212 THE HUNTING GROUNDS 



hip ; but as they arrive speedily to womanhood, so 

 their beauty decays ; at sixteen they are in the 

 prime of life, and at thirty aged, when they retain 

 no trace of their former beauty. The women have 

 a plurality of husbands, the brothers of a family 

 generally marrying one wife, which practice is also 

 common among the Nairs and other castes on the 

 western coast. Their huts are built in the shape 

 of the tilt of a waggon, of bamboos thatched with 

 turf. They are about ten feet long, seven broad, 

 and six high, and the door (the only aperture in the 

 building) is only about two feet square, so that the 

 inhabitants have to crawl in and out on all fours. 

 Half a dozen huts constitute a " mund " or village, 

 which is generally situated on the side of a hill, in 

 the most picturesque spots on the hills. They are 

 a pastoral people, possessing large herds of the 

 finest buffaloes in India ; having a strange language 

 of their own, but no character to express it. The 

 men sometimes wear small gold earrings, and the 

 women silver or brass armlets, and a rude kind of 

 zone, which is worn loosely round the hips. The 

 Toda men call themselves the lords of the soil, and 

 look down with supreme contempt upon the Bur- 

 ghers, another hill race, who are of inferior stature, 

 and cultivate the ground, for which they have to 

 pay the former a certain tribute. 



One morning as B and I were engaged in 



superintending the laying out of a piece of ground 

 as an addition to our kitchen-garden, a Toda, to 



