H. M. And The Todas

I HAVE read the communication of "H. M." in your paper of the 8th inst. I would not have mentioned the "Todas" at all in my book, if I had not read a very elaborate octavo work in 271 pp., by William S. Marshall, Lieut.-Col. of Her Majesty’s Bengal Staff Corps, entitled: A Phrenologist among the Todas, copiously illustrated with photographs of the squalid and filthy beings to whom "H. M." refers. Though written by a staff officer, assisted "by the Rev. Friedrich Metz, of the Basle Missionary Society, who had spent upwards of twenty years of labour" among them, "the only European able to speak the obscure Toda tongue," the book is so full of misrepresentations—though both writers appear to be sincere—that I wrote what I did.

What I said I knew to be true, and I do not retract a single word. If neither "H. M." nor Lieut.-Col. Marshall, nor the Rev. Mr. Metz have penetrated the secret that lies behind the dirty huts of the aborigines they have seen, that is their misfortune, not my fault.

H. P. BLAVATSKY.

New York, March 18th, 1878.