Our author, like Bishop Heber,[12] and other travellers on the same route, is struck by the contrast between the robust and well-fed peasantry of Hindustan Proper, and the puny rice-eaters of Bengal; "who eat fish, boiled rice, bitter oil; and an infinite variety of vegetables; but of wheaten or barley bread, and of pulse, they know not the taste, nor of mutton, fowl, or _ghee_, (clarified butter.) The author of the _Riaz-es-Selatin_, is indeed of opinion that such food does not suit their constitutions, and would make them ill if they were to eat it"--an invaluable doctrine to establish in dieting a pauper population! "As to their dress, they have barely enough to cover them--only a piece of cloth, called a _dhoti_, wrapped round their loins, while their head-dress consists of a dirty rag rolled two or three times round the temples, and leaving the crown bare. But the natives of Hindustan, and even their descendants to the second and third generation, always wear the _jamah_, or long muslin robe, out of doors, though in the house they adopt the Bengali custom. The author of the _Kholasat-al Towārikh_, (an historical work,) says that both men and women formerly went naked; and no doubt he is right, for they can hardly be said to do otherwise now." Such are the peasants of Bengal--a race differing from the natives of Hindustan in language, manners, food, dress, and personal appearance; but who, from their vicinity to the seat of the English Supreme Government, have served as models for the descriptions given by many superficial travellers, as applying to all the natives of British India, without distinction! The horrible Hindu custom of immersing the sick, when considered past recovery, in the Ganges, and holding their lower limbs under water till they expire,[13] excites, as may be expected, the disgust of the khan; but the reason which he assigns for it, "the belief of these people, that if a man die in his own house, he would cause the death of every member of the family by assuming the form of a _bhut_ or evil spirit," is new to us, and appears to be analogous to the superstitious dread entertained by the Greeks and Sclavonians, of a corpse reanimated into a _Vroucolochas_, or vampire. "But if a man escapes from their hands, and recovers after this treatment, he is shunned by every one; and there are many villages in Bengal, called _villages of the dead_, inhabited by men who have thus escaped death; they are considered dead to society, and no other persons will dwell in the same villages."