18 Notes of a towr in the Tributary Mehals. [No. 1, 
and other necessaries, wax, arrow-root, resin, gums, honey and stick 
lac, and excellent iron smelted by themselves. The Korewah iron, 
roughly fashioned as battle-axes, is greatly prized by the inhabitants 
of all the neighbouring States. 
Whilst conversing with the Rajah about these savages, he men- 
tioned to me that there existed a tribe called Birhores, whom he accused 
of a sort of interfraternal anthropophagy, of feeding literally on their 
blood relations. 
They are alluded to by the late Col. Ouseley, in a paper that ap- 
peared in the Journal of the Society for January 1848, but he relates 
the story, as of the Korewahs, calling them inhabitants of Mynepat 
in Sirgoojah. The Korewahs repudiate all affinity with the Birhores, 
nor could I hear of either Korewahs or Birhores on the Mynepat: the 
latter are found in some of the wildest parts of Chota-Nagpore and 
Jushpore, but they are of rare occurrence. With much trouble some 
were caught and brought to me. They were wretched looking objects, 
but had more the appearance of the most abject of one of those 
degraded castes of Hindu, the domes or pariahs, to whom most flesh 
is food, than of hill people. Assuring me that they had themselves 
given up the practice, they admitted that their fathers were in the 
habit of disposing of their dead in the manner indicated ; viz. by feasting 
on the bodies, but they declared they never shortened life to provide 
such feasts, and shrunk with horror at the idea of any bodies but 
those of their own blood relations being served up at them! The 
Rajah said he had heard that, when a Birhore thought his end was 
approaching, he himself invited his kindred to feast on his body. The 
Birhores brought to me did not acknowledge this, but they spoke on 
- the subject with a degree of reticence that. made me think it might be 
true. I told the Rajah to enquire particularly about it, and gave out 
that if the horrid rite was still practised, it must be discontinued. But, 
query,—‘ would not Saturday reviewers regard my order as an injudi- 
cious interference with a time-honoured custom, ona point that natives 
were so peculiarly tenacious of the disposal of their dead 2?’ 

The Birhores speak a jargon of Hindi, which I found intelligible ; i 
and have no other language. 
Nine-tenths of the population of the remaining portion of the Jush- 
pore highlands are “‘ Coles.” Chiefly Oraons, there are very few Moon- 

