l8o THE FORESTS OF UPPER INDIA 



This is a business which requires great skill, and know- 

 ledge of the various methods of timber transport ; but 

 it would be quite possible to train the hardy villagers 

 of these mountains to the work. They already are 

 very good axemen, and every hillman carries an axe, 

 with which he can quickly fell the largest trees. The 

 forests being all Government property, there would be no 

 difficulty in exploiting the timber ; and saw-mills could 

 be easily constructed at the depots, worked by the side- 

 streams coming from the lofty hills above. 



Let me describe a typical hill forest in this region. First, 

 starting from the Pindar river, where are villages with fields 

 of rice and terraces irrigated by water-courses cleverly 

 led from the side valleys, we ascend past fields of Indian 

 corn nearly ripe, and clumps of great-leaved plantains 

 laden with fruit. There are lemon-trees and apricots, 

 figs and wild cherries, and luxuriant mulberries and shady 

 evergreen mango-trees, some with great stems very old 

 and twisted. There are several kinds of figs, the sacred 

 pipal and banian. Higher up, following the villagers' 

 paths by which they drive their cattle to pasture, we 

 come to enormous walnut and sycamore trees. The wal- 

 nuts are collected by the natives and stored in great 

 quantities. Presently we strike into forests of ever- 

 green oak of three different kinds, several kinds of acacia, 

 and many sorts of underwoods, berberis, and wait-a-bit 

 thorns. 



Higher up, at about 8,000 feet elevation, we get into 

 the real pine forests, which grow best on the less steep 

 northern slopes where the sun does not glare. They prefer 

 to live under the shadow of the great mountain, where 

 the soil is black and deep, and many bulbous and flower- 

 ing plants, ferns innumerable, and shrubs of the azalea 

 and magnolia type abound. There are clusters of yew 



