heart of the darkness of paganism." There
are few nations in the world who resemble
the Hindoos in the strange but decorous
reverence they show to every worship and
creed, however hostile. The Buddhist shrines,
it is true, were destroyed during the long
struggle between Brahminism and its world-
embracing offshoot, the faith of Buddha. But
to pollute or injure a Mahommedan minor or
musjid, to deface a Moslem saint's mausoleum,
or to tear away the relics that decorate
a mosque, does not ever seem to present itself
to the imaginations of the worshippers of
Siva. They have endured, but, in this respect
at least, they appear to be wanting in the
very wish to retaliate.

On a third foray, directed against an
outlaw tribe, the Kattis, who were to be
hunted up and down the Ghir mountains,
Lutfullah beheld one of those Hindoo
hermits, whose fame for sanctity is so great,
and who are assuredly no hypocrites, for
they receive no alms, and refuse all human
intercourse. Many, in fact the majority, of
the Fakeers of India, Hindoo or Moslem,
are a mere noisy gang of bawling impostors,
who take up their trade simply to live in
idleness and luxury, and to whom the
superstitious ryots, male and female, can deny
nothing. Others are mild and tolerant in
their conversation with a passing European;
it is seldom that any but a bellowing impostor
greets a foreigner with a curse or a scowl, and
they often refuse money, and even food,
scrupulously accepting enough for each day's
sustenance, and giving the rest to some hungry
wayfarer. One day, as Lutfullah and his
pupil for the time, Lieutenant Spencer, were
riding among the mountains, the small force
of soldiers being in advance, they were
surprised by finding a deserted fire. On inquiring
of their syces, who ran beside the horses'
heads, to whom the fire belonged, the trembling
Hindoos replied that the fire must have
been kindled by one of the Aghori Babas,
or Omnivorous Fathers, and that he would
be angry if the party lingered. A few paces
farther on, the travellers came to the edge of
a prodigiously deep valley, and saw the hermit,
already at a great distance, and hurrying
down the steep declivity with the sure-footed
swiftness of a mountain goat. He often looked
round, and Lutfullah's English pupil, being
very anxious to converse with one of these
extraordinary personages, beckoned and
shouted lustily, but the holy man only fled
the faster. The hill-side being frightfully
steep, the monk was not followed, except by
the telescope, which revealed him as a noble-
looking old fellow, with a long white beard
and shaggy hair like silver falling over his
shoulders, keen, sparkling eyes, and no clothing,
save a coating of wood ashes, which are
some protection from the cold of winter.
The detachment fixed its head-quarters at
Tulsi Sham, a Hindoo monastery among the
mountains. Here the camp-followers and
non-combatants suffered much from hunger,
but threats of sacking the monastery induced
the Hindoo abbot to open his vast granaries.
It should be mentioned, however, that the
worthy superior, when once frightened into
producing grain at all, produced it as a gift;
refusing any money payment, and feeding the
whole of his unwelcome guests, gratis, while
he declared the corn was not his, but
entrusted to his stewardship to relieve the
needy.

The expedition lasted three months; by
which time the rebellious Kattis were
utterly broken and destroyed. Lutfullah's
pupil being now a proficient in Hindustani,
the Moonshee returned to Surat, which,
during all the later part of his life, he has
considered as his home. His sojourn there,
on this occasion, was brief, but his curiosity—
a rare quality with a Moslem—prompted him
to visit by stealth one of those curious
cemeteries where the Parsee fire-worshippers
expose their dead in roofless towers, to be
picked to the bone by vultures and hawks.
The Guebres are very jealous of the sanctity
of these places; and Lutfullah, who, after
clambering to the summit of a tower full of
skeletons, scattered bones, and half-decayed
corpses, had the ill-luck to fall from his perch
with a noise that alarmed the warder, was
glad to escape without being stoned or beaten
to a jelly. Leaving Surat, Lutfullah next took
service with a young Mahratta prince, to
whom he was Persian translator. His salary
was small, but his duties were light, being
chiefly to play chess with the prime minister,
and to lose every game. But, the shabby
conduct of his new masters—who deprived him of
the presents given him by Scindia at a grand
ceremony—made him once more abandon
them for his old friends the English. He again
taught languages, never ceasing to learn as
well as to teach; and, after some time, finding
that his servants cheated him, he married,
as he very naïvely relates, that he might
have a housekeeper. Marriage, however, by
no means appeared to suit him, and he
indulged in many sage remarks on the futility
of human wishes. His conscience, however,
more tender than those of most of his
co-religionists, forbade him to divorce his wife
on slight grounds; but he complains bitterly
of the expense and responsibility of the
married state.

About this time he went, with some of
his English pupils, to witness a suttee. His
English friends did their utmost to
dissuade the young widow—a handsome girl
of fifteen—from the sacrifice she was bent
on; but public opinion, fanaticism, and the
powerful stimulants secretly administered by
the Brahmins, made the victim defy reason,
and even pain; for, before mounting the fatal
pile she actually wrapped her finger in oiled
rags, and setting it on fire so that it burned
like a candle, triumphantly exhibited it to
the Europeans; who having no authority, as