and are
still made all over India. Happy had it been for mankind if those
only who were supposed to do good had been deified.[11]

On the 2nd we came on to the village of Khojanpur (leaving the town
and cantonments of Sagar to our left), a distance of some fourteen
miles. The road for a great part of the way was over the bare back of
the sandstone strata, the covering of basalt having been washed off.
The hills, however, are, at this distance from the city and
cantonments of Sagar, nicely wooded; and, being constantly
intersected by pretty little valleys, the country we came over was
picturesque and beautiful. The soil of all these valleys is rich from
the detritus of the basalt that forms or caps the hills; but it is
now in a bad state of cultivation, partly from several successive
seasons of great calamity, under which the people have been
suffering, and partly from over-assessment; and this posture of
affairs is continued by that loss of energy, industry, and character,
among the farmers and cultivators, which must everywhere result from
these two evils. In India, where the people have learnt so well to
govern themselves, from the want of settled government, good or bad
government really depends almost altogether upon _good or bad
settlements of the land revenue_. Where the Government demand is
imposed with moderation, and enforced with justice, there will the
people be generally found happy and contented, and disposed to
perform their duties to each other and to the state; except when they
have the misfortune to suffer from drought, blight, and other
calamities of season.[l2]

I have mentioned that the basalt in the Sagar district reposes for
the most part immediately upon the sandstone of the Vindhya range;
and it must have been deposited on the sand, while the latter was yet
at the bottom of the ocean, though this range is now, I believe,
nowhere less than from fifteen hundred to two thousand feet above the
level of the sea. The marks of the ripple of the sea may be observed
in some places where the basalt has been recently washed off,
beautifully defined, as if formed only yesterday, and there is no
other substance to be seen between the two rocks.

The texture of the sandstone at the surface, where it comes in
contact with the basalt, has in some places been altered by it, but
in others it seems to have been as little changed as the habitations
of the people who were suffocated by the ashes of Vesuvius in t