128 THE HIGHLANDS OF CENTEAL INDIA. 



wood-cutting part of the work they were well accustomed 

 to ; but those to whose lot fell the lime and earth 

 business were much disgusted, and were with difficulty 

 kept to their work. All payments were made in kind, 

 the convoy of Baujara bullocks being now unremittingly 

 employed in carrying grain from the plains. The work 

 rapidly progressed, and was but slightly interrupted by 

 the abscondinsf after a while of all our masons and 

 brickmakers, who had very unwillingly come up from 

 the plains. Their places were at once taken by the 

 Gonds who had been employed under them, and whom 

 I had selected to learn these branches of the work, with 

 a view to such a contingency. An old foreman carpenter, 

 who stuck by us and superintended the work, had 

 fortunately some knowledge of bricklaying, and with 

 his help we soon began to get the Gonds to turn out 

 very respectable work indeed. Nobody knew how to 

 turn an arch, however ; and I had to evolve the idea of 

 one out of my own consciousness, and build the first 

 over the fireplace myself. The Gonds were immensely 

 amused at the idea of the Koitor, or " men," as they call 

 themselves, dabbling in bricks and mortar, and laughed 

 and joked over it from morning till night. Kegular 

 industry, however, was not to be got from these un- 

 reclaimed savages ; and there were seldom half of those 

 on the muster-roll actually present. Every now and 

 then, too, they would walk off in a body, and have a 

 big drink somewhere for a couple of days, returning 

 and setting to work the next morning without appearing 

 to think a word of explanation necessary. The height 

 of absurdity was reached when I imported a plough and 

 a pair of bullocks from below, and sent a Korku to work 

 with them to plough up a piece of land for a garden. 



