We notice the death this week of General Sir John
Campbell, an Indian officer now almost forgotten, who once undertook and -carried through a remarkable task. The wild people of the Kbond district believed that the only way to make their crops grow was to capture a human victim, offei him up in sacri- fice, and then sow bits of his body over the fields with the seed- corn. The superstition cost hundreds of lives a year, and so immovably rooted was it, that when the practice was interdicted the Khonds rebelled,—the only instance, we believe, in our Indian history in which an order contrary to a religious tenet, but agree- able to the instinctive conscience of mankind, has been resisted in arms. It became necessary to watch the Khonds and rescue *all prisoners retained for slaughter. The duty was entrusted to Major Campbell, and was so successfully performed that in ten years he rescued more than 1,300 captives, and either stamped out the practice, or drove the murderers into the remotest hills. Major Campbell was at one time gravely attacked for his management of the Rhonda, and there can be little doubt that their habit of murder and incessant breaches of faith developed in him a temper of great severity, but it may well be doubted whether tribes accustomed to sow whole districts with snippets of murdered captives could be tamed by gentle means. At all events, the victims who had to be saved could not wait till their captors were humanised by persuasion.
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