army to flight; and the emperor ordered his gunners to desist, declaring that he was ‘satisfied of the presence of the god’.  There is hardly any part of India in which, according to popular belief, similar miracles were not worked to convince the emperor of the peculiar merits or sanctity of particular idols or temples, according to the traditions of the people, derived, of course, from the inventions of priests.  I should mention that these hornets suspend their nests to the branches of the highest trees, under rocks, or in old deserted temples.  Native travellers, soldiers, and camp followers, cook and eat their food under such trees; but they always avoid one in which there is a nest of hornets, particularly on a still day.  Sometimes they do not discover the nest till it is too late.  The unlucky wight goes on feeding his fire, and delighting in the prospect of the feast before him, as the smoke ascends in curling eddies to the nest of the hornets.  The moment it touches them they sally forth and descend, and sting like mad creatures every living thing they find in motion.  Three companies of my regiment were escorting treasure in boats from Allahabad to Cawnpore for the army under the Marquis of Hastings, in 1817.[9] The soldiers all took their dinners on shore every day; and one still afternoon a sipahi (sepoy), by cooking his dinner under one of those nests without seeing it, sent the infuriated swarm among the whole of his comrades, who were cooking in the same grove, and undressed, as they always are on such occasions.  Treasure, food, and all were immediately deserted, and the whole of the party, save the European officers, were up to their noses in the river Ganges.  The hornets hovered over them; and it was amusing to see them bobbing their heads under as the insects tried to pounce upon them.  The officers covered themselves up in the carpets of their boats; and, as the day was a hot one, their situation was still more uncomfortable than that of the men.  Darkness alone put an end to the conflict.

I should mention that the poor old Rani, or Queen of Garha, Lachhmi Kuar, came out as far as Katangi with us to take leave of my wife, to whom she has always been attached.  She had been in the habit of spending a day with her at my house once a week; and being the only European lady from whom she had ever received any attention, or indeed ever been on terms of any intimacy with, she feels the more sensible of the little offices of kindness and courtesy she has received from her.[10] Her husband, Narhar Sa, was the last of the long line of sixty-two sovereigns who reigned over these territories from the year A.D. 358 to the Sagar conquest, A.D. 1781.[11] He died a prisoner in the fortress of Kurai, in the Sagar district, in A. D. 1789, leaving two widows.[12] One burnt herself upon the funeral pile, and the other was prevented from doing so, merely because she was thought too young, as she was not then fifteen years of age.  She received a small pension from the Sagar Government,