THE XARBADA VALLEY. 37 



ing rebels over the stony wastes of Bandelkand. There 

 are two ways of travelling in such tracts. The one is 

 to take a full equipment of the large tents and their 

 luxurious furnishinfifs, which render marchinor about in 

 India, under ordinary circumstances, so little attended 

 by hardship, or even by inconvenience ; a corresponding 

 train of servants and baggage-animals ; and a small army 

 of horse and foot as a protection. Such a camp will 

 perhaps number from fifty to eighty men, and half that 

 number of animals of sorts. An array like this may be 

 allowable or even proper for the civil officer, who has 

 the dignity of his office to maintain, while traversing 

 slowly a populous and well-supplied district of the plains. 

 But the hardship of such an infliction on scattered tribes 

 of poor and resourceless aborigines is sometimes forcibly 

 brought home to the invaders, by finding the country, 

 as they advance, utterly deserted in their track. When 

 I come to describe the extreme poverty in resource of 

 these outlying tracts, this circumstance will perhaps be 

 more easy to realise. 



In my shooting excursions I had always marched 

 with only a single small tent, about eight feet square, of 

 the sort called a Fell, which is composed of two or three 

 thicknesses of common double-thread country cloth, 

 sewn together, and thrown over a ridge-pole on two 

 uprights, all of the hollow (female) bamboo, which 

 combines strength with lightness in the highest possible 

 degree. It has no doors nor windov/s, but one of the 

 gable ends (so to speak) is slit up the middle and fitted 

 with stout laces in case of storms. In ordinary weather 

 this end is kept open to the breeze except at night, and 

 such a tent really affords ample protection and accom- 

 modation to the traveller who has no heavy indoor 



