INTRODUCTORY. 17 



distant valleys and mountain gorges, that had heard no other 

 sound than the woodman's axe, echoed to the horsehoofs of the 

 tireless Chief, and his small knot of often weary followers ; 

 when the solitary Gond or Byga, clearing his patch of millet 

 on the remote hill-side, was astonished by the apparition, 

 on some commanding hill-top, of that veritable " Govern- 

 ment" (Sirkar) in the flesh, which to him and his for 

 several generations had been an abstraction, represented, 

 if by chance he ever visited the district head-quarters, by a 

 " Saheb " in his shirt sleeves, sitting in a dingy office smoking 

 a cheroot ! 



A Chief who thus, by dint of hard riding, insisted on seeing 

 the requirements of the country for himself, was not long in 

 perceiving that the highland centre of the province, with its 

 extensive forests and mineral wealth, its limitless tracts cf 

 unreclaimed waste and scanty half-wild population, and its 

 great capabilities for the storage of precious water, was worthy 

 of a principal share of attention. It had already been whis- 

 pered by a few that its forests, calculated on by the projectors 

 of the railway lines, then being constructed through the pro- 

 vince, for their supply of timber, were likely to prove a broken 

 reed, having been already exhausted by a long course of mis- 

 management ; and one of the first steps taken was the organi- 

 sation of a Forest Department, for the detailed examination 

 and conservation of the timber-bearing tracts. An officer * 

 who had already interested himself in the question, and had 

 travelled extensively in these regions, and who was admirably 

 fitted for the task by physical qualities, and the possession of 

 that faculty of observation which is not to be attained by the 

 labours of the study, was selected as superintendent of the 



* Captain G. F. Pearson, of the Madras Army, now Conservator in the N.W. 

 Provinces. 



