INTRODUCTORY. 21 



and after ten years of hard work they have now been set at 

 rest. Few persons can conceive the amount of personal 

 labour, in the field and in the office, involved in the settlement 

 of one of these districts. Every village and hamlet has to be 

 visited, and every acre of land appraised and assessed; the 

 title of every claimant to any interest in the land has to be 

 investigated from the beginning of time ; and finally a minute 

 and accurate record of the whole process has to be drawn up, 

 to form the substantive law for the disposal of future cases in 

 the civil and revenue courts of the district. The grand result, 

 as affecting rights and interests in the land, was, that where 

 any title which could be converted into a right of property 

 was established, the freehold, bearing liability to the fixed 

 Government rent-charge, was bestowed on the claimant ; while 

 all land to which no such private title could be established was 

 declared to be the unhampered property of the state. Most of 

 the hill-chiefs were admitted to the full ownership of the 

 whole of their enormous wastes, though certain restrictions as 

 to the destruction of the forests have here (as in all civilised 

 countries), been imposed on these proprietors. Thus the area 

 which has remained to the State in these highlands is only 

 about 14,500 square miles, of which about 9,500 are con- 

 sidered to be culturable, and the rest barren waste. A por- 

 tion of this area has been reserved from disposal to private 

 persons, as State forest ; but in every district there is much 

 good land available for sale or lease, under rules which will be 

 found in an Appendix. 



Few parts of India present so great a range of interesting 

 natural objects for investigation as this. Situated in the very 

 centre of the peninsula, the ethnical, zoological, botanical, and 

 even geological features of north and south, and of east and 

 west, here meet and contrast themselves. As has been 



