178 THE HIGHLANDS OF CENTRAL INDIA 



almost mistake tte valley for a scene in some northern 



primeval wilderness. But gradually, as the clouds clear 



ofi and the rain ceases, a change occurs. 'Hie rivers 



shrink in their beds, till a trickhng stream in a wide bed 



of boulders represents the resistless mountain torrent 



of a month before, while the higher gulhes are utterly 



dried up. The grass turns from green to yellow, and 



bristles with a terrible armature of prickles, like needles 



of steel with the barbs of a fish-hook, which catch in each 



other and mat together into masses. Woe betide the 



undefended pedestrian in grass like this. Unless defended 



by leather, before he has gone half a mile every stitch of 



his clothing will be run through and through, and pinned 



to his flesh by multitudes of these barbs, causing the most 



intolerable pain. The foHage of the Salei withers and 



droops after a few weeks of sunning ; and its naked yellow 



stems then fill the prospect hke a vast army of skeletons. 



But this stage is not even the worst. It continues till the 



month of April introduces the torrid summer season, when 



the fierce sun laps up the last particle of moisture in these 



basaltic regions. Then the grass has become hke tinder, 



and a thousand accidents may set it on fire. The traveller 



dropping a light from his pipe, the wind carrying a spark 



from an encampment of jungle-haimting Banjaras, the 



torch of the belated traveller, and, should it escape these 



accidents, then certainly the dehberate act of the graziers, 



who bring herds of cattle with the first fall of rain in June 



into these tracts to graze on the residting new crop of 



grass, will start a jungle fire which nothing can stop till 



it burns itself out. Early in the hot season it is a fine 



sight to watch at night the long creeping red lines of the 



jimgle fires on distant hill-sides. From the hill fortress 



of Asirgarh the eye ranges over the whole of the upper 



Tapti valley ; and at this season the whole country appears 



at night ringed with these lines of fire, curving with the 



curvature of hills; here thin and scarcely visible where 



the grass is scanty on a bare hill-top ; there flaring through 



tracts of long elephant grass, or wrapping some dried and 



sapless tree-stem in immense tongues of flame. By night 



a ruddy glow colours all the heavens above the spot; 



