36 A MAN DROWNED. 



opens or closes the culvert. To move tlie pole and attaclied plug a man 

 stands on the cross - slaljs. This method answers well enough for small 

 tanks, but in many of large size there is an additional vent in the vertical 

 slab which closes the mouth of the culvert vertically, and in this a hori- 

 zontal vent is drilled, to close which a flat stone is usually employed. 

 This stone has to be placed against the hole by hand ; and to all large 

 tanks tliere are attached one or more men, called Toobmullegies or 

 sluice-divers, to whom free lands are granted as remuneration for attending 

 to the distribution of the water. It would be very easy to have a vertical 

 shutter, in the shape of a spade, with a long handle reaching to above the 

 surface of the water, to close this dangerous horizontal vent. It is remark- 

 able how seldom accidents happen to the divers, as they keep to the guiding 

 granite pillars at either side, and place the stone in front of the vent with- 

 out getting before it themselves ; but mishaps sometimes occur, and six 

 years ago a diver was drowned by being sucked into the vent of one of the 

 sluices of the Eamasamoodrum tank. There was a depth of nineteen feet of 

 water above the sluice at the time. The danger of approaching a vent of 

 one foot in diameter, through which the water was issuing under this pres- 

 sure, may be imagined. In some way the unfortunate man was caught ; 

 both his legs were drawn into the vent up to the thighs, and he sat, when 

 drowned, with his body resting against the vertical slab. I was in charge 

 of the tank at the time, but it was some days before I could attend to get- 

 ting him out, as I thought the natives would manage it ; as they could not, 

 I went to the spot myself Standing on the top of the sluice slabs, the 

 corpse was twenty feet below ; only three or four men could get footing to 

 pull at it together, and it defied all attempts at withdrawal. We tried for 

 two days without effect. I at last had two hide-ropes secured by a diver 

 round the corpse, and ordered a raft of plantain-stems to be made capable 

 of floating ten people : this was stationed above the corpse, and sufficient 

 people stood on it to sink it a foot, whilst the hide-ropes were secured to it. 

 On the people getting off, the raft's floating power pulled up the body, not 

 at all decomposed, thougli it had been eleven days under water : the man's 

 never having been exposed to the air after death was probably the cause of 

 this. His dark skin was bleached quite white. One of the legs was torn 

 off at the hip-joint and carried through the sluice. 



The Billiga-rungun hills consist of three main parallel ranges running- 

 due north and south, with various offshoots. The Can very river floAvs 

 round their northern end, whilst they are separated from the Neilgherry hills 

 at their southern extremity by a gap of about twenty miles of level country. 

 They are about thirty miles in length from north to south, and ton in width; 



