--ED.] Prophecies were also rife that in 1857 the East India
Company's _raj_ [rule] would come to an end. Lord Canning has been
blamed for not taking alarm at these proceedings; but something of the
kind always had been going on in India. Cakes of cocoanuts are given
away in solemn fashion; and as the villagers were afraid to keep them or
eat them, the circulation went on to the end of the chapter. Then,
again, holy men and prophets have always been common in India. They
foretell pestilence and famine: the downfall of British rule, or the
destruction of the whole world. They are often supposed to be endowed
with supernatural powers and to be impervious to bullets; but these
phenomena invariably disappear whenever they come in contact with
Europeans, especially as all such characters are liable to be treated as
vagrants without visible means of subsistence.
One dangerous story, however, got abroad in the early part of 1857,
which ought to have been stopped at once, and for which the military
authorities were wholly and solely to blame.
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