ght it
worth while to write his name upon those trees which no travellers go
to see.' 'Cannot you see', said I, 'that these letters have been
engraved by man? Are they not all to be found on the trunk within
reach of a man's hand?' 'Of course they are', replied he, 'because
people would not be able conveniently to distinguish them if God were
to write them higher up.'

Shaikh Sadi has a very pretty couplet, 'Every leaf of the foliage of
a green tree is, in the eye of a wise man, a library to teach him the
wisdom of his Creator.'[6] I may remark that, where an Englishman
would write his own name, a Hindoo would write that of his god, his
parent, or his benefactor. This difference is traceable, of course,
to the difference in their governments and institutions. If a Hindoo
built a town, he called it after his local governor; if a local
governor built it, he called it after the favourite son of the
Emperor. In well regulated Hindoo families, one cannot ask a younger
brother after his children in presence of the elder brother who
happens to be the head of the family; it would be disrespectful for
him even to speak of his children as his own in such presence--the
elder brother relieves his embarrassment by answering for him.

On the 27th[7] we reached Damoh,[8] where our friends, the Browns,
were to leave us on their return to Jubbulpore. Damoh is a pretty
place. The town contains some five or six thousand people, and has
some very handsome Hindoo temples. On a hill immediately above it is
the shrine of a Muhammadan saint, which has a very picturesque
appearance.

There are no manufactures at Damoh, except such as supply the wants
of the immediate neighbourhood; and the town is supported by the
residence of a few merchants, a few landholders, and agricultural
capitalists, and the establishment of a native collector. The people
here suffer much from the guinea-worm, and consider it to arise from
drinking the water of the old tank, which is now very dirty and full
of weeds. I have no doubt that it is occasioned either by drinking
the water of this tank, or by wading in it: for I have known European
gentlemen get the worm in their legs from wading in similar lakes or
swamps after snipes, and the servants who followed them with their
ammunition experience the same effect.[9] Here, as in most other
parts of India, the tanks get spoiled by the water-chestnut,
'singhara' (_Trapa bispinosa_), which is everywhere as regularly