Note 31 — Chapter I

See my Folklore Relics of Early Village Life, 29; Tylor, Primitive Culture, i. 97. This case was reported in the newspapers at the time of its occurrence. It came to England from the London and China Telegraph, from which the Newcastle Chronicle, 9 February, 1889, copied the following statement:—

"The boatmen on the Ganges, near Rajmenal, somehow came to believe that the Government required a hundred thousand human heads as the foundation for a great bridge, and that the Government officers were going about the river in search of heads. A hunting party, consisting of four Europeans, happening to pass in a boat, were set upon by the one hundred and twenty boatmen, with the cry 'Gulla Katta,' or cut-throats, and only escaped with their lives after the greatest difficulty."