64 



The iSl eilgherry Mountains. 



[No. 34, 



„^ „ Their occupation is both agricultural and me- 



The Kothers. . ^ ^ 



chanical. 



They are tolerably good workers in iron and execute carpenters' 

 work in a rough way. They tan ox and buffalo hides, and make 

 baskets, and their women manufacture the only earthen pots, or chat- 

 ties, produced on the Hills. 



TheBuro-hers. Their occupation is solely agricultural, and 



their numbers having of late considerably in- 

 creased, there is always a superabundance of hands available for em- 

 ployment as carrying coolies and out of doors labourers, when their 

 own crops are either in the ground, or reaped and stored, which con- 

 stitutes them the most really useful tribe on the Hills. 



The Eruiars and Coo- Their employment is agricultural, and also, in 

 rumburs. ^ measure, vagrant; since, lacking sufficient ener- 



gy or industry to draw from the soil the utmost of its productive 

 powers, they subsist, between harvest and harvest, upon whatever 

 they can extract from the natural resources of the forests through 

 which they wander. 



Languages Neilgherries being situated within the 



limits of the Coimbatore district, Tamil is the 

 language employed in the public departments and in the bazaars and 

 other resorts of the natives from the low country ; but amongst all 

 the Hill tribes Canarese is the colloquial. The Todars have a lan- 

 guage peculiar to themselves, but they communicate with the Bur- 

 gher and other tribes in Canarese. The Todar language has a sin- 

 gular accent, and a quaint original style, and seems to bear no analo- 

 gy whatever to that spoken by any other race of natives in southern 

 India. The Ooorumburs have also a peculiar dialect of their own, but 

 it seems to be based on the Canarese. 



Condition. Under this head a very favorable report may 



be made, as, with the exception of the two in- 

 ferior tribes, the Eruiars and Coorumburs, who, from their improvi- 

 dent and vagrant mode of life, are often in a state of great destitution, 

 all the Hill tribes live in comparative comfort and affluence. This 

 is as to their physical condition ; but in regard to their moral state 

 the aspect is not so favorable. The accomplishments of reading and 

 writing seem almost entirely unknown amongst them, while their 

 morals are tainted by the arts of dissimulation, cunning, and false- 

 hood, which seem to be instilled into their minds at an early age. 



