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into the market, or to the shopkeepers, and force an alms, none 

 of them returning without his share: some of them pass the 

 bounds of a modest request, and bawl out in the open streets for 

 an hundred rupees, and nothing less will satisfy them. 



" They are clothed with a ragged mantle, which serves them 

 also for a mattress, for which purpose some have lion's, tiger's, or 

 leopard's skins to lay under them. The most civilized of them 

 wear flesh-coloured vests, somewhat like our brick-makers' frocks, 

 and almost of that colour. The merchants, as their adventures 

 return, are bountiful towards them, by which means some of 

 them thrive upon it. These field-conventiclers, at the hours 

 of devotion, beat a drum, from them called the fakeer's drum. 

 There are of these strollers about Surat enough to make an 

 army, so that they are almost become formidable to the citi- 

 zens, nor is the governor powerful enough to correct their inso- 

 lence; for lately setting on a nobleman of the Moors, when his 

 kindred came to demand justice, they unanimously rose in de- 

 fence of the aggressor, and rescued him from his deserved punish- 

 ment." 



The above is an excellent description of the Indian fanatics, 

 who go even greater lengths than is there mentioned, as many in- 

 jured husbands and deluded females can testify: but I imagine 

 Dr. Fryer has in some measure confounded the Hindoo Gosan- 

 ness and similar tribes with these Mahomedan saints; especialby 

 as to numbers. I never saw or heard of such a multitude either 

 at Surat or Baroche, where they most abound: it is easy for a 

 stranger to mistake appearances from their general pursuits being 

 the same. The- Hindoo austerities far exceed any which the fol- 



