THE NAEBADA VALLEY. 73 



hood of Nagpiir affords the best ground ; and there there is 

 a regular " tent club," which gives a good account of numer- 

 ous hogs in the course of the year. The sport has been so 

 voluminously described that I believe nothing remains to be 

 said about it. The hogs that reside in the open plains are 

 not much inferior in size to those of other parts of India ; 

 but those met with in the hills are generally much smaller, 

 and far more active. A brown-coloured variety has some- 

 times been noticed among them. The common village pig of 

 the country shows every sign of having been derived from 

 the wild race originally. 



My march down the Narbada valley led along the tortuous 

 and rugged cart track, through the deep black loam of the 

 surrounding fields, which, before the construction of the rail- 

 way, was the only means of communication through these 

 fertile districts. Broken carts strewed the roadside, and 

 clumps of thorny acacias overgrew the path. These were 

 justly called the " cotton thief" by the people, their branches 

 being laden with bunches of the fibre dear to Manchester, torn 

 by their thorns from the unpressed bales, as they lumbered 

 along on antediluvian buffalo carts towards the distant coast. 



Large gangs of aboriginal Gonds from the nearer hill tracts 

 were labouring on the railway works. The really wild tribes 

 of the interior of the hills were not yet attracted by the labour 

 market in the plains, preferring a dinner of jungle herbs and 

 their squalid freedom to plenty earned by steady toil under the 

 eye of the foreign task-master. But the semi-Hindu tribes of the 

 border-land, who are now the most numerous of the race, and 

 whom long contact with the people of the plains has imbued 

 with wants and tendencies strange to their wilder brethren, 

 have reaped a rich harvest from this sudden demand for labour 

 arising at their doors. How far it has been to them an un- 



