It would make intercommunication in a measure ungeneral.
India had eighty languages, and more custom-houses than cats.

No clever man with the instinct of a highway robber could fail to notice what a chance for business was here offered.

India was full of clever men with the highwayman instinct, and so, quite naturally, the brotherhood of the Thugs came into being to meet the long-felt want.
How long ago that was nobody knows-centuries, it is supposed.

One of the chiefest wonders connected with it was the success with which it kept its secret.

The English trader did business in India two hundred years and more before he ever heard of it; and yet it was assassinating its thousands all around him every year, the whole time..