AN EXPLOEATION IN THE FAR EAST. 403 



sently emerging, after a final shave against a sunken rock, 

 into a deep and silent pool, where the plash of huge fish, and 

 the eye-knobs and serrated backs of crocodiles sailing about, 

 showed that we had entered one of the long silent reaches 

 that break at intervals the torrent of these mountain rivers. 

 My companion had got a severe attack of fever, which marred 

 what would otherwise have been a sufficiently jolly trip. 

 After resting awhile at this most secluded of stations (they 

 get their supplies from Calcutta, several hundreds of miles 

 away, on men's heads, and a convoy had just been trampled 

 up by wild elephants before we arrived), we started again for 

 the Garhj&t States, where the next month was spent in unre- 

 mitting toil among their rugged hills. Here we were among 

 the Khond aborigines, famous for the Meria" sacrifices of 

 human beings to the dread goddess Kali. How they can 

 have been confounded with our Central Indian Gonds I can- 

 not imagine. They are much blacker and more negro-like in 

 their physique, and speak a wholly different language, a few 

 words only of which approximate, like G6ndi, to the Tdmil of 

 the south. Their country is wholly beyond the limits of the 

 central highlands ; and it would be out of place to enter here 

 into a detailed description of the tribe, even did the few 

 weeks I passed among them justify such an undertaking. We 

 returned from this trip with most of our following severely 

 ill of fever, contracted ' in these close jungles, where water is 

 so scarce and bad at this time of year (April) that we rose, 

 like river gods, from our daily bath hung with the green slime 

 of the fetid pools from which our supplies were drawn. As 

 we marched northward again we entered the valley of the 

 Jonk river, a tributary of the MiMnadi, and here we fell in 

 again with great herds of buffaloes, and halted for a day or 

 two to recruit our followers and shoot. Our camp was pitched 



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