134 
SCENES IN INDIA. 
tent ; for I am told the practice has been in a great 
measure abolished since the successful efforts of Mr. 
Duncan, when Resident at Benares in the latter part 
of the last century, to eradicate a custom as unna- 
tural as it is impolitic and cruel. 
I happen to recollect a remarkable fact arising 
out of this sanguinary practice, which took place 
during my residence in India. A Rajpoot, to his great 
mortification, had a daughter born to him. It was his 
first child, and the mother could not control her 
maternal impulses at the thought of haying it bar- 
barously sacrificed. She was, however, command- 
ed by the stern husband — a man inflexible in ad- 
hering to the habitudes of his ancestors, however con- 
trary to the suggestions of justice or of nature — to he 
the destroyer of her own babe, by forcing opium into 
its mouth while the unsuspecting victim was draw- 
ing nourishment from her maternal bosom. This is, 
or was at least, a common mode of infanticide among 
the Rajpoot tribes. 
On the evening of the day after the infant’s birth, 
the body of a newly-born babe being placed before 
the haughty father, he was satisfied that the honour of 
his family had been maintained by the destruction of 
his female offspring. He was the bravest of the 
brave, and moreover possessed all the high moral 
qualities of his tribe. He had distinguished him- 
self in a remarkable manner in an encounter with 
robbers. Having been met in a remote part of the 
country by six men who demanded his arms, he 
refused to relinquish them ; the six bandits attack- 
ed him simultaneously, but in a short time he laid 
