Feringis of all the little boys. When the people gave up this notion, a new fancy was brought out sixteen schools out of four-and-twenty in the jurisdiction of your humble servant were stopped; yes, absolutely closed; and what, Sir, do you suppose was the reason? The old women spread a report that the Ganges canal, which has been so long cutting, would not chul, that the water would not run in it, and that the boys were not really wanted for education, but for sacrifice to propitiate Gunga-ji! The schools, as I say, were deserted until I went round to the villages, and swore upon the Ganges water that there was no real cause for alarm."

But enough of Rung Lal and his prosing-to do him justice, he has made a very good tehsildar so far, and will do well, I doubt not.

We must close our notice of this little work with two more extracts, which will show first the difficulty of entirely putting an end to affrays amongst men of hot and excitable passions, and next the ill effects which may proceed from the issue of one rash and inconsiderate order by a magisterial officer. How many an affray, attended with wounding, or even a loss of life, has arisen from damage done by the cattle of one man to the growing crop of another! as in this instance :

Shere Singh, a violent, proud, and ignorant young Rajput, sees a goat trespassing on his sugar-cane or corn-field. Urjun is the owner of the goat, second cousin to Shere Singh, with whom he played as a child, with whom he climbed trees as a boy, and whom, as a man, he is ready to defend against all the world, out of his own village. But the fathers of these young men live and eat separately, the grand father of one killed the grandfather of the other half-a-century back, and the lands and interests of the two families have long been divided. Shere Singh feels that Urjun's goat has no right in his field; he picks up a clod of earth or a stick, flings it at the animal, which goes limping home with a broken leg. Urjun's father had watched Shere Sing; he comes down from the roof of his house, and abuses the offender at the top of his voice. Urjun comes home, sees the goat which he had bought for his sick child lying helpless on his threshold, sallies out, hears Shere Shing abusing his female relations, and runs to fetch his sword. The villagers gather round; there is a rush, a scuffle, a fight, and before the sun sets, Urjun and Shere Sing are carried off to the police-office on charpoys in a moribund state, with broken heads and mutilated bodies. Twenty others of the family had been engaged in the melee, but nobody will tell the police who they were; the wounded scuttle off to the neighbouring villages, the dead or dying are given up to the authorities. Let the village watchman be called, he will give no information, and unless the magistrate succeed in hunting up some stray witness unconnected with the village, the whole affair is left in doubt. So great are the difficulties when the landholder and the police do not pull together.

The last extract tells a piteous tale.

The author, or a friend of his, when magistrate of a district, which shall be nameless, in a year, the precise date of which is not given, finds the following evils to have resulted from a hasty order to cut down a tree given by an unlucky joint-sahib, who is not otherwise distinctly specified. Walking through the wards of the jail, the narrator discerns an odd-looking individual, with small red eyes, grizzled hair, and an excited manner, just the sort of person whom Dickens would have made the principal character in some moving tale. The man was waiting his trial, and kept reiterating that without fault or crime they had "killed his child." The child, it appeared, was a pet tree, and on enquiry, the following particulars are told by a

native visitor, who probably heightened the effect of his narrative, but whose facts were in the main correct :

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Birbul, who is now in your honour's gaol, and about to take his trial for murder before the sessions-judge, is a bhurji, or parcher of grain, by profession. He was always considered a quiet, decent man. Next door to him lived a Marwarrie money-lender, named Putní Mul, a banian by trade, but with a heart like a butcher, and so famous for avarice, that if by mishap any man took his name in the morning on an empty stomach, he would get no dinner that day unless he beat his shoes five times on the ground, crying " God forgive me each time. Putní Mul grudged to spend an anna, even in the funeral ceremonies of his own father, but could always find a few rupees to bribe the police to worry his neighbours. Well, as I said, he lived next door to the bhurji, and, as a matter of course, they hated each other. The bhurji had no children; he was an odd reserved sort of man, and cared for nobody except his old wife, and for nothing except one pet tree, which he had planted when a boy, and married, after his own marriage, to a well in his courtyard. Every morning he and his wife, after their daily ablutions, poured water over the tree; which, in short, they looked upon as their child. As bad luck would have it, a branch of this tree grew gradually over a part of the Marwarrie money-lender's roof. When the water dropped from this branch in the rainy season, it washed away a small portion of the mud plaster, and the repairs cost Putní Mul two pice. This was ruinous; so he went to the bhurji, and told him to cut the offending branch of his tree off. The bhurji got angry at the idea of mutilating his beloved tree, and gave Putní Mul a cross answer.

