The quotation is from The Task, Book II, line 161.

6.  Sadi (Sa’di) is the poetic name, or nom de plume, of the celebrated Persian poet, whose proper name is said to have been Shaikh Maslah-ud-din, or, according to other authorities, Sharf-ud-din Mislah.  He was born about A.D. 1194, and is supposed to have lived for more than a hundred years.  Some writers say that he died in A.D. 1292.  His best known works are the Gulistan and Bustan.  The editor has failed to trace in either of these works the couplet quoted.  Sadi says in the Gulistan, ii. 26, ’That heart which has an ear is full of the divine mystery.  It is not the nightingale that alone serenades his rose; for every thorn on the rose-bush is a tongue in his or God’s praise’ (Ross’s translation).

7.  November, 1835.

8.  Spelled Dhamow in the author’s text.  The town, the head-quarters of the district of the same name, is forty-five miles east of Sagar, and fifty-five miles north-west of Jabalpur.  The C.  P. Gazetteer (1870) states the population to be 8,563.  In 1901 it had grown to 13,335; and the town is still increasing in importance (I.  G., 1908).  Inscriptions of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries at Damoh are noticed in A.  S. R., vol. xxi, p. 168.

9.  The guinea-worm (Filaria medinensis) is a very troublesome parasite, which sometimes grows to a length of three feet.  It occurs in Africa, Arabia, Persia, and Turkistan, as well as in India.

10.  The Dhimars (Sanskrit dhivara, ‘fisherman’) are the same caste as the Kahars, or ‘bearers’.  The boats used by them are commonly ‘dugout’ canoes, exactly like those used in prehistoric Europe, and now treasured in museums.

11.  In the author’s time the rupee was worth two shillings, or more, that is to say, the ninth or tenth part of a sovereign.  After 1873 the gold value of the rupee fell, so that at times it was worth little more than a shilling.  Since 1899 special legislation has succeeded in keeping the rupee practically steady at 1s. 4d.  In other words, fifteen rupees are the legal equivalent of a sovereign, and a hundred rupees are worth 6 pounds 13s. 4d.

CHAPTER 13

Thugs and Poisoners.

Lieutenant Brown had come on to Damoh chiefly with a view to investigate a case of murder, which had taken place at the village of Sujaina, about ten miles from Damoh, on the road to Hatta.[1] A gang of two hundred Thugs were encamped in the grove at Hindoria in the cold season of 1814, when, early in the morning, seven men well armed with swords and matchlocks passed them, bearing treasure from the bank of Moti Kochia at Jubbulpore to their correspondents at Banda,[2] to the value of four thousand five hundred rupees.[3] The value of their burden was immediately perceived by these keen-eyed sportsmen, and Kosari, Drigpal,