580 Notes upon a tour through the Rdjmahal Hills. [No. 7. 



baskets or rather straw rope balls, five feet in diameter, and as the 

 driver almost invariably adds his own weight by standing on the cart, 

 a ruinous and cruel weight is thus thrown upon the necks of the 

 draught animals and upon the body of the cart, which bends and 

 springs under the weight, whilst the wheels which are at the utter ex- 

 treme of the bamboos are pressed outwards and backwards and seem 

 inclined to fly from their position, which they would do with great 

 force if relieved by their retaining wooden pegs. 



When it is intended to convey grass, rice in the ear, or any other 

 crop on these carts, a few sticks are interwoven with the two skeleton 

 longitudinal bamboos, so as to form a temporary retaining body to the 

 cart. 



No iron or other metal is ever used in the construction of these 

 carts ; wooden pegs and twisted grass string serving all the purposes 

 to which metal is put by a wheelwright. 



The plough in like manner is a simple but effectual instrument, con- 

 sisting of a crooked block of wood, fitted with a still more crooked 

 wooden handle, and a light beam from six to nine feet in length ; the 

 share is a small bar of soft iron a foot in length and one inch in width, 

 one end of which is hammered into a wedge-like shape, this is the 

 cutting part, the other or blunt end, is shipped into a groove in the 

 foot of the plough, where with the aid of two small iron clamps laid 

 across the grove to prevent it flying upwards, it is retained by the 

 pressure conveyed to it during its passage through the soil. The deep- 

 est furrow ploughed with these instruments is about four inches. 



Two buffaloes draw the plough and one man guides it, after the day's 

 work the Sonthal shoulders his plough and walks home. 



27th January, 1851. — Thermometer 46° at sunrise. 



General direction north west, twelve miles. The distance gained this 

 march was only twelve miles, though twenty miles of ground was 

 gone over. 



At Burhyte, crosses the Gumani river, exposing basalt in its bed ; to 

 Kuksi two miles in a northerly direction, over a well cultivated country. 



From thence west, over a spur of the low basaltic hills, offshoots from 

 the high Sunjori hills to Telaki, situate in a valley or cul de sac formed 

 by the Sunjori and Mori range of hills. Near the village of Tela- 

 kee, are two trees situate in a jungle on the banks of a nullah ; the 



