ked; and no doubt he is right, for they
can hardly be said to do otherwise now." Such are the peasants of
Bengal--a race differing from the natives of Hindustan in language,
manners, food, dress, and personal appearance; but who, from their
vicinity to the seat of the English Supreme Government, have served as
models for the descriptions given by many superficial travellers, as
applying to all the natives of British India, without distinction! The
horrible Hindu custom of immersing the sick, when considered past
recovery, in the Ganges, and holding their lower limbs under water
till they expire,[13] excites, as may be expected, the disgust of the
khan; but the reason which he assigns for it, "the belief of these
people, that if a man die in his own house, he would cause the death
of every member of the family by assuming the form of a _bhut_ or evil
spirit," is new to us, and appears to be analogous to the
superstitious dread entertained by the Greeks and Sclavonians, of a
corpse reanimated into a _Vroucolochas_, or vampire. "But if a man
escapes from their hands, and recovers after this treatment, he is
shunned by every one; and there are many villages in Bengal, called
_villages of the dead_, inhabited by men who have thus escaped death;
they are considered dead to society, and no other persons will dwell
in the same villages."

[12] "Almost immediately on leaving Allahabad," (on his
way from Calcutta to the Upper Provinces,) "I was struck
with the appearance of the men, as tall and muscular as
the largest stature of Europeans; and with the fields of
_wheat_, almost the only cultivation."--Heber's Journal,
vol. iii. "Some of our boatmen passing through a field
of Indian corn, plucked two or three ears, certainly not
enough to constitute a theft, or even a trespass. Two of
the men, however, who were watching, ran after them, not
as the Bengalis would have done, to complain with joined
hands, but with stout bamboos, prepared to do themselves
justice _par voye de faict_. The men saved themselves by
swimming off to the boat; but my servants called out to
them--'Ah! dandee folk, beware, you are now in
Hindustan; the people here know well how to fight, and
are not afraid.'"

[13] "I told his (Pertab Chund's) father, that it was
wrong to keep him where he then was, and he told me to
take him down to the river. He was lifted up on his
bedding