accompanied them; for long before they had reached the foot of the mountains, the path down which they had rushed was covered with dead and dying, who were actually, as the report describes it, piled up in heaps among the rocks and stones of the ghaut. Once down on the plains the vast multitude spread in all directions, all anxious to avoid contact with their fellows. And as there was scarcely a family, of all those who came down from the mountains, of which one member had not died, or of which one at least, sick with cholera, was not being carried away with them, so the disease was carried about to all points of the compass. At last the people in their panic abandoned their sick and dying relatives, leaving them to die under the trees or in the nullahs, and fled in every direction exhausted for want of food. If any of them dared to go near any village which stood on their route, the villagers armed themselves with clubs and stones, and threatened vengeance if they came nearer. And so vast numbers died, some of cholera, some of hunger, some of fear and exhaustion; and the unburied bodies polluted the atmosphere and ended in spreading the epidemic far and near.

It has been supposed that the great assemblies of people from every part of India at Juggernaut and other such sacred spots induces these outbreaks of cholera, and that the pilgrims on their return journey carry the seeds of the disease with them. There is no doubt truth in this; but cholera, as before remarked, seems to obey no laws, and sets at nought all the precautions which human skill can devise. It may consequently be imagined how intense a dread the people have of an outbreak of cholera; and seeing how unsparing a scourge it is, it may not be unnatural that they should believe witchcraft to be at the bottom of it. Their theory of witchcraft is simple and horrible. They imagine that there exists a certain "Devi," a demon of most blood-thirsty propensities, who possesses an insatiable craving for human flesh. In order to appease this appetite he selects from any village he thinks will suit him one or more women-old or young, he is not particular-and enlists them in his service; he endows them with supernatural powers, with that of the evil eye, and enables them at will to produce cholera. In consideration of the powers bestowed on them, the witches are under an engagement to kill off as many people by cholera for the demon's especial eating as he shall think sufficient. The witch herself is supposed to partake, and may sometimes be discovered drinking, the life-blood of her own relatives. Sometimes men are also said to be enlisted in this diabolical cause; but the demon on the whole seems to prefer the women, as being more easy to deal with. The consequences of branding any one as a witch are, of course, more onerous; and while such a state of things lasts, it may easily be conceived how readily any malicious person may revenge himself on his neighbours. No sooner does the first case of cholera appear in the village than the men hold a counsel, at which the head of the village presides, to determine on what is best to be done. It is,

perhaps, decided that the village divinity must be propitiated. So a procession sets out, with as much noise of tom-toms, conchs, and other barbarous music as can be made, to the place where the god has his abode,—usually immediately beyond the precincts of the village, under some large banyan or peepul tree. After much music has been perpetrated, garlands of yellow flowers are hung round the neck of the deity, libations of water are poured over him, and he is plentifully anointed with red ochre. More flowers are scattered over him and around him; offerings of fruit piled on large plaintain-leaves are deposited near him, together with several earthen jars of water; and if necessity demands and the means of the community admit of it, some large sacrifice, as a sheep or goat, is made. The procession then marches through the village with horrid noise of tom-tom, and what is commonly called the cholera horn, and the people disperse to await the result of their propitiatory offerings. When some time has elapsed, and the cholera, instead of decreasing, as it obviously should have done had the god been well-disposed towards his people, appears to increase in violence and to grow daily more formidable in its attacks, the inhabitants get panic-stricken, and giving up appeals to the clemency of their god as hopeless, agree among themselves that witchcraft must be at work. Under these circumstances it seems advisable, that before they are driven to leave their homes and take to the jungles, the witch or witches should be discovered and punished. Another secret council is held, winked at perhaps by the two men in authority in the village, the head-man and his kotwal, whose duty it clearly should be on the part of Government to interfere and put a stop to any such proceedings. It is now solemnly announced that witchcraft is abroad, and that the witches must be punished. It is determined to watch the women very carefully, more especially at those times when they go down to the wells, or the stream, or the tank, as the case may be, to draw water for their households; for it is then that the demon will no doubt have most influence over them, and who knows but that they may be induced to poison the water to bring about their dreadful ends? The women must be kept under careful scrutiny, and should anything appear suspicious in their conduct they must be confined altogether to their houses.

