44 THE HIGHLANDS OF CENTKAL INDIA. 



quality, owing to the bees having resorted to some 

 noxious flower. It is easy to procure a comb by slicing 

 it off the face of the rock with a ritle l)all ; and I once 

 had the gratification of thus operating on the colonies 

 at the Marble Rocks, from a safe position on the opposite 

 bank, sending several large comb-fulls to a watery grave 

 in the depths below. 



The presence of these inhospitable bees renders it a 

 matter for congratulation that the finest impression of 

 the Marble Rocks is to be got '' by the pale moonlight." 

 The bees are then quite harmless ; and, if the scenery 

 has then lost something in brilliancy of contrast in its 

 lights and shades, it has gained perhaps more in the 

 mysteriousness and solemnity that well befit a spot 

 seemingly created by Deity for an everlasting temple to 

 himself. 1 am sorry to say that, in the old Jubbulpur 

 days, we not unfrequently used to desecrate the sanctuary 

 by unholy moonlight picnics, in which plenty of cham- 

 pagne, brass bands, and songs that were sometimes very 

 much the reverse of hymns, bore the most prominent 

 part. It was very jolly, though, like most things that 

 are wrong, 



A spot so naturally remarkable as the Marble Rocks 

 could not escape sanctification at the hands of the 

 Bralimans. Nothing more completely refutes the ac- 

 cusation of want of taste for natural beauty, so often 

 made against the Hindus, than their almost invariable 

 selection of the most picturesque sites for their religious 

 buildings. Many of the commonest legends of Hindii 

 mythology have, as usual, been transplanted by the 

 local priests to this neighbourhood. The monkey legions 

 of Haniiman here leapt across the chasm on their way 

 to Ceylon; and the celestial elephant of Indra left a 



