THE SAL FOEESTS. 373 



which has in some measure redeemed them in most 

 parts from their state of practical serfdom to the 

 superior races. They usually plough with cattle, in- 

 stead of depending on the axe, and are nearly all 

 hopelessly in debt to the money-lenders, who speculate 

 in the produce they raise. There is no local market, 

 and the difiSculty of exporting grain over the seventy 

 or eighty miles of atrocious road to the open country 

 is such that the prices obtained for their produce are 

 contemptible. They congregate in filthy little villages, 

 overrun by poultry and pigs, and innocent of all attempt 

 at conservancy. 



Far superior to them in every respect are the still 

 utterly unreclaimed forest Bygas, another aboriginal 

 race, whose habitat is in the hills of the Mykat range 

 and its spurs, which intersect these valleys. The same 

 tribe extends over a vast range of forest-covered country 

 to the west of Mandla, where we shall subsequently meet 

 them again under the name of Bhiiuiias. A few have 

 som.ewhat modified their original habits, and live, along 

 with the Gonds, in villages lower down the valleys. 

 These have been slightly tainted with Hinduism, shave 

 their elfin locks, and call themselves by a name denoting 

 caste. But the real Byga of the hill ranges is still 

 almost in a state of nature. They are very black, with 

 an upright, slim, though exceedingly wary frame, and 

 showing less of the negretto type of feature than any 

 other of these wild races. Destitute of all clothing but 

 a small strip of cloth, or at most, when in full dress, 

 with the addition of a coarse cotton sheet worn cross- 

 wise over the chest, with long, tangled, coal-black hair, 

 and furnished with bow and arrow and a keen little axe 

 hitched over the shoulder, the Byga is the very model of 

 a hill aborigine. He scorns all tillage but the dhya 



