JUNGLES IN CENTRAL INDIA 265 



at each side. A naked man follows, holding the handles 

 and shouting to his oxen. The very modern invention 

 for sowing corn to be seen at our agricultural shows, 

 and called a drilling machine, has its very ancient proto- 

 type in the shape of a bamboo funnel attached to the 

 plough, down which the seed corn is carefully dropped 

 from the hand of a little black boy who walks beside, and 

 delivered under the coulter. Surely there is nothing new 

 under the sun. Without water the winter crops could 

 not grow ; wells, therefore, have been sunk in every field, 

 and bullocks are driven round in a circle, working a primi- 

 tive wheel, over which passes a rope belt with little red 

 earthen chatties, which come slowly up from the clear 

 cool well, dripping and full of the life-giving fluid, which 

 is upset into a trough, and runs in its meandering channel 

 to every part of the field. The same wheels exist in 

 Egypt, and the broken pots or chatties are found 

 40 feet below the surface in the Nile deposit, proving the 

 vast antiquity of this contrivance. In every cultivated 

 field in the plains of Central India such wells exist, the 

 clear water being found abundantly in the black, spongy 

 cotton soil at depths varying from 10 feet. The weirdest 

 music, caused by the grinding together of the polished 

 wooden cogs as the oxen go round, is heard all day on every 

 side in different keys, and often at night — continuous 

 moaning noises, varied by squeaks and groans. 



At length the ancient fortress of Jhansi looms against 

 the sky, with its bastioned waUs and very antique citadel. 

 The walls were 30 feet high all round the city, which was 

 bombarded by Sir Hugh Rose in 1858 and taken by assault. 

 Major Baillie most hospitably entertained me, and showed 

 me the place where the escalade party had placed their 

 ladders. Rushing in with a company of the 86th Regiment 

 and some sappers under a heavy fire, they clambered on to 



