18 THE HKrHLA^'US OF CENTRAL INDIA. 



Goncl or Byga, clearing his patch of millet on the re- 

 mote hill-side, was astonished by the apparition, on some 

 commanding hill-top, of that veritable " Government " 

 (Sirkar) in the flesh, which to him and his for several 

 generations had been an abstraction, represented, if by 

 chance he ever visited the district head-quarters, by a 

 " Saheb " in his shirt-sleeves, sitting in a dingy oflace 

 smoking a cheroot ! 



A Chief who thus, by dint of hard riding, insisted on 

 seeing the requirements of the country for himself, was 

 not long in perceiving that the highland centre of the 

 province, with its extensive forests and mineral wealth, 

 its limitless tracts of unreclaimed waste, and scanty, 

 half- wild population, and its great capabilities for the 

 storage of precious water, was worthy of a principal 

 share of attention. It had already been whispered by a. 

 few that its forests, calculated on by the projectors of 

 the railway lines, then being constructed through the 

 province, for their supply of timber, were likely to prove 

 a broken reed, having been already exhausted by a long 

 course of mismanagement ; and one of the first steps 

 taken was the organisation of a Forest Department, for 

 the detailed examination and conservation of the timber- 

 bearing tracts. An ofl&cer* who had already interested 

 himself in the question, and had travelled extensively in 

 these reunions, and who was admirablv fitted for the task 

 by physical qualities, and the possession of that faculty 

 of observation which is not to be attained by the labours 

 of the study, was selected as superintendent of the new 

 department. During the five succeeding years several 

 officers, quorum imusfui, were unremittingly employed 



* Captain. G. F. Pearson, of the Madias Army, now Conservator in 

 the N.W. I'rovinces. 



