THE ABORIGINAL TRIBES. 185 



them the seeds of death. Everywhere their trcicks 

 were marked by unburied corpses ; and the remotest 

 villages of the Narbada valley and the country of 

 the South felt the anger of the destroying fiend. A 

 pilgrim fleeing from the fatal gathering could find no 

 rest for the sole of his foot. The villages on his road 

 •closed their o-ates a2:ainst him as if he were a mad doo- • 

 and many who escaped the disease perished in the 

 jungle from starvation and wild beasts. At last, after 

 a terrible outbreak of cholera in 1865, the Government 

 prohibited the usual gathering at the Mahadeo Cave. 

 The people made no complaint. They do not seriously 

 care about these things when left alone by the priests ; 

 and here the priests were satisfied by the continuance to 

 the hereditary custodians, on whom they were depen- 

 dent, of their average income from the pilgrimage, in the 

 form of a pension. It is very difi"erent when their 

 gains are atfected. Two years ago a cholera epidemic 

 threatened in Nimar, and the pilgrimage to Omkar 

 Mandhatta was closed by order. The priests and 

 guardians of the shrine were up in arms at once, basing 

 their objections entirely on the money loss they would 

 suffer. Since the closing of the Mahadeo pilgrimage 

 the deities of destruction have been baulked of their 

 prey. The valley of the Denwa, although now opened 

 up by a good timber road made to penetrate the Sal 

 forest, no longer witnesses the annual pilgrim congress. 

 The Cave of the Shrine is silent and deserted. 



The interruption to the business of the country 

 caused by these cholera outbreaks used to be terrible. 

 Whole villages were sometimes swept away. I once 

 marched nearly twenty miles to a small Gond village 

 on one of the pilgrim tracks, in the district of Betiil. 



