whose advantages and acquirements I am very far from possessing; and although I am not on all occasions satisfied with the explanations of Sir William Jones or Mr. Colebrook, I should, even with the aid of our ingenious traveller, despair of carrying light into the works which they have left in obscurity.
Having spent three months in conversing with the Brahmins, and endeavouring to see his way through the obscure mazes of their religious system, Forster set out on the 3d of November on an excursion to Bijjighur, a place rendered famous, he observes, in the Bengal annals, from a large amount of plunder acquired there by the English. His first day's journey brought him to Luttufghur, about eighteen miles south of Benares. The fort, situated in the centre of a circular range of hills, and approached on all sides through a dense and lofty forest, was now deserted, and the passages leading to it were nearly choked up with trees. The circulation of the air being greatly impeded by the hills and woods, the atmosphere had acquired a malignant quality, which, exerting its influence on all animal bodies, produced what in India is termed the hill-fever. In all places of this kind, as, for example, at the southern foot of the Gurwal and Kemaoon mountains, the water partakes of the baneful quality of the air, by which in part it seems to be impregnated with its pestiferous properties, which may, however, be aggravated by the continual falling of branches and leaves into the rivulets and reservoirs.
In this desolate and deserted spot, where the elements array themselves in properties so hostile to life, our traveller found a Mohammedan fakeer, who had taken up his lonely residence at the gate of the fort. He was meager, wan, and nearly consumed by the effects of fever and ague; but when he was advised to leave so melancholy a situation, and go to some other place where he might recover his health, he replied, that he preferred an existence where he
