ROADS THROUGH THE FOREST 19 



and enjoyed himself thoroughly pulling their hair and 

 making them scream ; and then, jumping on to a tree or 

 roof, he would give them great abuse and mimic them 

 with strange grimaces. ^--'1 



The road from the foot of the hills from Kathgodam 

 by Juli to Naini Tal took three years to construct. The 

 first season, commencing in November, the lower twelve 

 miles up to the Brewery were marked out and cut 6 feet 

 wide. The work was done by native contractors of the 

 Kumaon district, principally lohars, or iron workers. 

 Each man with his family would take, say, a quarter-mile. 

 They were excellent workers, the men hacking out the 

 clay with picks and hoes, and the women dragging it 

 away on sledges made of boards, with creepers for ropes, 

 or sometimes of the skins of animals. The rocks were 

 blasted and built into dry walls below, to support the 

 stuff which came down from above. The hillsides being 

 very steep, the work was facilitated when the rains came, 

 large quantities of earth coming down all along the six- 

 foot cutting on to the track, which was completed the 

 following year — 20 to 30 feet wide — strong retaining walls 

 being built from below to retain the material, which, after 

 a time, became consolidated into a firm road. But in 

 some places, where the earth was loose or springs broke 

 out, there were disastrous landslips, and great difficulty 

 was experienced in keeping up the road at all. The second 

 season, the widening process had to be completed after 

 the rains ceased. No work could be done in the rains. 

 In some places where solid rock and precipices were met 

 with, the entire road was blasted out of the rock, which 

 was red sandstone, and luckily not very hard. Steel 

 jumpers and crowbars were largely employed, and a 

 hundred pounds of gunpowder per day were often burnt. 

 This portion was done by coolies from Nepal, called Dotials, 



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