66 THE HIGHLANDS OF CENTRAL INDIA 



of the gentlemen connected with the works, who surely 

 never could have seen a snipe before. We took opposite 

 sides of the long swamp, which swarmed with the long- 

 bills; and when we met at the end I had got twenty- 

 seven and a half couples, while my friend had collected 

 a miscellaneous bag of snippets, plover, paddy-birds, and 

 minas, and not one snipe among them. 



My next march lay under the northern face of the main 

 range of the Satpiiras, which here form a blufi headland 

 rising some 600 feet above the plain, crowned by an old 

 fortress called Chaoragarh. This is one of the many 

 extensive fortifications constructed by the chiefs of the 

 country to the south of the Narbada, at the time when 

 the resistless tide of Mahomedan conquest, after engulfing 

 the Hindu kingdoms of upper India and the Deccan, was 

 rolling against the principahties of these central regions. 

 The works of these forts generally enclose a considerable 

 space on the summit of a naturally inaccessible hill, 

 having been designed for the retreat of large bodies of 

 the inhabitants, and of armies, in times of successful 

 invasion. The flat-topped and scarp-sided hills of the 

 trap formation are the most suitable for such strongholds, 

 and there are consequently more of them in the trap 

 country than elsewhere. Such additional works as are 

 necessary are composed of massive blocks of rock, roughly 

 squared and laid without masonry. Inside tanks have 

 generally been excavated in the rock to hold a plentiful 

 supply of water, natural hollows being always taken 

 advantage of to avoid labour as much as possible. Before 

 the days of artillery such places must have possessed great 

 strength; but we rarely hear of their being vigorously 

 defended by their possessors, and they were generally 

 surrendered after a short investment. Doubtless the chief 

 cause was usually want of provisions, masses of people 

 being suddenly huddled into the place, and being unable 

 to carry with them the scanty provender afiorded by a 

 poor country in the face of danger. In 1564 the great 

 Akber sent his lieutenant to reduce the Gond chieftain of 

 Mandla. The Gond troops, led by the heroic Diirgawati, 

 the Rajput widow of the last chief, made a noble resist- 



