INTEODUCTOEY 11 



thas assumed little of a practical character in the interior 

 of the hills, the mountaineers continuing to wage against 

 them a desultory warfare from their fastnesses. The 

 present century broke with the commencement of that 

 " time of trouble," when the leaders of the Maratha con- 

 federacy began to quarrel over their spoil, and entered on 

 a deadly struggle for territory and power. The financial 

 straits of the Maratha chiefs now led to wholesale dis- 

 regard for all rights of property inconsistent with their 

 demand of a rack-rent from every acre of the soil com- 

 manded by their troops. The hill-chiefs were now reft of 

 the last of their possessions in the plains ; corrupt and over- 

 bearing farmers of the land-tax seizing on the last of their 

 accessible resources. Then they took to the hills with their 

 tribes, and turned their hands against the spoiler, till the 

 name of Gond and Bheel became synonymous with that 

 of hill-robber. Whole tracts came to be distinguished by 

 the title of the " coimtry of robbers." There is not a 

 district in all that long frontier between hill and plain 

 where tales are not still related of the sudden downswoop 

 of bands of hill-men on the garnered harvest of the plains, 

 of bloodshed, torture, and blazing villages, and of the 

 sharp and savage retaliation of Maratha mercenaries. A 

 little tributary of the Tapti river that comes down from 

 the hills of Gavilgarh is still called the " stream of blood," 

 from the massacre in its valley of a whole tribe of Nahals, 

 man, woman, and child, by a body of Arabs in the service 

 of Sindia; and many similar tales have been related to 

 me when travelling in the hills. Then, if not before, 

 every pass in the hills was crowned by a fortified post of 

 the mountain men, and every inhabited village of the 

 plains by a wall of earthwork and a central keep. Then, 

 too, arose the organised bands of mounted plunderers who 

 have been called Pindaris — Ishmaelites of these central 

 regions, who, like the vulture, sallied forth from their 

 fastnesses in some secluded wild to gorge on the prey 

 struck down by a nobler hand. Thenceforth, for nearly 

 twenty years, the hill-tribes, Pindari plunderers, and 

 lawless Maratha soldiery, with their daggers at each other's 

 throats, were unanimous only in robbing the husbandmen 



