80 j n Account of the Tribe of Mhadeo Kolies, [Jan. 



south-east direction, and ultimately constitutes the Balaghaut of the 

 western boundary of the Hydrabad territory. The chief gorges, or 

 passes, in the principal range, leading down from the Dukhan to the 

 Konkan, and the bottom of the different valleys, may average from 

 1,800 and 2,000 feel, to 2,300 feet, above the level of the sea; and the 

 most elevated points in the main range may vary from 4,000 feet to 

 4500 feet. However, the summit of the Kullsabaie hill, one of the 

 detached branches, only a few miles from the forts of Allung and 

 Kooning, rises to the height of 5,000 feet, and is considered the highest 

 land in the Dukhan. Many of these lofty, isolated and rocky hills, 

 were selected by the rulers of the country, some centuries ago, as fit 

 places to be converted into fortresses ; and, as the sides of the hills 

 were in general very steep, indeed often quite perpendicular, it was 

 only necessary to erect a gateway, and fortify this entrance, to render 

 the place almost impregnable. 



These numerous hill forts,* with a few solitary exceptions, have 

 been dismantled by the British government, as they were considered, 

 in a political point of view, useless and expensive. The original ob- 

 ject of establishing such strongholds might have been twofold. First, 

 the cost of fortifying such places must have been comparatively very 

 small. Hills, suitable for the purpose, in the vicinity of large, open 

 towns or villages, were fortified, to afford the inhabitants an asylum to 

 retire to, should a formidable body of plunderers threaten to overrun 

 the country — secondly, the object of erecting some of the hills of a 

 mountainous tract into fortresses, might have been to guard passes 

 leading from one province into another, or to overawe the population ; 

 for we know that the inhabitants of a hilly country are a very inde- 

 pendent and untractable people. 



The inhabitants of many of the villages in these valleys suffer very 

 great inconvenience, during the months of April and May, from the 

 great scarcity of water — yet the fortified hills were supplied abundant- 

 ly with the finest description of this necessary of life. Tanks or re- 



* As I was employed, after the termination of the last Maharatta war, in dismantling 

 the hill forts, I can bear testimony to the general salubrity of many of these lofty dwell- 

 ings, notwithstanding their very bleak and dreary situation, especially during the mon- 

 soon, when that terrible scourge, the cholera, was spreading desolationjn the villages, in 

 the plains below the forts, and more particularly those situated in low and confined situ- 

 ations. In the years 1818 and 1819 I had charge of five hundred Sibundies (irregular 

 troops), stationed in hill forts ; of this body, only two men of the garrison of Anky 

 Tanky died of cholera. A party of Sibundies, stationed at that fort, went to a village 

 in the vicinity to procure some supplies ; they slept below one night, and, in the course 

 of three days, the men alluded to were seized with the disease and expired. I may add that, 

 out of two hundred workmen, employed in destroying the forts, about twenty of them 

 slept below in the plain, as their families had joined them; while all the others slept 

 under trees on the hill, or in caves. The cholera on one occasion attacked several of 

 those that remained below, and one of them Ml a victim to it. 



