that produce in
distant markets.[5] Hitherto little beyond the rude produce of the
soil has been able to find its way into distant markets from the
valley of the Nerbudda; yet this valley abounds in iron mines,[6] and
its soil, where unexhausted by cropping, is of the richest
quality.[7] It is not then too much to hope that in time the iron of
the mines will be worked with machinery for manufactures; and that
multitudes, aided by this machinery, and subsisted on the rude
agricultural produce, which now flows out, will invest the value of
their labour in manufactured commodities adapted to the demand of
foreign markets and better able from their superior value, compared
with their bulk, to pay the cost of transport by land. Then, and not
till then, can we expect to see these territories pay a considerable
net surplus revenue to Government, and abound in a middle class of
merchants, manufacturers, and agricultural capitalists.[8]

At Sanoda there is a very beautiful little fortress or castle now
unoccupied, though still entire. It was built by an officer of the
Raja Chhatar Sal of Bundelkhand, about one hundred and twenty years
ago.[9] He had a grant, on the tenure of military service, of twelve
villages situated round this place; and a man who could build such a
castle to defend the surrounding country from the inroads of
freebooters, and to secure himself and his troops from any sudden
impulse of the people's resentment, was as likely to acquire an
increase of territorial possession in these parts as he would have
been in Europe during the Middle Ages. The son of this chief, by name
Rai Singh, was, soon after the castle had been completed, killed in
an attack upon a town near Chitrakot;[10] and having, in the
estimation of the people, _become a god_, he had a temple and a tomb
raised to him close to our encampment. I asked the people how he had
become a _god_; and was told that some one who had been long
suffering from a quartan ague went to the tomb one night, and
promised Rai Singh, whose ashes lay under it, that if he could
contrive to cure his ague for him, he would, during the rest of his
life, make offerings to his shrine. After that he had never another
attack, and was very punctual in his offerings. Others followed his
example, and with like success, till Rai Singh was recognized among
them universally as a god, and a temple raised to his name. This is
the way that gods were made all over the world at one time,