432 THE HIGHLANDS OF CENTRAL INDIA. 



Outbe 26th, B. rejoined me, having covered a great 

 extent of country by dint of hard marching, and ex- 

 plored the eastern portion of the sal forest and elephant 

 country which belongs to the Thakiii: of Uprora. He 

 had seen little game, and had never stayed to shoot. 

 From Matin we proceeded again together, due north, to 

 examine the country between this and Amarkantak ; 

 and till the end of the month we travelled on throus^h 

 an unbroken forest of the sal tree. This wild is very 

 scantily peopled by a few utterly primitive Bhumias, 

 a sight of whom could only be secured by sending 

 on an embassy of some of their own tribesmen, whom 

 we took with us from Matin. One one occasion I 

 had wandered off the elephant track that served for 

 a road in these parts, into the thick sal forest, with- 

 out a oruide, trustiuo: to reojain it after a short detour. 

 But the country is here so level, and the prospect so 

 circumscribed by the never-ending array of great gray 

 stems of the sal, that I soon found I had entirely lost 

 my way, while the midday sun, hanging like a globe 

 of glowing silver right overhead, threw only vertical 

 shadows, which afforded no guide to the points of the 

 compass. I was riding on an elephant, and we wandered 

 on for some hours through glade after glade and clump 

 after clump of the sal trees, each exactly like the one 

 before it, till at last we emerged into a little open space, 

 where a few tall naked stems of sal trees killed by ring- 

 ing stood up from among a thick copse of bushes sprung 

 from the roots of the cleared forest. In the middle was 

 a small Bhiimia hamlet of a few huts of bamboo basket- 

 work, surrounded by a fence of the same material. We 

 marched up to the little wicket-gate of this enclosure, 

 and the barking of a dog brought out the two or three 

 inhabitants. To stare wildly like startled deer at the 



