THE MAHADEO HILLS 95 



mainly subsisting on it, need not materially decrease in 

 numbers so long as there remain uncleared tracts to 

 furnish a retreat when pressed. But the bison admits 

 of no compromise. I have never heard of his visiting 

 fields even when he lives within reach; he never inter- 

 breeds with tame cattle ; and the axe of the clearer and 

 the low of domestic cattle are a sign to him, as to the 

 traditional backwoodsman, to move " further west." 



On the day appointed for our grand hunt I started 

 early, with the young Thakiir and a few of the Korkiis, 

 by a way that led right over the top of Dhiipgarh. After 

 walking along the open plateau for about three miles we 

 commenced the ascent of the hill, which is close on 1000 

 feet above the plateau. The zigzag track was hardly 

 distinguishable among the grass and bamboos that clothe 

 the hill ; and every here and there a road had to be cleared 

 with the axe, no one having passed that way since the 

 preceding rainy season, when all vestiges of paths in these 

 hills become obliterated. We were amply rewarded, 

 however, for the climb by the magnificent prospect that 

 awaited us when we gained the summit — ^the finest by 

 far in all this range of hills. The further slope of Dhiip- 

 garh was not nearly so precipitous as that we had come 

 up, but fell, by steps as it were, to the bottom of a deep 

 and extensive glen, which was the one we were about to 

 beat. Beyond this again rose the mural clifi that but- 

 tresses the whole of this block to the south ; and far past 

 this, to the left, stretched out below us the wilderness of 

 forest-clad hills, that reaches with scarcely a break to the 

 Tapti river — a distance, as the crow flies, of sixty or 

 seventy miles. All this immense waste is the chosen 

 home of the bison; and beyond it, on either side of the 

 Tapti, on the elevated Chikalda range, and in the wild 

 hills of Kalibhit, lies another tract of equally wide extent, 

 where, too, the mountain bull roams, as yet scarcely 

 troubled with the presence of man or cattle. This is the 

 region of the Teak tree far excellence in this central range 

 of moimtains, to which I will have the pleasure of con- 

 ducting the reader in a future chapter. 



Tracks of bison and sambar were numerous on the top 



