360 THE HIGHLANDS OF CENTRAL INDIA. 



top of wliicli is decorated with a streamer of red cloth. 

 Close by is a cairn of stones, to which every passer-by 

 adds another. These altars are generally erected to the 

 manes of some one of their race w^ho bore a saintly 

 reputation during life, and offerings placed on them are 

 supposed to propitiate his spirit. On this occasion the 

 Gond who had dropped behind, and who was the leader 

 and concocter of the present hunt, stopped before the 

 altar ; and, after a prostration, extracted from the folds 

 of his waistcloth, and placed on the plate constructed 

 for- such purposes, a peeled onion ! Each of the band 

 then added a stone to the heap, muttering at the same 

 time something I could not make out, and passed on. 

 This was for luck. 



We soon reached our station, and taking up a 

 properly concealed position, awaited the approach of 

 the game. The beaters had a long way to go round, 

 and we had waited about an hour when their voices 

 began to be heard, as they advanced in a long line that 

 stretched completely across the spur. They were still 

 about a quarter of a mile off, when I made out that 

 something unexpected had occurred, by their shouts 

 suddenly ceasing, and then breaking out into a terrific 

 and concentrated yell ! By my glass I saw that some 

 of them had taken to trees, and that all were looking 

 down the hill-side to the left of the line. Advancing my 

 Dollond in that direction, I made out some black objects 

 trundling dow^n the hill, and a few moments afterwards, 

 as they emerged on the plain, I saw that they were a 

 bear and two cubs ; they w^re making for another spur of 

 the hill that ran parallel to the one we were beating, at a 

 distance of about half a mile. Between them ran the dry 

 bed of a ndlil, formed of a natural pavement of huge flag- 

 stones, and strewn with boulders that had been rolled 



