THE ABOKIGINAL TEIBES 129 



seldom lost altogether. The short-sighted pohcy long followed 

 by our Legislattiie, which rendered the recovery of such 

 debts a matter of the greatest difficulty and uncertainty, 

 greatly aided in maintaining these rates of interest. This 

 pohcy is not even yet extinct, there being, in the Central 

 Provinces at least, a rule which prohibits procedure against 

 the farm-stock of a debtor, although it may all have been 

 purchased with the borrowed money to recover which 

 execution is sought. 



It is obvious that transactions of this nature are reaUy 

 of the nature of a partnership between the labourer and the 

 capitahst, the former furnishing nothing but his personal 

 labour and supervision. Sometimes the partnership takes a 

 more exphcit form, when the man of money furnishes the 

 oxen against the manual labour of the cultivator. AU the 

 other expenses, including the wages of the cultivator's family, 

 if he has any, are deducted from the gross produce of the 

 farm, with interest to the capitahst if he has advanced any 

 part of such expenditure, and the balance is then divided 

 equally between the owner of the oxen and the cujitivator. 

 In either case the result usually is that all the profit, beyond 

 the bare wages his labour would fetch in the market, is 

 absorbed by the man that supphes the money and takes the 

 risk. But the cultivator is far better ofE also than if he had 

 been working for hire, for then he would not have laboured 

 half so steadily as his interest in the result of the crop induces 

 him to do. 



Until recently, the habits of debauchery I have men- 

 tioned, together with the low value of agricultural produce, 

 usually prohibited the advance of the aboriginal cultivator 

 from this stage. The harvest reaped, any grain that might 

 fall to his share was at once taken to the spirit-dealer (who 

 usually combined grain-deahng with his more pernicious 

 trade), and converted into Mhowa spirit — gangs of Gonds at 

 this season being constantly to be seen rolling about in a 

 perpetual state of drunkenness, or sitting, blear-eyed, at the 

 door of the bothy, until the last of their earnings had been 

 dissipated. This effected, they had no resource but to work 

 during the rest of the season, until sowing-t^me should again 

 arrive, at occasional jobs of wood-cutting or road-malong, 



