it is not as nutritious as barley or wheat. I
have never heard that the Natives use this corn for making bread.

'Tumaushbeen'[41] (Wonder-workers).--This call announces the rope-dancers
and sleight-of-hand company; eating fire, swallowing pen-knives, spinning
coloured yarn through the nose, tricks with cups and balls, and all the
arts of the well-known jugglers. I have seen both men and women attached
to these travelling companies perform extraordinary feats of agility and
skill, also most surprising vaultings, by the aid of bamboos, and a
frightful method of whirling round on the top of a pole or mast. This pole
is from twenty to thirty feet high; on the top is a swivel hook, which
fastens to a loop in a small piece of wood tied fast to the middle of the
performer, who climbs the pole without any assistance, and catches the
hook to the loop; at first he swings himself round very gently, but
increasing gradually in swiftness, until the velocity is equal to that of
a wheel set in motion by steam. This feat is sometimes continued for ten
or fifteen minutes together, when his strength does not fail him; but it
is too frightful a performance to give pleasure to a feeling audience.

'Samp-wallah'[42] (Snake-catchers).--These men blow a shrill pipe in
addition to calling out the honourable profession of snake-catcher. I
fancy it is all pretence with these fellows; if they catch a snake on the
premises, it is probably one they have let loose secretly, and which they
have tutored to come and go at the signal given: they profess to draw
snakes from their hiding-place, and make a good living by duping the
credulous.

The best proof I can offer of the impositions practised by these men on
the weakness and credulity of their neighbours, may be conveyed in the
following anecdote, with which I have been favoured by a very intelligent
Mussulmaun gentleman, on whom the cheat was attempted during my residence
in his neighbourhood at Lucknow.

'Moonshie Sahib,[43] as he is familiarly called by his friends, was absent
from home on a certain day, during which period his wife and family
fancied they heard the frightful sound of a snake, apparently as if it was
very near to them in the compound (court-yard) of the zeenahnah. They were
too much alarmed to venture from the hall to the compound to satisfy
themselves or take steps to destroy the intruder if actually there. Whilst
in this state of mental torture it happened (as they thought ve