18 Notes of a tour in the Tributary Mehals. [No. 1, 



and other necessaries, wax, arrow-root, resin, gums, honey and stick 

 lac. and excellent iron smelted by themselves. The Korewah iron, 

 roughly fashioned as battle-axes, is greatly prized by the inhabitants 

 of all the neighbouring States. 



Whilst conversing with the Rajah about these savages, he men- 

 tioned to me that there existed a tribe called Birhores, whom he accused 

 of a sort of interfraternal anthropophagy, of feeding literally on their 

 blood relations. 



They are alluded to by the late Col. Ouseley, in a paper that ap- 

 peared in the Journal of the Society for January 1848, but he relates 

 the story, as of the Korewahs, calling them inhabitants of Mynepat 

 in Sirgoojah. The Korewahs repudiate all affinity with the Birhores, 

 nor could I hear of either Korewahs or Birhores on the Mynepat : the 

 latter are found in some of the wildest parts of Chota-Nagpore and 

 Jnshpore, but they are of rare occurrence. With much trouble some 

 were caught and brought to me. They were wretched looking objects, 

 bnt had more the appearance of the most abject of one of those 

 degraded castes of Hindu, the domes or pariahs, to whom most flesh 

 is food, than of hill people. Assuring me that they had themselves 

 given up the practice, they admitted that their fathers were in the 

 habit of disposing of their dead in the manner indicated ; viz. by feasting 

 on the bodies, but they declared they never shortened life to provide 

 such feasts, and shrunk with horror at the idea of any bodies but 

 those of their own blood relations being served up at them ! The 

 Rajah said he had heard that, when a Birhore thought his end was 

 approaching, he himself invited his kindred to feast on his body. The 

 Birhores brought to me did not acknowledge this, but they spoke on 

 the subject with a degree of reticence that made me think it might be 

 true. I told the Rajah to enquire particularly about it, and gave out 

 that if the horrid rite was still practised, it must be discontinued. But, 

 query, — ' would not Saturday reviewers regard my order as an injudi- 

 cious interference with a time-honoured custom, on a point that natives 

 were so peculiarly tenacious of the disposal of their dead V 



The Birhores speak a jargon of Hindi, which I found intelligible ; 

 and have no other language. 



Nine-tenths of the population of the remaining portion of the Jush- 

 pore highlands are " Coles." Chiefly Oraons, there are very few Moon- 