Off went the money-dealer to the thanadar, and, putting five rupees into his hand, begged him to report to the magistrate that the bhurji's tree opened a road for thieves to his house, and ought to be cut down. The report went before the junt-sahib (joint-magistrate, whose experience, be it said with respect, is limited), and the order came for cutting down the tree. Two burkundazes were sent to the village, who laid hold of a couple of labourers, and cut down the tree, whilst Putní Mul looked on with a satisfied grin from the roof of his house. In the evening the bhurji came home, with a basket of leaves for his oven on his head, found his wife crying and beating her breast, and his doorway blocked up with the fallen tree. Putní Mul called out to him," Well, Birbul, will you do as I bid you in future, or not?' Birbul was silent; but murder was in his heart.

Next morning, as Putni Mul came out in the early dawn with his lotah in his hand, he saw what looked like three lights under the wall of the bhurji's house; two of these were the blood-red eyes of the bhurji, the third was bis match. The next moment the Marwarrie was on the ground, with four bullets from Birbul's matchlock in his heart.

With a yell of triumph the bhurji sprung on his prey, and, ere yet the deathstruggles were over, drew his rusty sword, and hacking off the arms and then the head of his victim, stuck them on the mutilated trunk and branches of his darling tree. He then bent down over the dead body and drank, out of the hollow of his hand, three mouthfuls of his enemy's blood. This done, he re-loaded his matchlock, and, armed with it, with sword, dagger, and bow and arrows, took his post on the roof of his house. "Now," he cried, "let the thanadar come who dared to rob me of my child, my only child, and I'll serve him as I served this cursed Marwarrie."

Hours passed on, but none were found bold enough to seize the bhurji, whose matchlock was pointed at any human being who came near. Towards evening a dog came to smell at the body of the Marwarrie, but Birbul pinned him to the ground with an arrow.

The police surrounded the place, and the thanadar had a charpoy put for him under a tree beyond the range of Birbul's matchlock. All Putní Mul's money. bags would not have tempted him within the bhurji's reach. So passed the day, and so the night. Next day the voice of the woman could be heard encouraging her husband, as she handed him up a pitcher of water and a cake of bread. done, rajah! die like a man, and never let them tie your hands." Well, sir, to make a long story short, the bhurji was caught at last, but not by fair means.

Well

When the news of his resistance reached the sudder station, various expedients for taking him alive were discussed. Everybody had a plan, but nobody's plan was approved. At last a little Mahometan writer, named Jan Ali, belonging to the collector's office, stepped forward and said, "If the junt magistrate sahib will order his slave to go to the aid of the police, the bhurji shall, by the good fortune of the Kumpani Buhadur, be captured." The junt sahib assented, and the by-standers applauded Jan Ali for his devotion. "Here is my sword," said one; "here is my pony," said another. "I want no sword," said Jan Ali; "but give me that old book of medicine belonging to the dufturi: I want nothing else."

"He is going to work some sort of spell," said the bystanders: "well, contrivance is better than force, especially when one has to do with such a kafir as this bhurji. Such were the criticisms passing round as Jan Ali set off, with his thin legs sticking far out of his broad white trowsers, whilst he kicked his heels into the nazir's pony, one hand on the mane, the other clasping the medicine-book. When he arrived at the scene of Putní Mul's murder, the shades of evening were closing in. The bhurji had been two days and a night watching his enemy's corpse, and began to get rather tired. A villager was sent to scream out to him that a message had come from the magistrate. The bhurji put down his matchlock and invited the messenger to a parley. Jan Ali came, book in hand, and saluting Birbul, informed him that the magistrate, admiring his courage, had offered a pardon, if he would come quietly down from the roof of his house. (This, I need not inform you, Sir, was a device of Jan Ali's, and not any order of the magistrate's.) "Who are you?" said Birbul. They call me Syed Jan Ali," was the reply," and I am the chief Kazi of." "A Syed, are you?" replied Birbul; "will you swear that my hands shall not be tied if I come down?" "On the Koran," said Jan Ali, producing the medicine-book, and reverently holding it out on the palms of his hands, with his eyes turned up to heaven. The bhurji came down, when four burkundazes pounced upon him, kicked him, and, tying his arms with a strong rope, led him away like a wild beast. "Oh !" said he, "Kaziji, I thought my arms were not to be tied." Jan Ali replied, with a smile," That is the way we catch murderers ;" and so the bhurji was carried off, the policemen looking very big with drawn swords and lighted matches all round him.

46

Here ends the story of the narrator. The case came on at the sessions: the civil surgeon thought Birbul insane, but it was shown that at the time of committing the act he was capable of distinguishing right from wrong, and the matter ended by Birbul's crossing the "black water" for life: and thus one man was killed, one transported, and two families ruined by a rash order to cut a tree.

We can recommend Mr. Raikes' little volume to all men who wish to learn something of the manners and customs of the natives of Upper India.

Falconry in the Valley of the Indus. By Richard F. Burton, Lieutenant, Bombay Army, Author of "Goa and the Blue Mountains," &c. London. 1852.

