14 THE HIGHLANDS OF CENTRAL INDIA 



nearly ousted them from their seatT Along with many 

 more important provinces, this secluded region felt the 

 benefit of the impulse then given to the administration 

 of the empire. That great civiliser of nations — the iron 

 road — ^was to be driven through the heart of its valleys ; 

 and Manchester had prophetically fixed an eye on its black 

 soil plains as a future field for cotton. Something stronger 

 than the divided and limited agency of the several local 

 oflS.cers who had been sitting still over its affairs was wanted 

 for the guidance of a country and a people who possessed 

 all the elements of a rapid progress. Accordingly, in 1861, 

 were constituted what have since been known as the 

 Central Provinces, under the chief commissionership of 

 the late Sir Richard Temple, of the Bengal Civil Service. 



Then were seen strange sights in that imknown land; 

 when distant valleys and mountain gorges, that had heard 

 no other sound than the woodman's axe, echoed to the 

 horse-hoofs of the tireless Chief, and his small knot of 

 often weary followers; when the solitary Gond or Byga, 

 clearing his patch of millet on the remote hill-side, was 

 astonished by the apparition, on some commanding hill- 

 top, of that veritable " Government " (Sirkar) in the flesh, 

 which to him and his for several generations had been an 

 abstraction, represented, if by chance he ever visited the 

 district head-quarters, by a " Saheb " in his shirt-sleeves, 

 sitting in a dingy office smoking a cheroot ! 



A Chief who thus, by dint of hard riding, insisted on 

 seeing the requirements of the country for himself, was 

 not long in perceiving that the highland centre of the 

 province, with its extensive forests and mineral wealth, 

 its limitless tracts of imreclaimed waste, and scanty, 

 half-wild population, and its great capabilities for the 

 storage, of precious water, was worthy of a principal 

 share of attention. It had already been whispered by a 

 few that its forests, calculated on by the projectors of 

 the railway lines, then being constructed through the 

 province, for their supply of timber, were 'likely to prove 

 a broken reed, having been already exhausted by a long 

 course of mismanagement; and one of the first steps 

 taken was the organisation of a Forest Department, for 



