THE ABORIGINAL TEIBES 147 



the Matadeo Cave. The people made no complaint. 

 They do not seriously care about these things when left 

 alone by the priests; and here the priests were satisfied 

 by the continuance to the hereditary custodians, on whom 

 they were dependent, of their average income from the 

 pilgrimage, in the form of a pension. It is very different 

 when their gains are affected. Two years ago a cholera 

 epidemic threatened in Nimar, and the pilgrimage to 

 Omkar Mandhatta was closed by order. The priests and 

 guardiana of the shrine were up in arms at once, basing 

 their objections entirely on the money loss they would 

 suffer. Since the closing of the Mahadeo pilgrimage the 

 deities of destruction have been baulked of their prey. 

 The valley of the Denwa, although now opened up by a 

 good timber road made to penetrate the Sal forest, no 

 longer witnesses the annual pilgrim congress. The Cave 

 of the Shrine is silent and deserted. 



The interruption to the business of the country caused 

 by these cholera outbreaks used to be terrible. Whole 

 villages were sometimes swept away. I once marched 

 nearly twenty miles to a small G6nd village on one of the 

 pilgrim tracks, in the district of Betii]. I had been elud- 

 ing the tracks of cholera the whole of the hot season, 

 and had escaped without a single case of the disease in 

 my camp. My people were almost exhausted with such 

 a long march in the height of the hot season ; and I joined 

 them at the village, likewise much knocked up by a long 

 exploration in the hiUs. I found my tent-pitcher and 

 one or two others who had arrived struggling to pitch the 

 large tent, without the usual assistance rendered by the 

 villagers at the camping place. They placidly told me that 

 the village was no longer the home of the living, every 

 one in the houses being dead of cholera ! The only living 

 object in the place was a white kid, wandering about with 

 a garland round its neck. It was the scape-goat which 

 these simple people, after the manner of the Israelites of 

 old, send out into the wilderness on such occasions to 

 carry with it the spirit of the plague. Tired out as we 

 were, it was death to stay in this place ; so we re-loaded 

 the things and marched eight miles further, straight into 



