I became acquainted with this person in 1832. He was one of the approvers or informers who were sent to the Nizam's territories from Saugor, and whose appalling disclosures caused an excitement in the country which can never be forgotten. I have listened to them with fearful interest, such as I can scarcely hope to excite in the minds of my readers; and I can only add, in corroboration of the ensuing story, that, by his own confessions, which were in every particular confirmed by those of his brother informers, and are upon official record, he had been directly concerned in the murder of seven hundred and nineteen persons. He once said to me, "Ah! Sir, if I had not been in prison twelve years, the number would have been a thousand!" How the system of Thuggee could have become so prevalent, unknown to and unsuspected by the people of India, among whom the professors of it were living in constant association, must, to the majority of the English public not conversant with the peculiar construction of Oriental society, be a subject of extreme wonder. It will be difficult to make this understood within my present limits, and yet it is so necessary that I cannot pass it by. In a vast continent like India, which from the earliest periods has been portioned out into territories, the possessions of many princes and chieftains, each with supreme and irresponsible power in his own dominions, having most lax and inefficient governments, and at enmity with or jealous of all his neighbours, it may be conceived that no security could exist for the traveller upon the principal roads throughout the continent; no general league was ever entered into for his security; nor could any government, however vigorous, or system of police, however vigilant it might be in one state, possibly extend to all.