184 THE TRIBES ON MY FRONTIER. 



godowns, and eat our boots. I had forgotten them, but 

 they had not forgotten me. Is it not always the way? If 

 we could always remember, or they would sometimes 

 forget, things might be different ; but in a moment of 

 remissness the heavy book-box is laid down in the veran- 

 dah, and we forget it for a week or two. This was all I 

 did, and now! "Forbes's Manual" has lost its boards, two 

 long tunnels traverse the " Bagh-o- Bahar," and though the 

 " Penal Code " looks all right from without, open it, and a 

 yawning chasm stretches from Culpable Homicide to an 

 Unlawful Assembly. Worse than all these, the binding is 

 eaten away from the back of Kinglake's " Crimea," and the 

 intelligent hamal, who used to turn it upside down with 

 such faithful regularity, has nothing left to guide him. 



Where do these destroying hordes come from ? Is the 

 common theory of geology all wrong, and do the bowels 

 of the earth really consist of a seething mass of white ants ? 

 On these and all similar questions the prevailing state of 

 the public mind is a state of ignorance, for these consistent 

 evil-doers do so abhor the light that any experimental 

 acquaintance with their internal economy is unattainable. 

 What is known amounts to this, that if you put anything 

 on the ground in India, except teak-wood or glass, you 



