THE MAHADEO HILLS. 119 



on the surrounding trees, broiling and swallowing the titbits 

 during leisure moments. This was only the preliminary to 

 the great feast, however the dozen of oysters to whet the 

 appetite for turtle and venison. Soon the trees were fully 

 decorated with bloody festoons, and the savages set to work 

 in earnest to gorge themselves with the half-cooked meat. 

 The entrails were evidently the great delicacies, and were 

 eaten in long lengths, as Italians do maccaroni. The gorging 

 seemed to be endless, and I sat outside my little tent for 

 hours looking on in wonder at the bloody orgie. The bonfires 

 they had lighted threw a ruddy glow over the open glade, and 

 on the crimson junks of flesh hanging on the trees, bringing 

 the dusky forms of the revellers into every variety of 

 picturesque relief, and forming a wild and Eembrandt-like 

 picture which I shall not soon forget. Till a late hour many 

 new arrivals continued to add to their numbers, winding down 

 the steep path that leads over the Rorighat, with lighted 

 torches and loud shouts to show the way and scare wild beasts. 

 All were welcome to a raw steak and a pull at the pot of 

 Mhowa spirit that stood beside every group. Ere long they 

 began to sing, and then to dance to a shrill music piped from 

 half-a-dozen bamboo flutes. The scene was getting uproarious 

 as I turned in ; and my slumber was broken through the 

 greater part of the night by the noise and the glare of the 

 great fires through the thin canvas of my tent. 



Next morning I was roused by the crow of the red jungle- 

 fowl, which swarm in the bamboo cover of this little valley, 

 and by the unremitting "hammer, hammer" of the little 

 " coppersmith " barbet,* of which there seemed to be more in 

 this valley of Rorighat than in all the rest of the country. I 

 found the revellers lying like logs just where they had been 



* Xantholcema indica. 



