mysterious powers in their
beneficent and curative forms, there exist all over Hindostan abundant
proofs of the dread of 'zadoo,' or witchcraft, among all classes,
Moslems as well as Hindoos, when it appears to threaten them with
evil. If a cultivator has transplanted his tobacco or other valuable
plant, he collects old cracked earthen cooking-pots, and places a spot
of limestone whiting on the well-blackened bottom of each. They are
then fixed on stakes driven into the ground, so that the white spots
may be seen by all passers-by. This ingenious process is meant to
neutralise the influence of the 'evil eye' of the envious. The
talismans worn by the natives, said to be always the same, consist of
an oblong cylinder, with a couple of rings for a string to pass
through to fasten them, and would appear to have been originally
impregnated with the electric fluid. Children are invariably provided
with such amulets to avert the 'evil eye;' and should any one praise
their beauty, the parent spits on the ground, and declares them to be
perfect frights.

The inhabitants of the mountainous regions east of Bengal--the
Bhooteeas, and others--accuse all those of Bengal of being great
sorcerers; and when seized with fever in the low malarious tracts,
which they must pass through on descending from the mountains and
entering that province, for the purpose of bathing in the holy Ganges,
or visiting one of the numerous shrines in the plains, the disease is
invariably imputed to the incantations of the Bengalees.

Nor tree, nor plant
Grows here, but what is fed with magic juice,
All full of human souls.

Our military friend gives two other instances in which the effects
produced were really and truly mesmeric, though of course ascribed to
magic. He vouches for the facts, but leaves every one to form his own
opinion:--

The wife of one of my grooms, a robust woman, and the mother of a
large family, all living within my grounds, was bitten by a poisonous
serpent, most probably a cobra, or coluber maja, and quickly felt the
deadly effects of its venom. When the woman's powers were rapidly
sinking, the servants came to my wife, to request that the civil
surgeon of the station might be called in to save her life. He
immediately attended, and exerted his utmost skill, but in vain. In
the usual time, the woman appeared to be lifeless, and he therefore
left her, acknowledging that he could not be of any further s