ld account for? And is it not notorious throughout the
countryside that the seven miles of road between Jamalpur and Monghyr
are nightly paraded by tramping battalions of spectres, phantoms of an
old-time army massacred, who knows how long ago? The common voice
attests all these things, and an eerie cemetery packed with blackened,
lichened, candle-extinguisher tomb-stones persuades the listener to
believe all that he hears. Bengal is second--or third is it?--in order
of seniority among the Provinces, and like an old nurse, she tells many
witch-tales.

But ghosts have nothing to do with collieries, and that ever-present
"Company," the E. I. R., has more or less made Giridih--principally
more. "Before the E. I. R. came," say the people, "we had one meal a
day. Now we have two." Stomachs do not tell fibs, whatever mouths may
say. That "Company," in the course of business, throws about five lakhs
a year into the Hazaribagh district in the form of wages alone, and
Giridih Bazaar has to supply the wants of twelve thousand men, women,
and children. But we have now the authority of a number of high-souled
and intelligent native prints that the Sahib of all grades spends his
time in "sucking the blood out of the country," and "flying to England
to spend his ill-gotten gains."

Giridih is perfectly mad--quite insane! Geologically, "the country is in
the metamorphic higher grounds that rise out of the alluvial flats of
Lower Bengal between the Osri and the Barakar rivers." Translated, this
sentence means that you can twist your ankle on pieces of pure white,
pinky, and yellowish granite, slip over weather-worn sandstone,
grievously cut your boots over flakes of trap, and throw hornblende
pebbles at the dogs. Never was such a place for stone-throwing as
Giridih. The general aspect of the country is falsely park-like, because
it swells and sinks in a score of grass-covered undulations, and is
adorned with plantation-like jungle. There are low hills on every side,
and twelve miles away bearing south the blue bulk of the holy hill of
Parasnath, greatest of the Jain Tirthankars, overlooks the world. In
Bengal they consider four thousand five hundred feet good enough for a
Dagshai or Kasauli, and once upon a time they tried to put troops on
Parasnath. There was a scarcity of water, and Thomas of those days found
the silence and seclusion prey upon his spirits. Since twenty years,
therefore, Parasnath has been abandoned by Her Majesty's