398 THE HIGHLANDS OF CENTRAL INDIA. 



herds of wild elephants, which descended at the ripening of 

 the crops of Chattis'garh to the skirts of the forest, doing 

 immense damage, and forming a serious obstacle to the culti- 

 vation of the country. To penetrate to their haunts, ascertain 

 their numbers, and propose means for their destruction, was 

 another object of our expedition. 



In the end of January I descended the Kajddh&r pass from 

 the Mandla" district, and marched across the Chattis'garh plain, 

 where antelope, ducks, snipe, etc., afforded perpetual occupa- 

 tion for the gun, to the station of BaTpiir, where I met the 

 Chief Commissioner's camp and my future companion in this 



expedition Captain B., of Her Majesty's Eegiment. 



Thence we proceeded to the eastern and southern forests, 

 marching rapidly to get from one portion of these forests to 

 another, where days and weeks would be passed in tramping 

 about the hills and making notes, the great part of which 

 would possess no interest for the general reader. We never 

 allowed ourselves to linger for sport ; but the herds of buffa- 

 loes are in some parts of this country so numerous that it 

 would have been almost impossible to avoid encountering 

 them. 



The extreme western range of the wild buffalo* in Central 

 India is almost exactly marked by the 80th meridian of longi- 

 tude, or in physical features by the Wyn-Ganga tributary of 

 the Goda>ari river, and below their junction almost by the 

 latter river itself. I say almost, because in a trip down the 

 God&vari river which I made during the rains of 1865 I saw 

 the tracks of a herd of buffaloes on the western side of that 

 river, at the " third barrier" \ south of the station of CMnd, 



* Bubalus ami. 



t These " barriers " are points in the course of this river where its otherwise 

 still, lake-like character is broken by spaces in which the river assumes more the 



