ROUGHING IT IN SOUTHERN INDIA 173 



regarded as their positive rights in the matter. However, 

 if cases of salt-filching came under his notice, as would some- 

 times happen, living so constantly on the spot as he did, 

 my husband was often blind to them. 



There was the same rigour with regard to bamboos. 

 A Government permit from the Forest Department was 

 obligatory before a villager, one of those too poor to buy, 

 could run up a hut for himself or repair his old one — burnt, 

 perhaps, or blown down in a storm. He might possibly 

 have to tramp many miles to obtain this permit, but if it 

 were not forthcoming when he applied for his bamboos 

 he would have his journey for naught ; or if he dared to 

 help himself secretly, some lynx-eyed observer was certain 

 to pounce down upon him, and he would be fined — heavily 

 enough, too, for one possessing so little. But as these 

 permits were all in F/s hands in his own district — nothing 

 of forest produce being free — he took care to make them 

 pretty comprehensive, in various ways seeing to it that the 

 people did not suffer all they might have done from the 

 tyranny of a horde of underlings levying tolls on their own 

 account, thereby to eke out their salaries. 



Commend me to a native for being hard on a native, and 

 the lower class of Eurasian is as bad ; it is from these that 

 the petty officials of the Forest, Salt, Police, Survey, and 

 other Departments are recruited. Very much, therefore, 

 depends on the heads and their intimate knowledge of the 

 people's customs and caste prejudices. They need be Argus- 

 eyed, and should be devoid of fear and favouritism, but 

 perhaps that is speaking too ideally. Happily, the high- 

 ways of the sea and of the rivers are free ; I never heard of 

 tolls being levied there, whether on the people's fishing or 

 their craft. 



Unmanageably vast catches of sardines — the true, tiny 

 sardines — are so common that they are laid upon the fields 

 as manure. Highly odoriferous they are, too. The sardine 



