176 THE HIGHLANDS OF CENTRAL INDIA. 



who shrunk from the fatal leap when brought to the brink, 

 but was mercilessly pushed over by the excited religionists, 

 this was the last of these sacrifices that was permitted, the 

 country coming in 1824 under our administration. 



But the powers of evil were not yet to be baulked of their 

 victims. The British Government could prevent deluded and 

 drugged devotees from casting themselves over the Bir-Kali 

 rock ; but it could not deprive Kali and Kal-Bhairava of 

 their fell executioner the cholera demon. Year by year the 

 pestilence invaded the encampments of the pilgrims. Sani- 

 tary science would say that it arose from the germs of disease 

 brought from the festering gullies of the great cities, and 

 pushed into activity by the exposure, bad food, defiled neigh- 

 bourhood, and poisoned water, of the pilgrim camps. But the 

 Hindu saw nothing in it but the wrath of the offended 

 Divinity claiming his sacrifice. Year after year the gatherings 

 were broken up in wild disorder. The valley of the cave, the 

 steep hillside, and that green glade in the Sal forest, were left 

 to bury their dead, while the multitude fled affrighted over 

 the land, carrying far and wide with them the seeds of death. 

 Everywhere their tracks were marked by unburied corpses ; 

 and the remotest villages of the Narbada valley and the 

 country of the South felt the anger of the destroying fiend. 

 A pilgrim fleeing from the fatal gathering could find no rest 

 for the sole of his foot. The villages on his road closed their 

 gates against him as if he were a mad dog ; and many who 

 escaped the disease perished in the jungle from starvation and 

 wild beasts. At last, after a terrible outbreak of cholera in 

 1865, the Government prohibited the usual gathering at the 

 Mahadeo Cave. The people made no complaint. They do 

 not seriously care about these things when left alone by the 

 priests ; and here the priests were satisfied by the continuance 



