74 THE HIGHLANDS OF CENTRAL INDIA. 



I have known many places where children were regularly 

 carried off by them. Superstition frequently prevents 

 the natives from protecting themselves or retaliating on 

 the brutes. I was once marchinof throusfh a small 

 village on the borders of the Damoh district, and 

 accidentally heard that for months past a pair of wolves 

 had carried off a child every few days, from the centre of 

 the village and in broad daylight. No attempt what- 

 ever had been made to kill them, though their haunts 

 were perfectly well known, and lay not a quarter of a 

 mile from the village. A shapeless stone representing 

 the goddess Devi, under a neighbouring tree, had 

 instead been daubed with vermilion, and liberally 

 projDitiated with cocoa-nuts and rice ! Their plan of 

 attack was uniform and simple. The village stood on 

 the slope of a hill, at the foot of which ran the bed of a 

 stream thickly fringed with grass and bushes. The 

 main street of the village, where children were always 

 at play, ran down the slope of the hill ; and while one 

 of the wolves, which was smaller than the other, would 

 ensconce itself among some low bushes between the 

 village and the bottom of the hill, the other would go 

 round to the top, and, watching an opportunity, race 

 down through the street, picking up a child by the way, 

 and making off with it to the thick cover in the nala. 

 At first the people used to pursue, and sometimes made 

 the marauder drop his prey ; but, as they said, finding 

 that in that case the companion wolf usually succeeded 

 in carrying off another of the children in the confusion, 

 while the first was usually so injured as to be beyond re- 

 covery, they ended, like phlegmatic Hindus as they were, 

 by just letting them take as many of their offspring as 

 they \vanted ! An infant of a few years old had thus been 



