INTRODUCTOKY. 13 



the other race ; and they were compelled to segregate 

 themselves in humble hovels, beyond the limits of the 

 comfortable houses and homesteads of the superior 

 castes. 



The semi-aboriginal principalities of Mandla Deogarh 

 and Kherla, which included the whole of this hio-hland 

 region, were thus permitted, by the policy of successive 

 Mahomedan rulers, to maintain a little irksome feuda- 

 tory position until the Manitha power began to supplant 

 that of the Moghuls in the latter part of the eighteenth 

 century. Then the irrepressible hordes of the Deccan, 

 having swallowed up the more settled dominions of 

 the Moslem, began to overrun also the country of the 

 Gonds. Before the close of the century the three 

 kingdoms had been entirely broken up, and are 

 heard of no more in history. They seem to have 

 at no time been more than a feudal airslomeration 

 of numerous petty chiefships ; and on the ruin of 

 their heads they resolved themselves again into the 

 same elements. The conquest of the Marathas as- 

 sumed little of a practical character in the interior of 

 the hills, the mountaineers continuing to waoje agjainst 

 them a desultory warfare from their fastnesses. The 

 present century broke with the commencement of that 

 " time of trouble," when the leaders of the Maratha 

 confederacy began to quarrel over their spoil, and 

 entered on a deadly struggle for territory and power. 

 The financial straits of the Mariithd chiefs now led to 

 wholesale disregard for all rights of property inconsistent 

 with their demand of a rack-rent from every acre of the 

 soil commanded by their troops. The hill-chiefs were 

 now reft of the last of their possessions in the plains ; 

 corrupt and overbearing farmers of the land-tax seizing 



