152 THE HIGHLANDS OF CENTEAL INDIA. 



heritage in the land, and in a great many cases practically 

 even of their personal liberty. Inferior races give way before 

 superior whenever they meet ; and whether, as here and in 

 America, the instrument selected be " fire-water," or as in 

 New Zealand, it be our own favourite recipe of powder and 

 lead, the result is the same. 



The case of the Gond has hitherto little differed, whether 

 he has preferred to cling to his rugged hills and struggle 

 with nature, or has remained on the edge of civilization and 

 toiled for the superior races. Everywhere the aboriginal is the 

 pioneer of the more settled races in their advance against the 

 wilderness. His capacity for toil that would break the heart of 

 a Hindii, his endurance of malaria, and his fearlessness of the 

 jungle, eminently qualify him for this function; and his thrift- 

 lessness and hatred of being long settled in a locality as 

 certainly ensure the fruits of his labour reverting as a per- 

 manency to the settled races of the plains. The process is 

 everywhere much the same. The frontier villages in the posses- 

 sion of Hindu landholders or of the Grdnd Thakurs or chiefs 

 usually comprehend large areas of culturable but uncleared 

 land, and there are always numbers of the aborigines floating 

 about such frontiers, earning a precarious livelihood by wood- 

 cutting and occasional jobs, or working as farm servants, who 

 can be induced to undertake to break it up. They have, of 

 course, no capital, and seldom any security to offer; and the risk 

 of loss must therefore be borne by the landholder. He either 

 lends money himself for the purchase of a plough and pair of 

 bullocks, and the other small farm-j>tock required to commence 

 with, or becomes security for such a loan borrowed from the 

 banker who is found in every circle of villages with money 

 always ready to be lent on any such speculation. The interest 

 charged on such a money-loan is never less than 24 per 



