372 THE HIGHLANDS OF CENTRAL HSfDIA. 



culties in the way of their overflowing into this neighbouring 

 region. 



Some of these difficulties I will now mention. They are 

 principally the inaccessibility of the tract, and the conflict 

 that awaits the new settler with the forces of nature, in the 

 shape of unhealthy climate, luxuriant jungle, and noxious 

 animals. Much of the popular dread of these matters is the 

 work of imagination, though not of course for that the less 

 a real influence ; but much, too, is undeniable fact. The 

 country is doubtless very difficult of access, the nearest 

 available wastes lying upwards of eighty miles from the 

 railway line or a market, without any road that is worthy 

 of the name. Towards the south some attempt has been 

 made, within a few years, to open out the lowest of the 

 valleys (of the Baiyar river), by constructing passes through 

 the hills which separate it from the Nagpiir plain. The 

 adjacent country is more thickly peopled than that of the 

 Narbada valley ; and the encouragement given them by this 

 road, and by the establishment in the middle of the wilds of 

 a European civil officer and his following, has now begun 

 to show some signs of result, in attempts to colonise portions 

 of the land above the pass. But much cannot be looked for, 

 even here, for many years. The nearest good market would 

 be a hundred miles away, and over very imperfect roads. 

 There is no great amount of population to spare, and there 

 is still plenty of waste land to take up much nearer at hand. 

 The experiment, I fear, is one of those which have always 

 ended in the same result heavy expenditure vainly en- 

 deavouring to support a naturally languishing settlement 

 that has been planted some distance ahead of the natural 

 expansion of the population. 



In the matter of climate, like all uncleared regions in this 



