THE TEAK EEGION 199 



happened to visit Dhowtea just when nearly all the sambar 

 had gone down the hills to feed on some jungle fruits that 

 had ripened in the valleys; and the few that remained 

 were not to be found among the long imburnt grass. I 

 believe that the immense number of marks we saw were 

 caused by the collection of large numbers of deer there 

 during the rutting season (late autumn). 



The path we went down by wound along the top of 

 a long spur of naked basalt. On either side were deep 

 and almost coal-black rifts in the rock, the summits clothed 

 scantily with thin yellow grass, and here and there a Salei 

 tree stvmted and twisted like a corkscrew. At one point 

 the rock assumed the form of a sheer clifE, many hundred 

 feet in height, of the columnar structure seen occasionally 

 in this volcanic formation, where the rock seems composed 

 of a vast conglomeration of pentagonal pillars standing 

 together and broken ofi at different lengths. This singu- 

 larly favourable situation for nest-building had been 

 occupied by an immense colony of vultures, the whole 

 face of the rock for miles being whitened by their droppings, 

 while numbers of the birds were perched on the clifi or 

 sailing over the ravine. Among them were a good many 

 of the common brown carrion vulture ; ^ but the majority 

 were the foul white scavengers ^ to be seen on every dung- 

 hill in the villages of the plains. I had often wondered 

 where these birds bred, for although there are myriads in 

 all inhabited tracts of Central India only a few nests are 

 to be seen here and there in the tops of trees. Here was 

 the puzzle solved, in the grim and retired solitude of the 

 Valley of the Vultures. But a single hill — a few minutes' 

 flight— separated them here from the thickly peopled 

 plain where they find their repulsive food; and yet that 

 ravine is probably as seldom looked on by the eye of 

 man as if it were a guano island in the Pacific Ocean. 



A few weeks after our unsuccessful trip to the Hatti 

 hills, I heard from T. that the grass was mostly burnt, 

 and sambar were plentiful on the northern slope of the 

 hiUs. He had also come across a preserve of bison, out 

 of which he had bagged a bull. Early in April, therefore, 

 ^ Gyps Bengdmsis. ^ Neophum Perenopterus. 



