208 Memorandum on an unknown Forest Race. [No. 3, 



description of them at the time. I should remark here that I was 

 Dot like a person newly arrived from England liable to be led away 

 by an imagination excited by the previous account of these people, 

 for I had seen many varieties of the human race from the Bosche- 

 man and Hottentot of the Cape, eastward to the Papua and Harafora, 

 the savage of New Holland and New Zealand, and the Kanakas of 

 the Sandwich Islands, and I had looked at these too not incuriously, 

 but these people were evidently so different from the Dhangurs (and 

 so considered by them too) that it was impossible not to be, as it 

 were, convinced that they were a different race. 



Of this the most uu questionable proof was their language. It 

 was only with great difficulty and by the aid of signs that one of the 

 Dhangurs, evidently a very intelligent fellow, could make them un- 

 derstand the questions put to them ; the result of which was, that 

 they lived a long way off from the Dhangurs in the jungles and moun- 

 tains, that there were only a few villages of them, and that in con- 

 sequence of an accident or a quarrel, the man had killed a man of 

 another village, for which his own people were about to deliver him 

 up ; in the fear of which he fled with his wife, and after passing a 

 long time wandering in the jungles they had fallen in with my party 

 of Dhangurs who had given them food and had brought them down 

 in their company. This latter part of their story was corroborated 

 by the Dhangur Sirdar, who said, they were nearly starved when his 

 people met with them. The Dhangur who had acted as interpreter 

 said that some of their words sounded "like his talk," and that they 

 understood a good many words of the Dhangur language. All agreed 

 that they had never seen or heard of this people before. 



I thought all this so curious, that I told them immediately that 

 I should send them to Calcutta to a gentleman who wished to 

 learn their language and hear about their country, and that they 

 should have good pay and would get some presents. My intention 

 was to send them to my friend and partner Gr. J. Gordon, Esq. of 

 Mackintosh and Co. for Dr. Abel's inspection, and that of the 

 Asiatic Society ; and I never supposed for an instant that this could 

 possibly alarm them and so did not note any exact description 

 of them. It seems, however, that it did so, and that as I suppose 

 the man thought, perhaps, that I was going to send him to prison 



