348 THE HIGHLANDS OF CENTRAL INDIA 



little game, and had never stayed to shoot. From Matin we 

 proceeded again together, due north, to examine the country 

 between this and Amarkantak; and till the end of the 

 month we travelled on through an unbroken forest of the 

 sal tree. This wild is very scantily peopled by a few utterly 

 primitive Bhumias, a sight of whom could only be secured 

 by sending on an embassy of some of their own tribesmen, 

 whom we took with us from Matin. On one occasion 

 I had wandered off the elephant track that served for a 

 road in these parts, into the thick sal forest, without a 

 guide, trusting to regain it after a short detour. But the 

 country is here so level, and the prospect so circumscribed 

 by the never-ending array of great gray stems of the sal, 

 that I soon found I had entirely lost my way, while the 

 midday sun, hanging like a globe of glowing silver right 

 overhead, threw only vertical shadows, which afforded 

 no guide to the points of the compass. I was riding on 

 an elephant, and we wandered on for some hours through 

 glade after glade and clump after clump of the sal trees, 

 each exactly like the one before it, till at last we emerged 

 into a little open space, where a few tail naked stems of 

 sal trees killed by ringing stood up from among a thick 

 copse of bushes sprung from the roots of the cleared forest. 

 In the middle was a small Bhumia hamlet of a few huts of 

 bamboo basket-work, surrounded by a fence of the same 

 material. We marched up to the httle wicket-gate of this 

 enclosure, and the barking of a dog brought out the two 

 or three inhabitants. To stare wildly like startled deer at the 

 amazing sight of an elephant ridden by a white man, fly 

 over the fence with a shriek, and plunge into the thick 

 copse-wood of the little clearing, was the work of a moment. 

 But I could not do without a guide to regain the road, and 

 pushed in the elephant after them. It was just for all 

 the world like beating hog-deer out of thick bush-cover, 

 the naked black savages lying close in the thickets tUl 

 the elephant put her foot almost on the top of them, when 

 they bolted out and ran crouching across to another patch. 

 I thought we would never catch one, until the man behind 

 me shpped down the elephant's tail and ran round, inter- 

 cepting a lad in the act of leaving the last of the underwood 