At length, either from a spirit of malice, a desire for revenge, or simply for the sake of obtaining a victim, it is whispered about the village that the wife and daughter perhaps of some villager are the culprits, that they are in daily intercourse with the demon, and for his benefit are spreading abroad the dreaded cholera; it may even be asserted of them that they have been seen to drink the blood of their victims. It may chance that the innocent objects of all this popular indignation are sitting quietly in their hut about the time-as the expressive native idiom has it -" of lamp-lighting." They have been, perhaps, hard at work all day, and are preparing the scanty evening meal of rice and dhal, or cakes of coarse flour, for the husband and father not yet returned from his labour

in the fields. Suddenly a gang of men, savage and desperate-looking, enter the hovel, and drag away the two women, heedless of their cries and vehement declarations of innocence. They have no need, poor creatures, to ask what the reason of this sudden visit may be; they know full well that it is a question of witchcraft, and perhaps one of violent death to them. When the master of the house returns, he finds his hut empty, and he immediately guesses the cause. He may, perhaps, attempt to remonstrate with the infuriate mob, but he is soon silenced, for he knows that to show too great an interest in the fate of his wife or his daughter may suffice to implicate him also in the charge of dealings with the devil. He rarely, therefore, interferes, whatever may be his feelings in the matter; and indeed it is not impossible that he himself, only one year ago, had a hand in some such dealings in which his neighbour's family were concerned. The two women have in the meantime been dragged out of the village and taken to some large tree near at hand, where preparations are being made for their torture. The principal and favourite instrument of punishment is a rod of the castor-oil tree; for tradition says that this alone has any power of hurting a witch, all other woods, even the potent bamboo itself, being useless for the purpose. Indeed, it is said that if a witch be beaten with a stick cut from any other than the castor-oil tree, it will on the very first application break in pieces, however stout and strong it may seem. So on this occasion castor-oil rods are in great request, and most of the assembled crowd appear armed with one or more of them.

The modes of torture usually adopted for witches vary somewhat according to the particular province and district in which they are employed. In former days, under the beneficent rule of the rajahs, when no one, from the rajah to the ryot, had any fear of gods or men before his eyes, and when atrocities of all kinds were the rule rather than the exception, it was the custom to tie up witches in skins, and throw them alive into the water. Sometimes, by way of a little gentle torture, they were crammed into a small chamber full of cobras, where they first half died of fright, and then quite died of snake-bites. Now-a-days, however, the first thing to be done in all such cases is a flogging with castor-oil rods. The women are in the first instance reasoned with and told that denial is useless: of course they are witches, have dealings with the demon, and have in short, together with him, drunk the blood and eaten the flesh of numbers of the departed villagers. The women naturally deny the charge vehemently. They are forthwith disrobed and hung, very often head downwards, on to a horizontal bamboo, placed some ten or twelve feet from the ground, on two perpendicular ones planted firmly in the earth. They are then swung slowly backwards and forwards, while their neighbours, armed with their castor-oil rods, stand in rows on either side, and give each a blow as she swings past and the castor-oil rod is, in willing hands, capable of inflicting very severe punishment.

