JUNGLES IN CENTRAL INDIA 263 



The women, who work very hard in the fields, are to be 

 seen near the villages dressed in the usual Hindu costume, 

 wearing coloured saris of strong cotton cloth, stamped 

 with Grecian border-patterns, which fall in the most 

 graceful folds. The limbs are draped from the waist 

 down with double folds, and the loose end is then thrown 

 over the head and shoulders as a veil, but the face is 

 seldom concealed. Crowds of women or girls come at 

 evening time to the tanks or wells to draw water, which 

 they carry away to their houses in round red earthenware 

 chatties poised on the head. The carriage and gliding 

 movements of some of these oval-faced dark beauties, 

 as they bear their heavy burdens away, is admirable to 

 the artistic eye. The shops in the bazaar, where flour 

 and vegetables and ghee are bargained for, are quite 

 busy and picturesque places. The native artificers of 

 all kinds and castes, working at their simple trades of 

 lohar (blacksmith), chamar (leatherworker), and barhai 

 (carpenter), using the same tools that were used at the 

 time Solomon's temple was built, are to be seen in most 

 village communities, besides cotton-spinners and carders 

 of black wool, and weavers who make the universal black 

 blankets, which every coolie carries, in primitive looms. 

 There are shepherds {hheri wallas), who take the village 

 flocks out to graze; a simple and patient race, clad 

 in their own shiny brown skins, with blanket and stick, 

 living each with his flock of sheep, mostly black shaggy 

 little animals, and black-and-white goats, which are fine, 

 tall, and picturesque fellows with big horns and long 

 hair. 



The cultivated land in Bundelkhand is mostly quite 

 flat, with a deep black soil, known as cotton soil. It is 

 an alluvial bed of black mud, in which are grains of white 

 calcareous sand, and, being of any depth, is most fertile. 



