“Until 1810 their existence was unknown, not only to the European conquerors, but even to the native governments.  Between the years 1816 and 1830, several of their bands were taken in the act, and punished:  but until this last epoch, all the revelations made on the subject by officers of great experience, had appeared too monstrous to obtain the attention or belief of the public; they had been rejected and despised as the dreams of a heated imagination.  And yet for many years, at the very least for half a century, this social wound had been frightfully on the increase, devouring the population from the Himalayas to Cape Comorin and from Cutch to Assam.

“It was in the year 1830 that the revelations of a celebrated chief, whose life was spared on condition of his denouncing his accomplices, laid bare the whole system.  The basis of the Thuggee Society is a religious belief—­the worship of Bowanee, a gloomy divinity, who is only pleased with carnage, and detests above all things the human race.  Her most agreeable sacrifices are human victims, and the more of these her disciple may have offered up in this world the more he will be recompensed in the next by all the delights of soul and sense, by women always beautiful, and joys eternally renewed.  If the assassin meets the scaffold in his career, he dies with the enthusiasm of a martyr, because he expects his reward.  To obey his divine mistress, he murders, without anger and without remorse, the old man, woman and child; whilst, to his fellow-religionists, he may be charitable, humane, generous, devoted, and may share all in common with them, because, like himself, they are the ministers and adopted children of Bowanee.  The destruction of his fellow-creatures, not belonging to his community—­the diminution of the human race—­that is the primary object of his pursuit; it is not as a means of gain, for though plunder may be a frequent, and doubtless an agreeable accessory, it is only secondary in his estimation.  Destruction is his end, his celestial mission, his calling; it is also a delicious passion, the most captivating of all sports—­this hunting of men!—­’You find great pleasure,’ said one of those that were condemned, ’in tracking the wild beast to his den, in attacking the boar, the tiger, because there is danger to brave, energy and courage to display.  Think how this attraction must be redoubled, when the contest is with man, when it is man that is to be destroyed.  Instead of the single faculty of courage, all must be called into action—­courage, cunning, foresight, eloquence, intrigue.  What springs to put in motion! what plans to develop!  To sport with all the passions, to touch the chords of love and friendship, and so draw the prey into one’s net—­that is a glorious chase—­it is a delight, a rapture, I tell you!’

“Whoever was in India in the years 1831 and 1832, must remember the stupor and affright, which the discovery of this vast infernal machine spread through all classes of society.  A great number of magistrates and administrators of provinces refused to believe in it, and could not be brought to comprehend that such a system had so long preyed on the body politic, under their eyes as it were, silently, and without betraying itself.”—­See “British India in 183,” by Count Edward de Warren, 2 vols. in 8vo.  Paris, 1844.—­E.  S.