14 THE HIGHLANDS OF CENTRAL INDIA. 



on the last of their accessi])le resources. Then they 

 took to the hills with their tribes, and turned their 

 hands against the spoiler, till the name of Gond and 

 Bheel became synonymous with that of hill-robber. 

 Whole tracts came to be distinguished by the title of 

 the " country of robbers." There is not a district in all 

 that long frontier between hill and plain where tales are 

 not still related of the sudden downswoop of bands of 

 hill-men on the garnered harvest of the phiius, of blood- 

 shed, torture, and blazing villages, and of the sharp and 

 savacre retaliation of Maratha mercenaries. A little 

 tributary of the Tiipti river that comes down from the 

 hills of Gavilgarh is still called the " stream of blood," 

 from the massacre in its valley of a whole tribe of 

 Nahals, man, woman, and child, by a body of Arabs in 

 the service of Sin did ; and many similar tales have been 

 related to me when travelling in the hills. Then, if not 

 before, every pass in the hills was crowned b}'" a fortified 

 post of the mountain men, and every inhabited village 

 of the plains by a wall of earthwork and a central keep. 

 Then, too, arose the organised bands of mounted 

 plunderers who have been called Pinddris — Ishmaelites 

 of these central regions, who, like the vulture, sallied 

 forth from their fastnesses in some secluded wild to 

 gorge on the prey struck down by a nobler hand. 

 Thenceforth, for nearly twenty years, the hill-tribes, 

 Pinddri plunderers, and lawless Marathd, soldiery, with 

 their da^g^ers at each other's throats, were unanimous 

 only in robbing the husbandmen of the plains, who 

 ploughed their fields by night with swords and match- 

 locks tied to the shafts of their ploughs, or purchased 

 peace by heavy payments of blackmail. Vast areas of 

 the country that had been reclaimed by their industry 



