A GHASTLY TRAGEDY.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume X, Issue 3262, 22 July 1889, Page 3

A GHASTLY TRAGEDY.

Nothing more terrible, says (be Times of India, in the history of / superstition has happened for many wyears than the following atrocities '"which have already, been briefly mentioned by telegraph. In a small village in the Gbeuaar Taluka in the Nizam's dominions were several shepherds who, for some unknown reason, were looked on by the natives with a suspicious eye, It was held that there was something uncanny about them, and a bachclm falling sick after being " looked at" by one of the unhappy fhepherds it began to " be whispered that the men had dealings in witchcraft. Lib most isolated villagers the peoplo were suporstitious to a degree, and when an outbreak of cholera took place they naturally al tributed the epidemic to the ovil influence of the shepherds. Eventually when the cholero had corried off fifteen or sixteen of < their number, tho survivors assembled in a body and went out to seizo the ovil ones. They were successful in finding only two of them, and these wero brought to the village well where they were solemnly tried for witchk. craft. They were found guilty, of * course, and sentenced to death by torture. They were first carried to an open space on the outskirts of the village, and there in the presence of the people, their teeth were drawn with pinchers,' aud their heads shaved. "Water,in which leather had been. well soaked" was then given them, and they were compelled to drink liberally of it,' While this was going on two narrow pits wero being dug in the Bandy soil, and when these wero ready tho miserable victims of superstition—alive but in dosporate agony—wero buried in them up to their necks, Tnen as a crowning V horror, wood was piled round the *' livfngheads, afire was lighted, and tho skulls of the unhappy men were roasted into powder. It is a mctoncholy kind of satisfaction to learn tlmt somo 28 or 80 of tho villagers who took part in this ghastly tradgedy have been sentenced to terms of imprisonment varying from sevon to ourteen years.

It Nows from Mauritius rolntive to tlio prospects of tlio sugar crop, is to tlio effect that tlio month of May was not so favourablo as it was oxpcctod to bo, but tho rain which fell during Juno, inspired the hops that tho crop will reach maturity about tho middlo of the present month ■ Tho skeleton of tho bi?gest elephant known is now to bo soon in tho Madras Museum. It was lately killed by tho inhabitants of South Arcot, and is the greatest olophant evor known in India by c'.ht niches in height. But this onormous beast might havo passed for tt suckling of the gigantic Deiuotberium that dwelt in tlio ancient Mioceno forests beforo tho human period.