raja,[9] as grave and reverend an old gentleman as ever sat in the senate of Venice, told me one day that he was himself an eye-witness of the powers of the women of Khilauti.  He was with a great concourse of people at a fair held at the town of Raipur,[10] and, while sauntering with many other strangers in the fair, one of them began bargaining with two women of middle age for some very fine sugar-canes.  They asked double the fair price for their canes.  The man got angry, and took up one of them, when the women seized the other end, and a struggle ensued.  The purchaser offered a fair price, seller demanded double.  The crowd looked on, and a good deal of abuse of the female relations on both sides took place.  At last a sepoy of the governor came up, armed to the teeth, and called out to the man, in a very imperious tone, to let go his hold of the cane.  He refused, saying that ’when people came to the fair to sell, they should be made to sell at reasonable prices, or be turned out’.  ‘I’, said Jangbar Khan, ’thought the man right, and told the sepoy that, if he took the part of this woman, we should take that of the other, and see fair play.  Without further ceremony the functionary drew his sword, and cut the cane in two in the middle; and,