18 THE HIGHLANDS OF CENTRAL INDIA. 



new department. During the five succeeding years several 

 officers, quorum unusfui, were unremittingly employed in the 

 exploration of the 36,000 square miles which may be taken 

 to be the area of the central hills, besides doing much to ex- 

 amine an almost equally extensive tract of. low-lying forest in 

 the south of the province. In later years the regular civil 

 officers of the district, those employed in the land revenue 

 settlement, surveyors, missionaries, and many others, have 

 traversed many parts of these mountains ; and a great mass 

 of information respecting their physical character and in- 

 habitants has been accumulated, which, although of very 

 unequal value, is yet a mine of useful ore from which much 

 good metal may be extracted. Much of this has already been 

 printed in the form of official Eeports ; and recently the 

 cream of it has been abstracted into a Gazetteer of the Central 

 Provinces, the Introduction to which, from the pen of Mr. 

 Grant, late Secretary to the Chief Commissioner, is a resume 

 of the history of the province, admirable for its conciseness 

 and research. Good maps of all but the remotest tracts have 

 also now been made available ; and statistical information of 

 all sorts is annually prepared with much care and made public 

 by the Government. 



My design, then, in thus venturing before the public, is not 

 that of attempting to rival these most complete official docu- 

 ments in accuracy or extent of information, but rather to pre- 

 sent, in a more popular and accessible form, the lighter and 

 more picturesque aspects of a country in which an increasingly 

 large section of our countrymen may be expected to take an 

 interest, now that two railways, carrying most of the pas- 

 sengers between India and England, pass for several hundred 

 miles within sight of the hills of Gondwana. Though most of 

 what I shall have to say is founded on, or corroborated by, my 



