Deserts.
All deserts, also, are a resort of Bhûts, as the great desert of Lop, where Marco Polo assures us they are constantly seen at night. In the Western Panjâb deserts, during the prairie fires and in the dead of night, the lonely herdsmen used to hear cries arising from the ground, and shouts of Mâr! Mâr! “Strike! Strike!” which were ascribed to the spirits of men who had been killed in former frontier raids. Such supernatural sounds were heard by the early settlers within the last fifty years, and, until quite recently, the people were afraid to travel without forming large parties for fear of encountering the supernatural enemies who frequented these uninhabited tracts.[121] So, among the Mirzapur jungle tribes, the wild forests of Sarguja are supposed to be infested with Bhûts, and if any one goes there rashly he is attacked through their influence with diarrhœa and vomiting. The site of the present British Residency at Kathmându in Nepâl was specially selected by the Nepâlese as it was a barren patch, supposed to be the abode of demons. So, in Scotland, the local spirit lives in a patch of untilled ground, known as the “Gudeman’s field” or “Cloutie’s Croft.”[122]