We turned off the road to visit a formidable towering rock on which stands the old Mahratta fort of Pratapgarh. In the centre of it are found two lovely Hindoo temples--one to Maha Dèo, the high god, and the other to Bhawanee, who is at once the goddess of love and hatred--with the attending Brahman priests officiating there. Somewhere under this fortress lies the head of the simple-hearted Afzal Khan, the renowned Bijapoor general. Here was enacted by the hand of Sivaji, the founder of the great Mahratta empire, one of the darkest of the many tragedies with which the history of India abounds. Having induced, through false pretences, Afzal Khan to visit him unarmed and attended by one sole follower, Sivaji met the trusting foe with open arms and slew him when in the act of embracing him. Sayid Bunder, the faithful follower of the general, refused to surrender even on condition of having his life granted to him, and suffered the same fate as his master. There and then the signals agreed upon boomed forth from this old fort. The Mhawalis rushed from their places of concealment all along the hillside on the khan's retinue, stationed at the foot of the hill, and slaughtered and dispersed them. Thus Sivaji defeated the enemy and acquired at the same time great amount of treasure as well as reputation as a warrior. Satarah, or "the Star City," is full of antiquities and historical associations; every rock and hill and fortress has its own deadly secret--sometimes more than one--of murder, bloodshed, treachery, and triumph on the part of the Mohguls, Mahrattas, or British, besides other local interests. The town lies on a high slope or plain between two ranges of hills, one on the east and one on the west. The western hills have been occupied for many hundred years by the descendants of the early Mahratta Brahmans. They are covered with temples, huge, ancient, and solemn; gods and goddesses in ivory and stone, admirably wrought, sit enshrined in each of these. The priests worship them merely for the sake of their age and number. Tall, gray-bearded monkeys abound on these hills, and while we stood gazing at one of the temples a troop of these creatures assembled on the roof and showed signs and symptoms of great excitement or displeasure. The Satarah bazaar is peculiar and well worth visiting. The Mahratta women are as free and as unconfined in their movements almost as the English. They are darker and less good-looking than those at Wye and on the hills.