THE MAHADEO HILLS. 105 



private proprietors, no teak forest ever escaped this 

 treatment, unless so situated in ravines or on precipitous 

 hill-sides as to make it unprofitable to make dhya 

 clearings on its site. 



The system of cultivation thus adopted by the wild 

 tribes, which seems to be a natural consequence of their 

 want of agricultural stock, necessitates a more or less 

 nomadic habit of life. The larger villages, where the 

 chief of a sept, and the Hindu traders who efi'ect their 

 small exchanges, reside, is usually the only stable settle- 

 ment in a whole tract ; the rest of the people spreading 

 themselves about in small hamlets of five or six families, 

 at such interv^als as will o-ive each a sufiicient rano-e of 

 jungle for several years of dhya cutting. Their huts 

 are of the most temporary character, and made from 

 materials found on the spot — a fevv upright posts, inter- 

 laced with split bamboos, plastered with mud, and 

 thatched with the broad leaves of the teak, and an 

 upper layer of grass. It costs them but the work of a 

 day or two to shift such a settlement as this in ac- 

 cordance with the changes of their dhya sites. 



The system of cultivation, if it can be so termed, I 

 have thus described is of course of the most precarious 

 character. The holding off of rain for a few weeks after 

 the seed is sown, or when the ear is forming, will ruin 

 the whole, and then the owner may be compelled to 

 subsist entirely on what always largely supplements 

 his diet — the wild fruits and products of the forest. 

 Nature has been very bountiful in these forests in her 

 supply of food for their wild human denizens. Many 

 species of tree and bush ripen a wholesome and palatable 

 fruit in their season ; and the earth supplements the 

 supply by many nourishing roots. The Mhowa flower 



