220 The Hunting Grounds 



that of other women, are of a rich, clear, olive 

 colour, several shades lighter than the men, in conse- 

 quence of less exposure to the weather ; and their 

 hands and feet are comparatively small and beauti- 

 fully formed. They arrive at maturity at a very 

 early age, and it is no uncommon thing to see outside 

 the huts a pretty little girl, under twelve years of 

 age, with an infant on her 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 



