198 
SCENES IN INDIA. 
always destroyed as soon as it was born either by 
the mother or the nurse ; sometimes by opium, some- 
times by stratagem ; but it appears that since the 
practice has fallen into desuetude, through the hu- 
mane endeavours of Mr. Duncan and of those active 
functionaries who so shortly after followed his meri- 
torious example, thousands of mothers have rejoiced, 
with a glowing gratitude, to see their daughters grow- 
ing up around them in the native loveliness of inno- 
cence and youth. I can well imagine the anxious 
mother now looking on her blooming offspring with 
all the rapture of an affection enhanced by the re- 
membrance of that horrid law of custom which would 
once have deprived her of so interesting a pledge of 
conjugal love, and exclaiming in the words of one of 
her own native poets— 
“ Lost in the silvery beam so soft and fair, 
No eye can trace her as she moves along ; 
The winds which fan her, heavenly fragrance bear, 
And trace her footsteps in the virgin throng.”* 
I believe a case of infanticide is now seldom or 
never heard of, though within the last half century 
many thousand victims were yearly sacrificed to an 
arrogant and inhuman prejudice. It is scarcely pos- 
sible to conceive the indifference with which mothers 
are said by those who have described the fact, to have 
put their new-born babes to death— and mothers 
too who, on other occasions, when their maternal 
feelings were aroused, have exhibited the most tender 
* Broughton’s translations from the Popular Poetry of the 
Hindoos. 
