146 THE HIGHLANDS OF CENTKAL INDIA 



death followed this descent of ninety feet, and terminated 

 the existence of this youth, whose strength of faith and 

 fortitude would have adorned the noblest cause, and must 

 command admiration when feelings of horror have sub- 

 sided. Thus closed the truly appalling scene." ^ 



With the exception of the murder of a poor old woman 

 who shrank 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-Kah rock; but it could not deprive Kali 

 and Kal-Bhairava of their fell executioner— the cholera 

 demon. Year by year the pestilence invaded the encamp- 

 ments of the pilgrims. Sanitary science would say that 

 it arose from the germs of disease brought from the fester- 

 ing gullies of the great cities, and pushed into activity 

 by the exposure, bad food, defiled neighbourhood, 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 hill-side, 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 



^Extract from a letter of 29tli of November, 1822, from Captain 

 Douglas, Political Assistant in Nimdr, to the Eesident at Indore. 



