THE mAhAdEO hills. Ill) 



that way since the preceding rainy season, when all 

 vestiges of paths in these hills become obliterated. We 

 were amply rewarded, however, for the climb by the 

 magnificent prospect that awaited us when we gained 

 the summit — the finest by far in all this range of hills. 

 The further slope of Dhupgarh was not nearly so pre- 

 cipitous as that we had come up, but fell, by steps as it 

 were, to the bottom of a deep and extensive glen, which 

 was the one we were about to beat. Beyond this again 

 rose the mural cliff that buttresses the whole of this 

 block to the south ; and far past this, to the left, 

 stretched out below us the wilderness of forest-clad hills, 

 that reaches with scarcely a break to the Tapti river — a 

 distance, as the crow files, of sixty or seventy miles. 

 All this immense waste is the chosen home of the bison ; 

 and beyond it, on either side of the Tapti, on the 

 elevated Chikalda range, and in the wild hills of Kalibhit, 

 lies another tract of equally wide extent, where, too, the 

 mountain bull roams, as yet scarcely troubled with the 

 presence of man or cattle. This is the region of the 

 Teak tree ^9ar excellence in this central range of moun- 

 tains, to which I will have the pleasure of conducting 

 the reader in a future chapter. 



Tracks of bison and sambar were numerous on the 

 top of the hill, which is covered with bamboo clumps 

 and with a low thicket of the bastard date.* I have 

 frequently, on other occasions, found both bison and 

 sambar on the very top of Dhiipgarh in the early 

 morning. The descent of the farther side of the hill, 

 over long slopes of crumbled sandstone, and the curious 

 vitrified pipes of ironstone that exfoliate from the 

 decomposed surface of these hills, was fully more tire- 

 * Pluenix sijlvestris. 



