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and often resorted to by fakeers and pretended saints of that reli- 

 gion; who, like their religious brethren among the Hindoos, are 

 guilty of those various extravagancies, indecencies, and immoral 

 practices so well described by Dr. Fryer: " These fakeers, or holy 

 men, profess to be abstracted from the world, and resigned to God. 

 On this pretence they commit many extravagancies, and put 

 themselves on voluntary penances. Here is one that has vowed 

 to hang by the heels until he get money enough to build a mosque 

 to Mahomed, that he may be held a saint: another shall travel the 

 country with an horn blowed before him, and an ox it may be to 

 carry him and his baggage, besides one to wait on him with a 

 peacock's tail; whilst he rattles a great iron chain fettered to his 

 loot, as big as those elephants are foot-locked with, some two 

 yards in length, every link thicker than a man's thumb, and a palm 

 in length; his shaking this speaks his necessity, which the poor 

 Gentiles dare not deny to relieve; for if they do, he accuses them 

 to the cazy, who desires no better opportunity to fleece them ; for 

 they will not stick to swear they blasphemed Mahomed, for which 

 there is no evasion but to deposit, or be made a Moor. 



" Most of these are vagabonds, and are the pest of the nation 

 they live in. Some of them dwell in gardens, and retired places 

 in the fields, in the same manner as the Seers of old, and the 

 children of the prophets did ; their habit is the main thing that 

 signalizes them more than their virtue : they profess poverty, but 

 make all things their own, wherever they come; all the heat of 

 the day they idle it under some shady tree, at night they come 

 in troops, armed with a great pole, a mirchal, or peacock's 

 tail, and a wallet, more like plunderers than beggars: they go 



