'What! entirely cured?'

'Yes, sir; perfectly cured.'

'Well, then, tell me what medicine you took.'

'I took no medicine; I called in two women, zadoo walees (dealers in magic) from the bazaar, and gave them four pice apiece (about twopence each), and they cured me.'

'But how—what did they do?'

'They put me on a charpaee (a low bed), and one sat at each side of me, and both passed their hands over my body so (describing long mesmeric passes), and thus they set me to sleep, and I slept soundly: when I awoke, I was free from rheumatism, and am now perfectly well.'

The master made no investigation of the matter; the man was laughed at, and told to return to his duties, which he continued thenceforth to perform with all his former zeal. Now, this was not regarded by the patient or the other servants as a strange thing, for they took it quite as a matter of course; and there is indeed no reason to doubt, that the natives of India frequently have recourse to jhar phoonk, or mesmerism, for the cure of rheumatism; but many interesting things arc carefully concealed from the English, because we invariably ridicule or sneer at native customs—a mode of treatment peculiarly distasteful to the inhabitants of the East.

But though willing to make use of these mysterious powers in their beneficent and curative forms, there exist all over Hindostan abundant proofs of the dread of 'zadoo,' or witchcraft, among all classes, Moslems as well as Hindoos, when it appears to threaten them with evil. If a cultivator has transplanted his tobacco or other valuable plant, he collects old cracked earthen cooking-pots, and places a spot of limestone whiting on the well-blackened bottom of each. They are then fixed on stakes driven into the ground, so that the white spots may be seen by all passers-by. This ingenious process is meant to neutralise the influence of the 'evil eye' of the envious. The talismans worn by the natives, said to be always the same, consist of an oblong cylinder, with a couple of rings for a string to pass through to fasten them, and would appear to have been originally impregnated with the electric fluid. Children are invariably provided with such amulets to avert the 'evil eye;' and should any one praise their beauty, the parent spits on the ground, and declares them to be perfect frights.

The inhabitants of the mountainous regions east of Bengal—the Bhooteeas, and others—accuse all those of Bengal of being great sorcerers; and when seized with fever in the low malarious tracts, which they must pass through on descending from the mountains and entering that province, for the purpose of bathing in the holy Ganges, or visiting one of the numerous shrines in the plains, the disease is invariably imputed to the incantations of the Bengalees.

Nor tree, nor plant
Grows here, but what is fed with magic juice,
All full of human souls.