ces on the Ganges. The first day, the people bathe below the rapid
over which the river falls after it emerges from its peaceful abode
among the marble rocks; on the second day, just above this rapid; and
on the third day, two miles further up at the cascade, when the whole
body of the limpid stream of the Nerbudda, confined to a narrow
channel of only a few yards wide, falls tumultuously down in a
beautiful cascade into a deep chasm of marble rocks. This fall of
their sacred stream the people call the 'Dhuandhar', or 'the smoky
fall', from the thick vapour which is always seen rising from it in
the morning. From below, the river glides quietly and imperceptibly
for a mile and a half along a deep, and, according to popular belief,
a fathomless channel of from ten to fifty yards wide, with snow-white
marble rocks rising perpendicularly on either side from a hundred to
a hundred and fifty feet high, and in some parts fearfully
overhanging. Suspended in recesses of these white rocks are numerous
large black nests of hornets ready to descend upon any unlucky wight
who may venture to disturb their repose;[10] and, as the boats of the
curious European visitors pass up and down to the sound of music,
clouds of wild pigeons rise from each side, and seem sometimes to
fill the air above them. Here, according to native legends, repose
the Pandavas, the heroes of their great Homeric poem, the
Mahabharata, whose names they have transferred to the valley of the
Nerbudda. Every fantastic appearance of the rocks, caused by those
great convulsions of nature which have so much disturbed the crust of
the globe, or by the slow and silent working of the, waters, is
attributed to the god-like power of those great heroes of Indian
romance, and is associated with the recollection of scenes in which
they are supposed to have figured.[11]

The strata of the Kaimur range of sandstone hills, which runs
diagonally across the valley of the Nerbudda, are thrown up almost
perpendicularly, in some places many hundred feet above the level of
the plain, while in others for many miles together their tops are
only visible above the surface. These are so many strings of the oxen
which the arrows of Arjun, one of the five brothers, converted into
stone; and many a stream which now waters the valley first sprang
from the surface of the earth at the touch of his lance, as his
troops wanted water. The image of the gods of a former day, which now
lie scattered