46 THE HIGHLANDS OF CENTEAL INDIA. 



not long, that is, in the history of countries, a hunting ground 

 of the Gonds and other wild tribes who are now chiefly con- 

 fined to the hills which surround it. At most it could have 

 been but scantily patched by their rude tillage before the 

 arrival of the Hindu races, who have cleared its forests, 

 driven the wild elephant that roamed through them to the far 

 east, and covered its black soil with an unbroken stretch of 

 wheat cultivation that strikes every visitor with admiration. 

 In less than three centuries this has been done ; and yet it is 

 the custom to say that India is an unprogressive country, that 

 she has been standing still since the beginning of history ! 

 Everything shows that this country is still in its very youth. 

 The people strong-limbed and healthy, rejoicing in the, rude 

 abundance that falls to the lot of energetic races tilling an 

 almost virgin soil. Tilling it roughly, it is true, getting from 

 it nothing approaching to the quantity of produce extracted 

 by the denser populations of long-reclaimed tracts from much 

 inferior soils ; but still tilling it in the way which is the most 

 profitable to a scanty population with a poor accumulation of 

 wealth and stock. The example of all new countries with 

 much available land, even when, as in America, all the 

 resources of capital and machinery are available, shows that a 

 comparatively rough culture of a large area is more remunera- 

 tive than the higher tillage of a smaller area ; and this alone 

 is the cause of the rude state of agriculture still observed in 

 this and many other parts of India. This undoubted fact is 

 however continually overlooked by those who declaim against 

 the barbarous processes of Indian agriculture, or cry aloud for 

 the imposition in these Central Provinces of a land-tax as 

 heavy per acre as that received from the old countries in 

 Northern and Western India. The time is probably -not far 

 distant, now that this land-locked valley has been tapped by 



