180 THE HIGHLANDS OF CENTRAL INDIA 



tombs and mosques of their Mahomedan rulers. Near 

 the ancient site of Sajni, the chief town of one of these 

 tracts, may be seen a banyan tree of immense spread, 

 whose trunk has embraced and Ufted bodily up from off the 

 ground the domed masonry tomb, about twelve feet in 

 all dimensions, of some Moslem notable, and so enveloped 

 it with its thousand folds that not one stone of it is to be 

 seen outside, while, passing inside by a narrow opening, 

 the arch of the dome and the wall will be seen to be almost 

 perfect. A Moslem could scarcely desire a fitter entomb- 

 ment than to be suspended thus between heaven and 

 earth, hke the prophet of his faith. 



It is now some years since the malaria of the encroaching 

 jungle and famine in the country, caused by the failure 

 of the rains of heaven and the still more terrible strife of 

 men, desolated these settlements in the Tapti valley. 

 The rank jungle then sprang on the deserted clearings, 

 rendered fertile to weed as to cereal by the labour of man, 

 and has now clothed them with a thicket of vegetation 

 of such thickness, and guarded by a miasma so deadly, as 

 to baffle all attempts at renewed occupation by the Hindu 

 cultivators densely crowded in the adjoining open country. 

 Here and there the Korkiis, whose constitutions seem 

 impervious to malaria, have settled down on some neigh- 

 bouring rising ground, and built a neat little village of 

 Swiss-like cottages of bamboo, and have cleared and tilled 

 the opener parts of the vaUey, raising such crops of wheat 

 on the unexhausted black soil as are the envy of the 

 laborious tiller of the hard-used lands in the outer valley. 

 But it is a terrible and unequal struggle between the 

 aborigine, even so far reclaimed as these Korkiis are, and 

 the jungle with its immense and unremitting strength of 

 vegetation, and tribes of noxious wild beasts. Every now 

 and again the heart of the Korku fails him, and he abandons 

 the contest, flitting off to some hill-side where he may 

 more easUy contend with axe and fire against the less 

 exuberant vegetation of the thin mountain soils. On the 

 whole, however, the habits of the Korkiis of the Tapti 

 valley are a great advance on those of the tribes inhabit- 

 ing the Mahadeo hills further east. Their cultivation is 



