they are of a very serious nature.

At Entally, on January 12th, 1837, the rope snapped whilst a Sannyasi (religious mendicant) was being swung. He was thrown to a distance of nearly one hundred feet, and was literally dashed to pieces. I am disposed to think there is some powerful anesthetic property in bhāng, for very near to where the Sannyāsī was killed, a drunken man presented himself at another Charkh, with a pair of harpoons bored into his thighs just above the knee joints.

After being swung for three-quarters of an hour, he was let down, and found to be quite sober, but complained that he had been swung only for a short. time. How is it that men, with impunity, can play such pranks with that delicate piece of mechanism, the human frame?

I may never live to see it, but possibly some day bhāng and gunjah may be found classed in the British pharmacopoeia among the most precious of anodynes.

To preserve the continuation of the narrative I omitted to explain the terms bhāng and gunjah, and will now proceed to do so.

Our common European hemp (Cannabis sativa), cultivated for its fibre and seed, is the same plant as the Indian hemp (Cannabis indica), which from the earliest ages has been celebrated among Eastern nations for its narcotic virtues. It is not only pro

ON THE USE OF BHANG AND GUNJAH. 143

duced in England and in India, but also in Persia, Arabia, Africa and the Brazils. But it has a wonderful power of adapting itself to differences in soil and climate. Probably in all countries it possesses a peculiar resinous substance in the sap; but in northern climates this resin is of scarcely appreciable quantity. In the warmer regions of the east, it exudes naturally from the flowers leaves and young twigs, and these are collected and dried for the sake of the resin they contain.

The whole plant gathered when in flower, and dried without the removal of the resin, is called gunjah. In this form it is sold in the bazaars and elsewhere in Calcutta. The larger leaves and seed capsules separated from the stalks are called bhāng. It is used in different forms and preparations by not less than two hundred millions of the human race. The effects of the narcotic are very peculiar; but both in kind and degree they are materially different How is this to be

in a European and an Asiatic.

accounted for? "Causa latet, vis est notissima." ("The cause is wrapped in darkness, but the effect is most notorious.")

As some of the Hindoo myths are poetical and amusing, I shall give one or two specimens.

The origin of mist is grounded on the following story. One fine summer's morning, Matsaganda the daughter of Dhebar Rājā was tripping along the

bank of a beautiful silvery lake, clear as crystal. As she sped along she admired the brightness of the scenery, and the flitting of the beautiful plumaged waterfowl scarcely disturbed by her fairy feet. She was charmed with the mellow laughter of morning dawn and the light murmurs of the southern breeze. Approaching day smiled in brightness, and happiness dwelt around. As she was listlessly musing on these beauties, suddenly there appeared before her a man of large and majestic appearance and richly clad. Taking her tapering hand in his, he thus spoke: “I am Monasir Muni. Lady, thy loveliness has bound me your slave. My heart is gone, and with it happiness, unless you smile on me."

The fair Matsaganda blushed and brightened at these words. She hesitated to reply. She was indeed silent. Muni awaited in impatient ecstasy. At last he took her in his arms; when, breaking silence, she thus replied: "If thou be a god, darken this sequestered spot of my father's kingdom." Muni created mist.

Rain. It is supposed that rain is formed not by exhalations from the surface of the earth, but that Indra, the god of the firmament, possesses an enormous elephant, which, when commanded, raises up by his huge proboscis an immense volume of water from the seas and rivers, and then throws it from his lofty portal over the face of the earth.

Clouds. It is supposed that the clouds are a species of aerial animals, endowed with the sensations of hunger and thirst; and that when hungry they go in crowds to the tops of the highest mountains to feed on the leaves of the sal trees, which are supposed to be their daintiest food. Whilst engaged in the process of mastication, the froth of their mouths produces talk (talc), which we find so plentifully embedded in the bowels of the earth.

L

CHAPTER IX.

The Phansigars or Thugs-Ram Lochen Sein; his captureGunga Hurree captured after committing fifty murdersUniversal consternation and mistrust-Organisation of the Thugs--Speculations as to the origin of Thuggee-Statistics of crime-Another appalling catastrophe-Disasters in Afghanistan and surmises thereon.

Quis novus hic nostris successit sedibus hospes ?
Quam sese ore ferens!"-Virgil.

"What new guest is this, who has approached our dwelling? And how proudly he bears himself!"

Or the many plague spots infesting Hindūstān which the Government of the Honourable Company struck at with a powerful and unsparing hand, Thuggee may be considered to have been the principal

quarry.

Infanticide, Satee, Jagannath, and human sacrifices all shrink to a mere vanishing point in the destruction of human life, when compared with the horrible crimes of Thuggee.

Properly speaking, the name of these miscreants was Thags, or Phansi-gārs. But as Thug has be