the elephant drivers in our large camp were immediately assembled, and it was determined in council to refer the matter to the decision of the Raja of Darbhanga’s driver, who was acknowledged the head of the class.  We were all breakfasting with the brigadier after muster when the reply came-the distance to Darbhanga from Nathpur on the Kusi river, where we then were, must have been a hundred and fifty miles.[16] We saw men running in all directions through the camp, without knowing why, till at last one came and summoned the brigadier’s driver.  With a face of terror he came and implored the protection of the brigadier; who got angry, and fumed a good deal, but seeing no expression of sympathy on the faces of his officers, he told the man to go and hear his sentence.  He was escorted to a circle formed by all the drivers in camp, who were seated on the grass.  The offender was taken into the middle of the circle and commanded to stand on one leg[17] while the Raja’s driver’s letter was read.  He did so, and the letter directed him to apologize to the offended party, pay a heavy fine for a feast, and pledge himself to the offended drivers never to offend again.  All the officers in camp were delighted, and some, who went to hear the sentence explained, declared that in no court in the world could the thing have been done with more solemnity and effect.  The man’s character was quite altered by it, and he became the most docile of drivers.  On the same principle here stated of enlisting the community in the punishment of offenders, the New Zealanders, and other savage tribes who have been fond of human flesh, have generally been found to confine the feast to the body of those who were put to death for offences against the state or the individual.  I and all the officers of my regiment were at one time in the habit of making every servant who required punishment or admonition to bring immediately, and give to the first religious mendicant we could pick up, the fine we thought just.  All the religionists in the neighbourhood declared that justice had never been so well administered in any other regiment; no servant got any sympathy from them—­they were all told that their masters were far too lenient.

We crossed the Hiran river[18] about ten miles from our last ground on the 22nd,[19] and came on two miles to our tents in a mango grove close to the town of Katangi,[20] and under the Vindhya range of sandstone hills, which rise almost perpendicular to the height of some eight hundred feet over the town.  This range from Katangi skirts the Nerbudda valley to the north, as the Satpura range skirts it to the south; and both are of the same sandstone formation capped with basalt upon which here and there are found masses of laterite, or iron clay.  Nothing has ever yet been found reposing upon this iron clay.[21] The strata of this range have a gentle and almost imperceptible dip to the north, at right angles to its face which overlooks the valley, and this face has everywhere