PANDU THE GOND. 33 



take a bad place in a skeleton show, yet withal as 

 straight as a reed and with an eye as keen as a 

 hawk's. Not the slightest thing moves in the 

 forest but his keen vision or sharp ears detect it. 

 He must be over fifty, as his scanty locks and long 

 moustache are quite grey ; yet he thinks nothing 

 of a forty-mile trudge beside my pony, and is up 

 and away for khubber (early news) as soon as we 

 get into camp, as if the long walk were nothing 

 more than his regular morning exercise. I have 

 known him go twenty-four hours without food or 

 drink, beyond a pinch of snuff thrown into his 

 mouth wherever I have stopped for a rest. By 

 caste a Gond, he will not touch cooked food from 

 my hands, but will gratefully accept a handful of 

 rice, which he eats raw by preference. Armed 

 with an old Brown Bess (army musket), presented 

 to him years ago by Mr. Hewett, a former Com- 

 missioner of Chota Nagpore, he is an unerring 

 shot, and will fearlessly face a wounded tiger or 

 raging buffalo. He makes his own powder, purchas- 

 ing the sulphur and saltpetre at Ranchi and burn- 

 ing some twigs of the Hilla bush for his charcoal. 

 He also fashions his own bullets, in rude moulds of 

 clay. But his great difficulty is the percussion caps. 

 These are extremely difficult to be got, now that 

 breech-loading small arms are in general use ; and I 

 won his heart by a present of several hundred of 

 the large caps of the kind used with the old Brown 

 Bess. He has frequently asked me if I could not 

 convert his cap-gun into a flint-lock, as with the 

 latter there would be no bother about caps. Cloth- 



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