AN EXPLOEATION IN THE FAE EAST. 415 



tribal name in MandM, being restricted to their priests and 

 medicine-men in these more eastern regions. It was queer to 

 see what trifles sufficed to bring a grin of .delight on their 

 black and unhandsome but good-humoured countenances. 

 Their broadest grins were elicited by my three lemon-and- 

 white spaniels, when they sat up in line to beg "Wah 

 Kookur ! Koo-oo-Koo-ra* ! " exclaimed among them, testifying 

 their delight ; and when the visitors who had been initiated 

 to this awful mystery were excluded ' from the hut to let me 

 have a sleep, I saw them, through the leafy wall, form a depu- 

 tation from the whole population of the place, to solicit my 

 dog-boy to give one more exhibition, by the aid of a bone, of 

 the wonderful performing "kookurs." For days afterwards 

 fresh parties of these simple savages used to come up to my 

 tent on the hill, and sit down over against me in the hope of 

 seeing the wonderful spectacle, the news of which was carried, 

 I believe, to the uttermost ends of this wilderness. When our 

 elephants arrived from below with my tent and things (there 

 was a pathway as far as the village), all the Bhumids saluted 

 them by placing a hand on their broad footprints and then 

 touching their foreheads. The wild elephants were truly, as 

 they said, the raj&s and demons of their country at that time, 

 wandering whither they listed, and devastating their fields of 

 hill rice at will. So, as usual with the offensive powers of 

 nature among these tribes, they were ranked and propitiated 

 as an expression of the Deity. The next morning I was 

 carried up to the top of the hill, where my tent had been 

 pitched under a shady tree by the banks of a small tank, 

 which in olden days had been excavated for a supply of water 

 to the fort. The way up was a steep zigzag of 730 feet. Near 

 the top a clear scarp of light grey rock rises out of the sloping 

 forest-covered hill-side, sweeping right round the hill, an in- 



