Page:McCosh, John - Advice to Officers in India (1856).djvu/226

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206
ADVICE TO OFFICERS

attendants, hot and suffocating. After prescribing for, and enjoining perfect rest, we went away, promising to return in an hour or two. About ten, when we called again, we learned that they had carried her off to the river side, where she expired. I have no doubt that if this lady had been allowed to lie quietly in her chamber, that she would have recovered. In her condition it was dangerous even to raise her: nevertheless, she was placed upon a bed, carried through a labyrinth of narrow passages and staircases out of a very hot room into the cold night air, and jolted along on men's shoulders through the streets to the river, because Hindoo superstition assures a blessed immortality to all who die on the banks of the Sacred Ganges.

17. EUNUCHISM.—It is somewhat remarkable that this unnatural practice,so common from time immemorial, yet so directly opposed to human nature, and the welfare of the commonwealth, should never have engaged the attention of the legislation. It is notorious that the attendant of every Zenana, and many of the favourites about native courts, are creatures of no sex at all: emasculated in early boyhood like pigs and rabbits with impunity—and with the same object in view, that of bringing a higher price in the market than ordinary humanity; yet the perpetration of such an act in any other region of the British dominions