gument falls to the
ground simply because the connecting links have not been found. The two
main reasons alleged by Mr. Groom and those who try to establish this
theory are, first, that the Ishmaelites are wanderers; second, that they
are smiths, or workers in iron and brass. The Mohammedans claim Ishmael
as their father, and certainly they would be in a better position to
judge upon this point eleven centuries ago then we possibly can be at
this late date. And so, in like manner, where it is alleged that the
Gipsies sprang from, Roumania, Wallachia, Moldavia, Spain, and Hungary.

The following are specimens of Indian characters, taken from "The People
of India," prepared under the authority of the Indian Government, and
edited by Dr. Forbes Watson, M.A., and Sir John William Kaye, F.R.S. In
speaking of the Changars, they say that these Indians have an unenviable
character for thieving and general dishonesty, and form one of the large
class of unsettled wanderers which, inadmissible to Hinduism and
unconverted to the Mohammedan faith, lives on in a miserable condition of
life as outcasts from the more civilised communities. Changars are, in
general, petty thieves and pickpockets, and have no settled vocation.
They object to continuous labour. The women make baskets, beg, pilfer,
or sift and grind corn. They have no settled places of residence, and
live in small blanket or mat tents, or temporary sheds outside villages.
They are professedly Hindus and worshippers of Deree or Bhowanee, but
they make offerings at Mohammedan shrines. They have private ceremonies,
separate from those of any professed faith, which are connected with the
aboriginal belief that still lingers among the descendants of the most
ancient tribes of India, and is chiefly a propitiation of malignant
demons and malicious sprites. They marry exclusively among themselves,
and polygamy is common. In appearance, both men and women are
repulsively mean and wretched; the features of the women in particular
being very ugly, and of a strong aboriginal type. The Changars are one
of the most miserable and useless of the wandering tribes of the upper
provinces. They feed, as it were, on the garbage left by others, never
changing, never improving, never advancing in the social rank, scale, or
utility--outcast and foul parasites from the earliest ages, and they so
remain. The Changars, like other vagrants, are of dissolute habits,
indulging freely in int