THE NARBADA VALLEY 59 



the wolf of Central India does not always confine Mmself 

 to such substitutes for legitimate game; and the loss of 

 human life from these hideous brutes has recently been 

 ascertained to be so great that a heavy reward is now 

 offered for their destruction. Though not generally ven- 

 turing beyond children of ten or twelve years old, yet, 

 when confirmed in the habit of man-eating, they do not 

 hesitate to attack, at an advantage, full-grown women 

 and even adult men. A good many instances occurred, 

 during the construction of the railway through the low 

 jungles north of Jubbulpur, of labourers on the works 

 being so attacked, and sometimes killed and eaten. The 

 attack was commonly made by a pair of wolves, one of 

 which seized the victim by the neck from behind, pre- 

 venting outcry, while the other, coming swiftly up, tore 

 out the entrails in front. These confirmed man-eaters 

 are described as having been exceedingly wary, and fully 

 able to discriminate between a helpless victim" and an 

 armed man. 



My own experience of wolves does not record an instance 

 of their attacking an adult human being; but I have 

 laio-WTi many places where children were regularly carried 

 off by them. Superstition frequently prevents the natives 

 from protecting themselves or retaliating on the brutes. 

 I was once marching through a small village on the borders 

 of the Damoh district, and accidentally heard that for 

 months past a pair of wolves had carried off a child every 

 few days, from the centre of the village and in broad 

 daylight. No attempt whatever had been made to kill 

 them, though their haunts were perfectly well known, and 

 lay not a quarter of a mile from the village. A shapeless 

 stone representing the goddess Devi, under a neighbour- 

 ing tree, had instead been daubed with vermilion, and 

 liberally propitiated with cocoa-nuts and rice ! Their plan 

 of attack was uniform and simple. The village stood on 

 the slope of a hill, at the foot of which ran the bed of a 

 stream thickly fringed with grass and bushes. The main 

 street of the village, where children were always at play, 

 ran down the slope of the hill; and while one of the 

 wolves, which was smaller than the other, would ensconce 