When the victims are half dead from the beating and from suffocation, they are taken down and dragged off to some neighbouring hovel while further tortures are being prepared. At this stage of the proceedings, perhaps, some more experienced or long-headed member of the company hints that the Sirkar (i. e. Government) may object to their arrangements; for the Sirkar, it is well known, does (though it is very unaccountable) object to people being punished and put to death, unless for proven offences and by competent authority. He, however, is silenced by the remark that if the Sirkar catches them, why then they must be caught in the meantime, is their blood to be drunk and their village destroyed by witches? Some one else then suggests that burning with hot irons is a good way of making witches confess. So fires are lighted and pieces of old iron put in to be heated, and when all is ready the unfortunate victims are again brought out, and are oftentimes very cruelly and brutally burned on their necks and heads with the redhot irons. Another mode of torture is to cover the face and neck with cotton-wool and then set fire to it, or to heat a brass candlestick to a white heat and compel the accused to carry it about until the hand is nearly burnt off. Another plan is to hang the witch from the bamboo above mentioned by the arms, to attach heavy weights to the feet, and to dash them about until the joints are ready to give way. The wretched creatures are kept all this time without food, water, or sleep, and are beaten during the intervals of other punishments with the allpowerful castor-oil rod. In their agony the victims very often declare that they really have a compact with a demon, and disclose horrible particulars as to the banquets they share with him. At last it happens that one or perhaps both of the women die under the cruel treatment they have received, and then the assembly is struck with a guilty fear. The bodies must be buried or got rid of in some way or other, and that is a very difficult thing to accomplish. No one who has any respect for his caste or himself will stretch out a hand to bury a witch-it would be endless pollution to think of it. The affair must be kept quiet, however; there must be no delay, for if it does come to the ears of the Sirkar, it will go hard with the murderers. So a couple of men of the lowest caste to be found in the village are induced by threats and bribes to drag away the bodies and throw them into some neighbouring ditch, or into a nullah, or a tank even, of which the water is little used, and so the tragedy ends -for a time at least. The murderers are then all sworn to secrecy, and go to their homes, hoping that cholera at any rate after this night's work will disappear. When matters are not carried quite so far as this, they content themselves with beating the supposed witches and turning them and their families out into the jungles, forbidding them ever again to approach the village to prevent their doing so, they pull down their huts. The outcasts wander into the jungles and die very soon of starvation or cholera.

It now probably becomes necessary to make a general exodus from

the plague-stricken village. Though the witches have been murdered. the plague is not stayed; therefore, as before described, the survivors gather together what goods they can conveniently carry, and leaving most of their old and helpless relations to perish of hunger and disease, betake themselves to the jungles. When the rainy season has commenced, the great heats passed away, and the cholera to some extent has abated, those who have managed to keep themselves alive come back to their homes and their occupations. And it is just at this time that, by some means or other, the news of the witch-murder does get to the ears of the Sirkar; a quarrel ensues most likely between some of the culprits, or one or more find a guilty conscience too much for them, and so walk in and make a clean breast of it to the nearest authorities. Oftener, however, the relations of the deceased, who have been probably bribed to silence, strike for more money, and in default thereof go and lodge a complaint against the murderers. Owing to the zeal of the civil authorities, the people are beginning to understand that they must not call people witches and put them to cruel deaths; because to do so is murder: a fact which they found difficult at first to grasp. The means employed, however, to convince them of this great truth, have been summary, and consequently, successful. The ringleaders and instigators of the crime have been arrested, found guilty, and hanged on the very spot where, in many instances, but some few months previously their victims had suffered and died a horrible death.

There is a strange, wild story of witchcraft and its results, well known among the people of the district here alluded to, and which will perhaps form an appropriate conclusion to this narrative. It is as follows:'A great many years ago,—so many, that it was beyond the memory of even the oldest inhabitant's great grandfather, so long ago that perhaps in those days many of the ruined temples to be seen perched on hill-tops and ensconced picturesquely among the palm-trees on the banks of the lotus-covered tanks or lakes, were in the very climax of their prosperity, and the gods enshrined therein were well fed, and had plenty of music and flowers on feast days, there was a small village, situated on the bank of some such large tank, inhabited by industrious basket-makers. It was small and remote, and the inhabitants had a very singular horror of 'meeting or intermixing with the people of other neighbouring towns, for they had strong faith in the power of the evil eye. At last a report reached them of a certain dreadful plague which was ravaging the surrounding villages, carrying off the population by hundreds. Witchcraft, of course, was at the bottom of it all. It happened on a certain fine evening, towards the commencement of the hot season, that a basket-maker and his wife were sitting at the door of their hut, busily engaged at their trade, and their son, a boy of some six years old, was playing about under a large peepul-tree, some hundred yards off. Presently a woman was seen to pass through the village, and strike into a path which led immediately under the peepul-tree. Always suspicious