78 THE HIGHLANDS OF CENTRAL INDIA. 



witli rolling trap boulders, both sorts of country 

 being equally productive of dangerous croppers. The 

 neighbourhood of Ncigpiir affords the best ground ; and 

 there there is a regular " tent club," which gives a 

 Qjood account of numerous hoo;s in the course of the 

 year. The sport has been so voluminously described 

 that I believe nothing remains to be said about it. 

 The hogs that reside in the open plains are not much 

 inferior in size to those of other parts of India ; but 

 those met with in the hills are generally much smaller, 

 and far more active. A brown-coloured variety has 

 sometimes been noticed among them. The common 

 village pig of the country shows every sign of having 

 been derived from the wild race originally. 



My march down the Narbada valley led along the 

 tortuous and rugged cart track, through the deep black 

 loam of the surrounding fields, which, before the 

 construction of the railway, was the only means of 

 communication through these fertile districts. Broken 

 carts strewed the roadside, and clumps of thorny acacias 

 overgrew the path. These were justly called the "cotton 

 thief" by the people, their branches being laden with 

 bunches of the fibre dear to Manchester, torn by their 

 thorns from the unpressed bales, as they lumbered along 

 on antediluvian bufi'alo carts towards the distant coast. 



Large gangs of aboriginal Gouds from the nearer 

 hill tracts were labouring on thfe railway works. The 

 really wild tribes of the interior of the hills were not 

 yet attracted by the labour market in the plains, 

 preferring a dinner of jungle herbs and their squalid 

 freedom to plenty earned by steady toil under the 

 eye of the foreign taskmaster. But the semi-Hindii 

 tribes of the border -land, who are now the most 



