188 NATURAL HISTORY OF 



legendary names ; and they now occupy many localities, but 

 greatly debased by persecution. Indeed, their intermediate 

 races, and still more and more, as they pass into the purer 

 type of the Papua or Negro, have suffered, and continue to 

 suffer, the unmitigated oppression of Caucasian superiority. 

 In hot regions, where a powerful vegetation supplies the 

 means, some of the most brutal tribes, such as the Vedas of 

 Ceylon, Cookies, and Goands of Chittagong, east of the Bra- 

 maputra, reside in trees, with little more contrivance, or the use 

 of reason, than is evinced by Chimpanzees, the great apes of 

 Africa. The Pouliahs of Malabar are no better, for they also 

 form a kind of nests, in trees, beyond the reach of elephants 

 and tigers, never associating with other nations, and not even 

 permitted by the Hindoos to approach within one hundred 

 yards. In open mountain country, these nations are more 

 commonly troglodytes, dwellers in natural grottos ; and only 

 in colder regions inhabitants of caves, excavated by their own 

 industry. Mat tents, bark and skin huts, belong to a third 

 class; and all are, or have been, cannibals ; but this appears to 

 be a condition of existence which, at some time or other, was 

 a habit in the highest and noblest races; for human sacrifices 

 are always the last symptom of the expiring custom.* 



To the east of the Indus we find the primeval nations of 

 India sometimes typified, in mythological poems, by Hanuman 

 and his monkey followers ; but historically shown to designate 

 certain human tribes, since the Ranas of Odeypoor, heads of 

 the Sesodya tribe, noblest of the Rajpoots, claims to be 

 descended from the monkey god, which they pretend to prove 

 by a peculiarly elongated structure of the coccyx in their 

 family. The claim establishes much more clearly, that the 

 Bheels of this region, primeval inhabitants, and still the most 

 numerous portion of the population, were the chief means of 



* The Mexican sovereigns, in the time of Cortez, were still obliged, by 

 law, to taste human flesh once in the year. The Goands do the same as 

 i religious behest. 



