permission of cow-slaughter. Accordingly, when the Mutiny broke
out, she quickly joined the rebels. On the 7th and 8th June, 1857,
all the Europeans in Jhansi, men, women, and children, to the number
of about seventy persons, were cruelly murdered by her orders, or
with her sanction. On the 9th June her authority was proclaimed. In
the prolonged fighting which ensued, she placed herself at the head
of her troops, whom she led with great gallantry. In June, 1858,
after a year's bloodstained reign, she was killed in battle. By
November, 1858, the country was pacified.

CHAPTER 30

Haunted Villages.

On the 16th[1] we came on nine miles to Amabai, the frontier village
of the Jhansi territory, bordering upon Datiya,[2] where I had to
receive the farewell visits of many members of the Jhansi parties,
who came on to have a quiet opportunity to assure me that, whatever
may be the final order of the Supreme Government, they will do their
best for the good of the people and the state; for I have always
considered Jhansi among the native states of Bundelkhand as a kind of
oasis in the desert, the only one in which a man can accumulate
property with the confidence of being permitted by its rulers freely
to display and enjoy it. I had also to receive the visit of
messengers from the Raja of Datiya, at whose capital we were to
encamp the next day, and, finally, to take leave of my amiable little
friend the Sarimant, who here left me on his return to Sagar, with a
heavy heart I really believe.

We talked of the common belief among the agricultural classes of
villages being haunted by the spirits of ancient proprietors whom it
was thought necessary to propitiate. 'He knew', he said, 'many
instances where these spirits were so very _froward_ that the present
heads of villages which they haunted, and the members of their little
communities, found it almost impossible to keep them in good humour;
and their cattle and children were, in consequence, always liable to
serious accidents of one kind or another. Sometimes they were bitten
by snakes, sometimes became possessed by devils, and, at others, were
thrown down and beaten most unmercifully. Any person who falls down
in an epileptic fit is supposed to be thrown down by a ghost, or
possessed by a devil.[3] They feel little of our mysterious dread of
ghosts; a sound _drubbing_ is what they dread from them, and he who
hurts himself in one of the fits is considered to have got