186 STATISTICAL SKETCH 



During the later winter, and the summer months, the pasture, from frost 

 and sun, becomes very scanty : at this period, therefore, the inhabitants of the 

 southern and midland districts of Kamaon send down their cattle to the 

 forests in the Tarat, reserving only a few cows for milk, when a great part of 

 the inhabitants accompany them : this migration commences in November, 

 after the sowing of the wheat is completed, and the return is delayed till the 

 end of i\pril, or beginning of May, when the crop is ready for reaping. 

 While in the Bhdwar, the inhabitants of two or three neighbouring vil- 

 lages, and sometimes of a whole pergunna, canton together for mutual protec- 

 tion against decoits. As this custom has existed from time immemorial, each 

 community has its own particular tract of forest to which it annually returns. 

 Some parts of the Tarai afibrding little or no grass j the Zemindars, in such 

 situations, cut boughs of trees for their cattle. The temporary villages called 

 Gotlis, which they occupy, are mere sheds, formed of branches of trees, and 

 covered with leaves or grass. The site of them is changed according as the 

 pasture in the immediate neighbourhood is exhausted. During the season 

 that the cattle remain in the forests, a very large quantity of ghee, remarkable 

 for its goodness, is made by the Zemindars, and exported to the plains. In 

 the northern pergunnas, where the forest lands are more extensive, the 

 necessity for sending the cattle to the Tarai does not exist, and in the sum- 

 mer months, abundance of fine pasture is produced on the summits of the high 

 mountains after the snows have melted. The practice is very little followed 

 in Gerhtval, which may be ascribed to the greater proportion of waste land 

 that is to be found there : the cattle are, however, remarkably poor and bad 

 conditioned, and consequently die off rapidly. Few buffaloes are reared in 

 that part of the country. 



Neither bullocks nor buffaloes are here used for commercial transport, 

 but they are employed to carry the baggage of the cultivating classes in their 

 annual migration to the Bhdwar, 



