THE ABOEIGINAL TEIBES. 177 



to the hereditary custodians, on whom they were dependent, 

 of their average income from the pilgrimage, in the form of a 

 pension. It is very different when their gains are affected. 

 Two years ago a cholera epidemic threatened in Nimar, aud 

 the pilgrimage to Omkar Mandhatta was closed by order. 

 The priests and guardians of the shrine were up in arms at 

 once, basing their objections entirely on the money loss they 

 would suffer. Since the closing of the Mahadeo pilgrimage 

 the deities of destruction have been baulked of their prey. The 

 valley of the Denwa, although now opened up by a good 

 timber road made to penetrate the Sal forest, no longer wit- 

 nesses the annual pilgrim congress. The Cave of the Shrine 

 is silent and deserted. 



The interruption to the business of the country caused by 

 these cholera outbreaks used to be terrible. Whole villages 

 were sometimes swept away. In May of 1865 I had marched 

 nearly twenty miles to a small Gond village on one of the 

 pilgrim tracks, in the district of Be'tul. I had been eluding 

 the tracks of cholera the whole of the hot season, and had 

 escaped without a single case of the disease in my camp. My 

 people were almost exhausted with such a long march in the 

 height of the hot season ; and I joined them at the village, like- 

 wise much knocked up by a long exploration in the hills. 

 I found my tent-pitcher and one or two others who had 

 arrived struggling to pitch the large tent, without the usual 

 assistance rendered by the villagers at the camping place. 

 They placidly told me that the village was no longer the home 

 of the living, every one in the houses being dead of cholera ! 

 The only living object in the place was a white kid, wandering 

 about with a garland round its neck. It was the, scape-goat 

 which these simple people, after the manner of the Israelites 

 of old, send out into the wilderness on such occasions to carry 



