296 THE FORESTS OF UPPER INDIA 



an elephant or on foot, I found the heat quite bearable, 

 and did not get fever. Ten days after, when the rains 

 threatened and I marched back to Hoshangabad, I had 

 an attack of sharp fever for a few days. 



Large quantities of sal sleepers had to be furnished at 

 a place on the Great Indian Peninsula Railway called 

 Bagra, not far from Hoshangabad, where the last relics 

 of a fine sal forest were being cut up for the use of the 

 railway. The native method of sawing is ingenious. 

 The logs are propped up in a sloping direction and cut 

 with whip saws, one man standing on top and one below. 

 Saw-pits were not used. Work in the forest came to an 

 end in the rains, camping out and marching being im- 

 possible. Camels cannot carry loads over wet and 

 slippery ground, as their big flat feet are more suited 

 to dry and rocky soil. They frequently then slip and 

 split up if loaded, and cannot stand a damp climate, 

 dying like flies. Their owners drive them all back to 

 the rainless Bikaner in the north-west, to graze on the 

 babul or camel-thorns {Acacia Arabica) of those arid, 

 sandy deserts, and bring them south again to be hired 

 out in the dry season. 



The rains at Hoshangabad can only be described as hot, 

 relaxing, and incessant for four months. The normal con- 

 ditions of life were mere existence, alternated with goes 

 of fever ; but sometimes there were delightful intervals 

 of European-like weather, when one could ride abroad or 

 take trips on elephants, which had to take all the mes- 

 sages to the railway station at Itarsi — ten miles — as the 

 roads were impassable for carts. There is now a railway 

 junction at Hoshangabad, and a fine bridge over the 

 Nerbudda. 



