which our
kind sisters represent, who may therefore be considered in
the exalted light of a valuable species of _unpaid
magistracy_ to the government of India."

There is a touch of the old English chivalry even in these few words
addressed to a sister whose approbation he values, and with whom he
hoped to spend the winter of his days. Having been, as he confesses,
idle in answering letters, or rather, too busy to find time for long
letters, he made use of his enforced leisure, while on his way from
the Nerbuddah River to the Himmaleh Mountains, in search of health, to
give to his sister a full account of his impressions and experiences
in India.

Though what he wrote was intended at first "to interest and amuse his
sister only and the other members of his family at home," he adds, in
a more serious tone: "Of one thing I must beg you to be assured, that
I have nowhere indulged in fiction, either in the narrative, the
recollections, or the conversations. What I relate on the testimony of
others, I believe to be true; and what I relate on my own, you may
rely upon as being so."

When placing his volumes before the public at large in 1844, he
expresses a hope that they may "tend to make the people of India
better understood by those of our countrymen whose destinies are cast
among them, and inspire more kindly feelings toward them."

You may ask why I consider Colonel Sleeman so trustworthy an authority
on the Indian character, more trustworthy, for instance, than even so
accurate and unprejudiced an observer as Professor Wilson. My answer
is--because Wilson lived chiefly in Calcutta, while Colonel Sleeman
saw India, where alone the true India can be seen, namely, in the
village-communities. For many years he was employed as Commissioner
for the suppression of Thuggee. The Thugs were professional assassins,
who committed their murders under a kind of religious sanction. They
were originally "all Mohammedans, but for a long time past Mohammedans
and Hindus had been indiscriminately associated in the gangs, the
former class, however, still predominating."[28]

In order to hunt up these gangs, Colonel Sleeman had constantly to
live among the people in the country, to gain their confidence, and to
watch the good as well as the bad features in their character.

Now what Colonel Sleeman continually insists on is that no one knows
the Indians who does not know them in their village-communities--what
we shou