6. Dhamonî is in the Sâgar district of the Central Provinces, about twenty-nine miles north of Sâgar. The fort was taken by General Marshall in 1818. It had been rebuilt by Râjâ Bîrsingh Deo of Orchhâ on an enormous scale about the end of the sixteenth century. In the original edition, the author's march is said to have taken place 'on the 24th'. This must be a mistake for 'on the 4th'; as the last date, that of the march to Bahrol, was the 3rd December. The author reached Agra on January 1, 1836, 7. The number fifty-two is one of the Hindoo favourite numbers, like seven, twelve, and eighty-four, held sacred for astronomical or astrological reasons. Bîrsingh Deo was the younger brother of Râmchand, head of the Bundêla clan. To oblige Prince Salîm, afterwards the Emperor Jahângîr, he murdered Abûl Fazl, the celebrated minister and historian of Akbar, on August 12, 1602, Jahângîr, after his accession, rewarded the murderer by allowing him to supersede his brother in the headship of his clan, and by appointing him to the rank of 'commander of three thousand'. The capital of Bîrsingh was Orchhâ. His successors are often spoken of as Râjâs of Tehrî. The murder is fully described in _The Emperor Akbar_ by Count von Noer, translated by A. S. Beveridge, Calcutta, 1890, vol. ii, pp. 384-404. Orchhâ is described _post_, Chapters 22,23. CHAPTER 17 Basaltic Cappings--Interview with a Native Chief--A Singular Character. On the 5th[1] we came to the village of Seorî. Soon after leaving Dhamonî, we descended the northern face of the Vindhya range into the plains of Bundêlkhand. The face of this range overlooking the valley of the Nerbudda to the south is, as I have before stated, a series of mural precipices, like so many rounded bastions, the slight dip of the strata being to the north. The northern face towards Bundêlkhand, on the contrary, here descends gradually, as the strata dip slightly towards the north, and we pass down gently over their back. The strata have, however, been a good deal broken, and the road was so rugged that two of our carts broke down in descending. From the descent over the northern face of the tableland into Bundêlkhand to the descent over the southern face into the valley of the Nerbudda must be a distance of one hundred miles directly north and south. The descent over the northern face is not everywhere so gradual; on the contrary, there are but few places where it is at all feasible; and some of the rivers of the tableland between Jubbulpore and Mirzapore have a perpendicular fall of more than four hundred feet over these mural precipices of the northern face of the Vindhya range.[2] A man, if he have good nerve, may hang over the summits, and suspend in his hand a plummet that shall reach the bottom.