170 THE LATE REV. P. DEHON ON 



/' Aurore avec ses doigts de rose entr'ouvre les portes de F Orient " she finds the girls 

 straggling home one by one, dishevelled trainant Vaile, too tired even to enjoy the com- 

 pany of the boys, who remain behind in small groups still sounding their tom-toms at in- 

 tervals as if sorry that the performance was so soon over. And wonderful to say and 

 incredible to witness, they will go straight to the stall, yoke their bullocks, and work the 

 whole morning with the same spirits and cheerfulness as if they had spent the whole 

 night in the most refreshing sleep. At 1 1 o'clock they come home with their bullocks, 

 eat their meal, and take a nap this time with a vengeance. They are like logs of wood 

 stretched in the verandahs, and the report of a cannon would not disturb their heavy 

 slumbers. It is only at about 2 o'clock that, poked and kicked about unmercifully by the 

 people of the house, they reluctantly get up with heavy eyes and weary limbs to resume 

 their work. How they can stand this for a long time is beyond comprehension, but such 

 a life cannot help playing havoc with the system, and as they live too quickly their 

 life is quickly spent. You find very few old people among the Uraons. At about 40 

 they have no vitality left in them, and they begin to vegetate. 



VI. — Villages and Houses. 



In some parts of the country the Uraons live in large villages consisting of 

 100 and even 200 houses. These are huddled together in the most perfect disorder : 

 there are no thoroughfares, but only small little bits of winding and crooked paths — a 

 most perfect labyrinth leading you to an infinite series of cul-de-sacs, each one more 

 puzzling than the last. A European who finds himself in one of these mazes would 

 find it impossible to get out of it without a guide. Nothing more monstrously filthy 

 can be imagined than one of these villages in the rainy season. As it is impossible to 

 dig any ditch in such a disorderly heap of houses, the rain collects and forms stagnant 

 pools. The cattle, the pigs (every Uraon must keep five or six pigs) have very soon 

 made a perfect quagmire through which everyone has to wade knee-deep. Imagine the 

 sink of filth this must be, and what a mixture of nose-offending matter gets accumulated 

 in four months. But the pigs and the children delight in it ; and you can see them 

 wallowing together side by side in perfect harmony. 



The houses are very small and low, most of them consisting of four mud walls, 15 feet 

 long, seven feet high, and six feet broad, surmounted by a thatched roof. In the middle 

 of one of these walls there is a hole \\ feet high, which is the door; it is level with the 

 ground, whilst on both sides there is a raised but hollow verandah under which a whole 

 family of pigs are always fighting and screaming. Inside the corps the logis is divided 

 into three parts : on one side the bullocks and the goats separated from the middle room 

 by three bamboos put horizontally, and resting, on one side, in the wall and, on the other 

 side, attached to a pole. Near the pole there is a small door of trellised bamboos. 

 On the other side is the granary, and a place for pots and pans and all kinds of utensils 

 where they lie heaped up together. In the middle is a small room left for the people to 

 sit in and prepare their food. There are generally three chulas, or hearths. No Government 

 in the time of any epidemic ever invented a more perfect system of fumigation. The 

 chulas are lighted with half-dried wood, the water is boiling, there is no chimney, no hole 



