le bloody conflicts, when hundreds of
thousands of men, women, and children were butchered by the cruel monster
Timur Beg in cold blood, and during the tenth and eleventh centuries by
Mahmood the Demon, on purpose to make proselytes to the Mohammedan faith,
it is only natural to suppose that under those circumstances the Gipsies
would leave the country to escape the consequences following those
calamities, over-populated as it was, numbering close upon 200,000,000 of
human beings. {8} I am inclined to think that it would be hunger and
starvation upon their heels that would be the propelling power to send
them forward in quest of food. From Attock, Peshawur, Cabul, and Herat,
they would tramp through Persia by Teheran, and enter the Euphrates
Valley at Bagdad. From Calcutta, Madras, Seringapatam, Bangalore, Goa,
Poonah, Hydrabad, Aurungabad, Nagpoor, Jabbulpoor, Benares, Allahabad,
Surat, Simla, Delhi, Lahore, they would wander along to the mouth of the
river Indus, and commence their journey at Hydrabad, and travelling by
the shores of the Indian Ocean, stragglers coming in from Bunpore,
Gombaroon, the commencement of the Persian Gulf, when they would travel
by Bushino to Bassora. At this place they would begin to scatter
themselves over some parts of Arabia, making their headquarters near
Molah, Mecca, and other parts of the country, crossing over Suez, and
getting into Egypt in large numbers. Others would take the Euphrates
Valley route, which, by the way, is the route of the proposed railway to
India. Tribes branching off at Kurnah, some to Bagdad, following the
course of the river Tigris to Mosul and Diarbeker, and others would go to
Jerusalem, Damuscus, and Antioch, till they arrived at Allepo and
Alexandretta. Here may be considered the starting-point from which they
spread over Asiatic Turkey in large numbers, till they arrived before
Constantinople at the commencement of the fourteenth century.

Straggling Gipsies no doubt found their way westward prior to the wars of
Timur Beg, and in this view I am supported by the fact that two of our
own countrymen--Fitz-Simeon and Hugh the Illuminator, holy friars--on
their pilgrimage to the Holy Land in 1322, called at Crete, and there
found some Gipsies--I am inclined to think only a few sent out as a kind
of advance-guard or feeler, adopting the plan they have done subsequently
in peopling Europe and England during the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries.

Brand, i