88 IN THE INDIAN JUNGLE. 



known to be concerned in the numerous robberies 

 that had recently taken place in that neighbour- 

 hood. A special officer Lieutenant Cumberledge, 

 I think, of the Thuggi Department had been sent 

 down to investigate, as several persons had dis- 

 appeared from the village of late and it was thought 

 that the Thugs (professional stranglers) had had 

 something to do with their disappearance, as the 

 bodies were not recovered and these wretches 

 were known to be particularly skilful in hiding 

 away the corpses of their victims. 



Cumberledge told me a strange story. His first 

 search was for signs of Thugs, but no strangers 

 were known to be about nor had parties of seemingly 

 respectable Hindoo travellers (the usual disguise 

 of Thugs) gone up or down the road. He then 

 thought that the murderers might be Bheels ; but 

 Bheels were also among the missing persons, and 

 a great fear had fallen on their people, as they 

 ascribed the disappearance of their fellows to a 

 malignant spirit. Robbery evidently was not an 

 object, since most of those who had disappeared 

 were poor people with few or no ornaments. The 

 officer then imagined that the cause of all this 

 mischief might be a man-eating tiger ; but he soon 

 had to dismiss that idea from his mind, as no tiger 

 pugs had been seen, and the keenest trackers had 

 been unable to find traces of one of these brutes 

 anywhere in the neighbourhood. A man-eating 

 wolf then suggested itself, as it was known that 

 wolves frequently took to man-eating, and then 

 became very daring. The circumstances attending 



