THE MAIIADEO HILLS. 99 



fact I can say, from an experience reaching over every teak 

 tract in these hills, that, excepting a few preserved by private 

 proprietors, no teak forest ever escaped this treatment, unless 

 so situated in ravines or on precipitous hill-sides as to make 

 it unprofitable to make dhya clearings on its site. 



The system of cultivation thus adopted by the wild tribes, 

 which seems to be a natural consequence of their want of 

 agricultural stock, necessitates a more or less nomadic habit 

 of life. The larger villages, where the chief of a sept, and the 

 Hindu traders who effect their small exchanges, reside, is 

 usually the only stable settlement in a whole tract ; the rest 

 of the people spreading themselves about in small hamlets of 

 five or six families, at such intervals as will give each a suffi- 

 cient range of jungle for several years of dhya cutting. Their 

 huts are of the most temporary character, and made from 

 materials found on the spot a few upright posts, interlaced 

 with split bamboos, plastered with mud, and thatched with 

 the broad leaves of the teak, and an upper layer of grass. It 

 costs them but the work of a day or two to shift such a 

 settlement as this in accordance with the changes of their 

 dhya sites. 



The system of cultivation, if it can be so termed, I have 

 thus described is of course of the most precarious character. 

 The holding off of rain for a few weeks after the seed is 

 sown, or when the ear is forming, will ruin the whole, and 

 then the owner may be compelled to subsist entirely on what 

 always largely supplements his diet the wild fruits and pro- 

 ducts of the forest. Nature has been very bountiful in these 

 forests in her supply of food for their wild human denizens. 

 Many species of tree and bush ripen a wholesome and palatable 

 fruit in their season ; and the earth supplements the supply 

 by many nourishing roots. The Mhowa flower before referred 



H 2 



