246 THE HIGHLANDS OF CENTEAL IXDIA. 



never again found any place vacant of game but to be 

 told with a grin, " Oh, they are gone to Dhowtea, of 

 course ! " 



We were utterly beaten, and the unburnt jungle 

 having also proved too thick for our boundary opera- 

 tions, we determined to retreat to the plains. But we 

 were unwilling to return by the awful road we had 

 come ; and, a possible way down the northern face of 

 the hill being reported, we left Dhowtea behind us the 

 next morning, marching along the top of the range for 

 eight or ten miles to a place called JAmti, the residence 

 of another of these petty Bheel chieftains, and marked 

 by a conspicuous banyan tree which is visible from 

 ever}^ part of the surrounding country. Thence we 

 descended the next day to the Tapti valley, intending 

 to return to the hills when the jungle should be clearer. 

 The truth was, we had happened to visit Dhowtea just 

 when nearly all the sambar had gone down the hills to 

 feed on some jungle fruits that had ripened in the 

 valleys ; and the few that remained were not to be 

 found among the long unburnt grass. I believe that 

 the immense number of marks we saw were caused by 

 the collection of lars^e numbers of deer there durine; 

 the rutting season (late autumn). 



The path we went dow^n by wound along the top of 

 a long spur of naked basalt. On either side were deep 

 and almost coal-black rifts in the rock, the summits 

 clothed scantily with thin yellow grass, and here and 

 there a Salei tree stunted and twisted like a corkscrew. 

 At one point the rock assumed the form of a sheer cliff, 

 many hundred feet in height, of the colunmar structure 

 seen occasionally in this volcanic formation, where the 

 rock seems composed of a vast conglomeration of pen- 



