594 Notes upon a Tour through the Rdjmahal Hills. [No. 7. 



out tobacco to dry in the sun, and who was ignorant of our arrival was 

 caught ; his trepidation at the appearance of myself, servants and ele- 

 phant was most painful, and not without much persuasion could he be 

 induced to descend from his house for the purpose of showing us the 

 Mangi's residence ; a house was pointed out as being that of the Man- 

 gi's, but it was, as was every house in the village, closed. I took up my 

 residence in the verandah, where hung bows and poisoned arrows, deer 

 horns, wild boar skulls, pea-fowl eggs and the cocoon of the wild silk 

 or Tusser. The Mangi soon arrived from the jungle, carrying on his 

 shoulder the produce of his morning's work, a log of wood ; he was so 

 alarmed at my appearance that he was speechless, but after an hour's 

 persuasion, talking and laughing he gradually thawed, and told me 

 that he had never before seen a white man, nor an elephant, nor had 

 any one individual out of the four hundred inhabitants of his village 

 ever seen one or the other. The ice being now broken, and the reason 

 of his timidity known, I endeavoured to prove to him that a mortal 

 with a white face was not the dreadful creature he imagined ; I pre- 

 sented him with an empty bottle, a quantity of beads, gilt buttons, 

 bodkins, ornaments for the women's hair, and told him to assemble 

 all the children of the village ; to whom I presented in succession 

 three or four strings of beads and a handful of buttons. I now had 

 the whole village with me and turning round I perceived the Mangi's 

 house doors wide open and about fifteen females old and young stand- 

 ing behind me, into the midst of whom I threw a quantity of the hair 

 ornaments consisting of tufts of Tusser silk, dyed scarlet and tied with 

 black cotton ; to the children in the Mangi's house I distributed a 

 quantity of copper money, bargained with the Mangi with a quantity 

 of empty bottles and money for poisoned arrows, bows, and grass ham- 

 mocks, bade him good-bye and strongly recommended him next time 

 he met a European to be more at his ease and not to be afraid of him, 

 as no one had the most remote idea of doing any harm to any one 

 in the hills ; on the contrary, that we were all desirous of seeing so 

 worthy a race happy and contented. 



I was amused at the Mangi's repeated question put to me in a most 

 serious tone, as to whether 1 had of my own free will given him the 

 empty bottle, my first gift to him ; upon my assuring him that my 

 gift, a most invaluable one to him, and whence his utter unbelief of my 



