154 THE HIGHLANDS OF CENTEAL INDIA. 



steadily as his interest in the result of the crop induces 

 him to do. 



Until recently the habits of debauchery I have mentioned, 

 together with the low value of agricultural produce, usually 

 prohibited the advance of the aboriginal cultivator from this 

 stage. The harvest reaped, any grain that might fall to his 

 share was at once taken to the spirit-dealer (who usually com- 

 bined grain-dealing with his more pernicious trade), and con- 

 verted into mhowa spirit, gangs of Gonds at this season be- 

 ing constantly to be seen rolling about in a perpetual state of 

 drunkenness, or sitting blear-eyed at the door of the bothy, 

 until the last of their earnings had been dissipated. This 

 effected, they had no resource but to work during the rest of 

 the season, until sowing-time should again arrive, at occasional 

 jobs of wood-cutting or road-making, or anything that 

 might turn up, always getting drunk whenever opportunity 

 served. 



Great numbers of them, when once they had resorted to the 

 grog-shop, never again became their own masters, remaining 

 practically the bond slaves of the spirit-dealer ever after. 

 And this introduces one of the most pernicious evils with 

 which we had to contend in the early days of forest conserva- 

 tion. A very great amount of timber, bamboos, grass, and 

 other forest produce is annually required by the people of the 

 plains for house-building and repairing, fencing their fields, 

 and other agricultural purposes. The timber-bearing tracts in 

 the neighbourhood of the cultivated plains having long since 

 been cleared, all this has to be brought down from the interior 

 of the hills ; and such work can only be done by the bold 

 and hardy aborigines. Almost the whole of this trade had 

 got into the hands of the Kulars, or spirit-dealers, by means of 

 the power they had obtained over the tribes by their devotion 



