Note return — COLONEL DAVIDSON'S TRAVELS IN INDIA.5
Reading edition
The colonel's movements, after quitting Calpee and its attractive circles, appear to have been somewhat desultory. We find him, successively, at Murgaon or Murgong, Julalpore, Keitah, &c., without being told what decided his route; but from some subsequent remarks, it appears probable that he was engaged on engineering service by order of Government. Between Julalpore and Keitah he fell in with a gang of nutts 9 or gipsies, whom the beauty of their women (a point to which the colonel is always alive) did not prevent him from suspecting of an intention to practise thuggee on his own portly person—a belief in which he was confirmed by hearing them speak in another tongue among themselves—no doubt the Ramasee, or cant language of the Thugs, subsequently made known to the world at large by the investigations of Major Sleeman. At Goraree he purchased some small cups, carved from the variegated serpentine of the rock on which the town is built; but, on proposing to employ the artist in making some larger vases, "he told me that he was a very poor man, and his efforts had never been directed to larger patterns; meaning to infer that it was impossible he could either try or succeed!" Such is Hindoo nature!