Proven or not Proven? by B.M. Croker — Read

Look around, and above, with your mind's eye, and behold high hills and deep narrow valleys -- valleys overflowing with corn, and hills speckled with flocks; no, these are not the Alps, -- nor yet the Andes; the sturdy brown people have the Tartar type of face, their stubborn, shaggy ponies are of Thibetan breed. You stand on the borders of Nepaul, and among the lower slopes of the great Himalayas -- a remote district, but tolerably populated and prosperous. There are many snug, flat-roofed houses scattered up and down the niches in these staircase-like heights, encompassed with cowsheds, melon gardens, groves of walnut trees, and a few almost perpendicular acres of murga (grain); their proprietors are well-to-do, their wants inconsiderable, the possession of a pony, half a dozen goats, and a couple of milch buffaloes, constitutes a man of means, who is as happy in his way as, perhaps happier than, the English or Irish owner of a great landed estate. Moreover, this pastoral life has its pleasures: there are holy festivals, fairs, feasts, wrestling-matches, -- and occasionally a little gambling and cock-fighting. But even in these primitive mountain regions, life is not _all_ Arcadian simplicity; there are black spots on the sun of its existence, such as envy, hatred, malice, jealousy, false-witness, and murder.

Peaceful, even to sleepiness, as the district appears, serene and immovable as the grand outline of its lofty white horizon, nevertheless this remote corner of the world has been the scene of a renowned trial -- a trial which outrivalled many a notorious case in far-away Europe for exciting violent disputes, disturbances, and bloodshed -- a trial which convulsed Kumaon, Kali Kumaon, and Gurwalh -- whose effects, as it were the ripples from a stone cast into still waters, are experienced to the present hour in the shape of curses, collisions, and feuds. At the root of the trouble was, as usual, a woman.