ROADS THROUGH THE FOREST 21 



masons {raj mistri), not of the Dotial race, but men of the 

 hills generally. The Kumaonis are mostly Hindus, and 

 belong to a mild, hard-working, agricultural race, speak- 

 ing a Hindi dialect. They are of a Semitic cast of feature, 

 not like the Dotials, who are of a semi-Tartar race like 

 the Gurkhas, speaking a Nepali dialect, have Chinese- 

 like slit eyes and sturdy muscular limbs, and are a more 

 warlike people. Kumaon had been conquered by the 

 Gurkhas before it came under British rule, but its people 

 were not dispossessed of the land, which is everywhere 

 terraced and cultivated up to the tops of the lower hills. 



The masons were very clever at dressing and quarrying 

 stones, and building them into the walls and buttresses 

 of bridges which had to be thrown across mountain 

 torrents and ravines. The mortar was made by attendant 

 coolies, and the fitting and jointing of the stones was very 

 neatly done in courses, and sometimes in cyclopean 

 pattern, the stones being redressed when in position with 

 stone adze-like hammers. There were timber fellers, who 

 cut down the tall straight sal trees which grow in the 

 forest, a very heavy and straight-grained timber, darker 

 in colour but not unlike teak in the grain. Sal {Shorea 

 robusta) grows all over the Bhabar, or foot-hills above the 

 Terai, and up to 3,000 feet elevation. It was cut into 

 great beams by men with adzes and whip-saws, who 

 worked in the forest. These beams were used in con- 

 structing strong bridges on the principle of strut-and-tie 

 girders, on which sal planks were laid for the roadway ; 

 piers 25 feet wide and buttresses were built where re- 

 quired on the foundations of great rock boulders, which 

 were found in the river-beds, or resting on the solid water- 

 worn rock, mostly red sandstone. There were twenty 

 or more streams to be bridged over, of various sizes, from 

 20 feet to one of 100 feet, besides innumerable culverts in 

 ravines where water flowed. 



