'A Journey from Bengal to England, through the Northern part of India, Kashmire, Afghanistan, and Persia, and into Russia, by the Caspian-Sea. By George Forster. In the Civil Service of the Honourable the East-India Company in Two Volumes. Vol. I.' [‎63] (88/342)

FORSTER’S TRAVELS.
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the whole mafs of blood, and will only yield to the power of mer
cury. The water alfo in fuch places partakes of the like baneful
property :—it ihould feem that the air infufes into this element, a
certain portion of that peftiferous quality, with which the climate
of woody and confined countries in India is ever pregnant. The
falling of the branches and leaves into rivulets and refervoirs
of water, may likewife increafe the noxious effedt. Having fre
quently witneffed the ill effects of a confined air, I am the more
emboldened to hazard thefe conjedtures which I will clofe with
noticing to you, that wherever I have obferved an impurity of air
the water has been equally pernicious.
At the gate of the fort, had taken up his lonely refidence, a
Mahometan Faquir, who bore on him, poor man! evident proofs
of the deftrudtive climate of Lutteef-ghur ;—he was meagre, wan,
and nearly con fumed by the violence of a fever and ague. When I
deiired him to leave fo melancholy a ftation, and go where he might
recover his health, he fliewed little attention to the advice, and
prefeied, he laid, an exiftence in this place, under a load of mifery
and the precarious charity of paffengers, to the rifk of ffarving in
places where he might be wholly unknown.
On the 4th, after a Journey of about twenty miles, I arrived
near the foot of Bidgi-ghur hill, where I flept, and in the morning
walked up to the fort, which is a circumvallation of the crown of
a rocky hill, meafuring from the immediate bale to the fummit, a
little more perhaps than two miles.
The