THE NAEBADA YALLEY. 77 



If utility is, as some have thought, a good quality in religions, 

 surely we have it in perfection in a pliable belief like this ! 



Near Mohpani is one of the best snipe jheels in the pro- 

 vince. I went out to it in the afternoon with one of the 

 gentlemen connected with the works, who surely never could 

 have seen a snipe before. We took opposite sides of the long 

 swamp, which swarmed with the long-bills ; and when we 

 met at the end I had got 27^ couples, while my friend had 

 collected a miscellaneous bag of snippets, plovers, paddy birds, 

 and minas, and not one snipe among them. 



My next march lay under the northern face of the main 

 range of the Satpuras, which here form a bluff headland 

 rising some 500 feet above the plain, crowned by an old 

 fortress called Chaoragarh. This is one of the many extensive 

 fortifications constructed by the chiefs of the country to the 

 south of the Narbada, at the time when 'the resistless tide of 

 Mahomedan conquest, after engulfing the Hindu kingdoms of 

 upper India and the Deccan, was rolling against the princi- 

 palities of these central regions. The works of these forts 

 generally enclose a considerable space on the summit of a 

 naturally inaccessible hill, having been designed for the retreat 

 of large bodies of the inhabitants, and of armies, in times of 

 successful invasion. The flat-topped and scarp-sicled hills of 

 the trap formation are the most suitable for such strongholds, 

 and there are consequently more of them in the trap country 

 than elsewhere. Such additional works as are necessary are 

 composed of massive blocks of rock, roughly squared and laid 

 without masonry. Inside tanks have generally been exca- 

 vated in the rock to hold a plentiful supply of water, natural 

 hollows being always taken advantage of to avoid labour as 

 much as possible. Before the days of artillery such places 

 must have possessed great strength ; but we rarely hear of 