It is a happy thing that furloughs come to an end; and we should suppose and hope, that that of Lieutenant Burton must be approaching its termination; otherwise we see no prospect of a cessation of that stream of publications with which, for some time, he has been

inundating the community, and on whose banks the poor reviewer is constrained to sit in an attitude of expectancy, like that attributed by Horace to a singularly verdant rustic. And the worst of it is, that each of his publications is inferior to its predecessor. This is easily accounted for. At first, Mr. Burton wrote because he had information to communicate. Now, we fear, he writes, because he has contracted a habit of writing, and therefore he sets himself to the solution of the problem, to spread a minimum of matter over a maximum number of pages. Dr. Johnson absolutely refused to hold intercourse with a man who had written more than he had read; and we do trust that Mr. Burton will now, for a short time, lay aside his pen, and pore again over that volume, of men and manners and scenery, that he well knows how to decypher. If he will adopt this course, we can confidently predict that he will fulfil the promise held out by his earlier works; otherwise he will certainly sink lower and lower in the literary scale-a consummation which we should sincerely regret.

Rough Notes of a trip to Reunion, the Mauritius and_Ceylon, with Remarks on their eligibility as Sanitaria for Indian Invalids; by Frederic J. Mouat, M. D., Medical Staff. Calcutta. Thacker, Spink and Co., 1852.

OUR local press has seldom produced a more interesting, or truly useful little work, than the one before us. Doctor Mouat has rendered good service in publishing his notes, and in thus fixing the vague ideas hitherto prevalent as to the eligibility of these ocean isles, as suitable sanitaria for Indian invalids.

Whilst our author, as he states, does not aim at literary excellence, or attempt researches into the arcana of science in any of its departments, but simply to guide others in the path which proved so eminently beneficial to his own health-he has succeeded in producing a little vade-mecum, which may be read alike with interest by the ordinary reader and by the enquirer in search of a beneficial change of climate.

"It is not I believe generally known," (remarks the author,) "that there exists in the little island of Bourbon, within a few days' sail of Calcutta, one of the finest and most healthy climates in the whole world; grand and beautiful scenery, and mineral waters of rare virtue and efficacy. The Mauritius being a British Colonial possession, carrying on an extended intercourse with India, is much better known, but comparatively few are aware of its great advantages as a resort for Indian invalids." The former island, however, possesses such superior qualifications as a sanitarium over the two others

visited by our author, that in the brief notice we can here take of the subject, we must confine our remarks principally to it, recommending our readers, nevertheless, to the work itself, and assuring them they will find full remuneration for their trouble in its interesting pages.

Bourbon, or Reunion, is described by Horsburgh as an island of "round form, about 14 leagues from N. W. to S. E., which is its greatest length. There is a volcano near the S. E. part, and the highpeaked mountain, near the centre of the island, is in about Lat. 21° 9' South. Although this island is larger than Mauritius, it is only a great mountain, in a manner cloven through the whole height in three different places. *** According to Bory de St. Vincent, Bourbon is composed of two volcanic mountains, originating at different and distant periods-a heaping of Pelion on Ossa. In the southern part, which is the smaller, the subterranean fires still commit ravages." "It rises rapidly from its iron-bound inhospitable coast to its highest point, the Piton des Neiges, nearly in the centre of the isle. This snowy peak is the crest of a bold, bare rocky ridge, dividing the Ciloas from the Salazie range of mountains. It is, I believe, higher than even the summit of the volcano, and has frequently been seen on a clear day from the neighbouring island of Mauritius, at a distance, very little, if any thing, short of a hundred miles."

Although Bourbon and Mauritius possess every where a pure atmosphere, and absolute immunity from all diseases of the malarious class, it must still be borne in mind that they are within the tropics, and the portion situated near the sea-coast, having all the tropical characters and high temperature, modified alone by the ocean breeze. It is to elevation we must look for diminished temperature, and that invigorating coolness so essential to the restoration of the impaired health arising from long residence in warm climates. Independently, therefore, of its mineral springs (for Mauritius boasts likewise of its medicinal waters), Bourbon has greatly the advantage over the sister isle in respect to the possession of habitable localities of superior elevation.

The general outline of Mauritius is that of a blunt or flattened cone, having several (five) distinct chains of mountains arising abruptly thereon, the highest point amongst which reaches to 2,717 feet. The height of the general central plateau of the island does not exceed 1,800 feet. From this configuration it happens that Mauritius, although much smaller than the sister island of Bourbon, possesses a much greater extent of arable surface-soils of superior fertility, and is, in consequence, a far more productive and valuable colony.

It possesses, moreover, an unusually large proportion of bays and harbours, suited to vessels of every class, a qualification in which Bourbon is in the other extreme; actually not possessing a Bay or harbour around its extensive coasts; whole regions otherwise fertile are thereby rendered of little utility to man.