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around, together with the idea that tigers, leopards, and wild elephants are near you, produces a melancholy feeling in the mind, and depresses the spirits.

The People.

The people are much the same in size as the Hindoos of the plains, dress nearly in the same way, but differ in features, and are generally darker in complexion. The hair of the men is drawn up all round, and bound in a knot, sometimes at the crown, but more frequently towards the front of the head: that of the women is tied behind with a great bunch of cotton strings of various colors. The latter have also a profusion of metal ornaments. The ear is generally pierced all round, and hung with rings to the amount of eight or ten. Nose and finger rings are also very common, and armlets universal. Their necks are loaded with strings of beads of various colors, but chiefly red, to the amount frequently of ten, twelve, and upwards. How they become possessed of these ornaments I know not: for they have but little money, and manufacture nothing besides their sleeping cots. Their clothing is brought from Bhaugulpore, and given to them, together with grain, by the possessors of land, in lieu of labour in the fields. I suppose the ornaments come from the same quarter, and are given in the same way. Their dealings are mostly by barter. They exchange their surplus of grain with the merchants of Hindoostan for salt, prepared tobacco, iron instruments, cooking and eating utensils, &c. with which, excepting the first two, they seem well supplied.

I visited, within a circuit of ten or twelve miles, nearly thirty villages, and suppose there may have been ten or twelve others, within the same compass, which I did not see. Each village ave

raged from twenty to thirty houses, and seemed well-stocked with inhabitants; and as the hills are very numerous, occupy a great extent of country, and as almost all are inhabited, the population must be very great. The number of old people is small: but the children did not seem out of proportion to those advanced in life. Few, I understood from them, reach the term of fifty or sixty years; but this may be accounted for by their universal indulgence in intoxicating liquors, and perhaps also by their lack of salt. They seemed in general healthy; although subject to all the diseases common to India. I could not learn that they were ever the victims of anything like jungle fever. Epilepsy is exceedingly common, and leprosy not unfrequent.

Their villages are interesting in appearance, many of them being kept very clean, and all fenced around, both to keep their pigs from straying into their fields, and also to be a kind of barrier, though a very ineffectual one, against the wild beasts. Their houses are constructed of grass, on frames of bamboo, and consist of a large square room, with a small verandah at one, and sometimes at both, ends; and are, on the whole, neater than those of the Hindoos. They universally stand north and south; and

have doors on each side, with the exception of the east. The reason of this uniformity of position I could not learn. They told me, however, that at the time they perform their worship or poojahs, the women invariably enter by the west door; the men, who are pure, by the north, and those who are impure, by the south. In what their impurity consisted they seemed ashamed to tell, and I did not press the question.

When parents have children, somewhat advanced in life, a sepa rate house is constructed for them in which they sleep. At twenty or thirty paces from each dwelling, a small tenement is erected, in which they keep their grain, clothes, cooking utensils, &c. And though neither bars nor bolts are attached to the doors, yet nothing like apprehension of thieves is felt in the smallest degree.

Their temporal circumstances, when contrasted with those of the poorer classes of Hindoos, are much more comfortable. Of fuel they have a superabundance. Numbers of them have cows, goats, and swine; and all keep an ample stock of fowls. They never cultivate their grounds except in the rainy season, but then their crops are generally so heavy that all have plenty for the year. They express wonder at the people of the plains, and actually say, "We cannot conceive how you should toil the year round, and yet have so little we work four months only, and have food for twelve." The necessary they lack most is salt; and although they well know its worth, and are glad to obtain a little, yet most of them seem to eat their food very contentedly without it.

They are exceedingly fond of all kinds of animal food, particu larly of swine's flesh. And when a pig, deer, or cow is killed, the whole village is made joyful by a feast, the owners not being able to preserve any in consequence of the lack of salt. The cow's flesh is boiled; but the sow is always roasted in a whole state. Their usual mode of killing the pig, and sometimes the cow, is by the bow and arrow, at which they are wonderfully expert. They go out frequently in companies into the jungles for the purpose of hunting the wild deer, swine, peacocks, fowls, and birds in general, and I believe, rarely return empty-handed. It is almost incredible with what certainty they will take their aim. Their quivers, or rather their bundles, are always provided with a few poisoned arrows, in the event of their meeting tigers, or any other wild animal.

The greatest evil with which they have to contend, as it regards temporal subsistence, is the destruction sometimes of their crops and granaries by the wild elephants. These huge monsters will occasionally come in droves of fifty and an hundred, and consume in one night all the grain and crops in a district. Famine is the immediate consequence; and the people have no means of defence against them. Poisoned arrows soon put an end to the tigers and leopards, which occasionally carry off their cattle; but are entirely without effect upon the elephant. Rarely, however, is human life destroyed by any of the wild creatures that prowl around.

The people cannot be denominated intelligent. Indeed, they do not seem to have a single thought beyond their daily occupations, food, and drinking. The great world is completely unknown to them, and they to it. Practising no trades, and having no business to transact, many of them hardly ever wander more than a few miles around their native village. We found several to whom villages a few miles distant were as little known as to ourselves. Seldom were we asked any questions; and not many of them evinced much curiosity. They were, however, wonderfully surprised at my watch, and at a burning glass which I had in my possession. When they saw the effects of the latter, they were much afraid, and said, "This is God."

Notwithstanding very frequent and minute inquiries as to their origin, I could obtain no satisfaction. They seem, however, universally to believe, that they are the aboriginals of India, or rather that the people of the plains are sprung from a branch of their family, who always inhabited the hills. They have no historical records of any kind; and I do not believe that there is a man amongst them who is acquainted with any event earlier than the days of his grandfather. Traditions they have none, except that they are sprung from one Beean. They appear to have no ancient poems, and little poetry of any kind; but they have a variety of nonsensical tales, with which they entertain one another, but which do not, as far as I could discover, contain any historical notices. No traces of any thing like fortifications are to be found and it is likely none ever existed. Their hills and jungles must, at all times, have been protection sufficient against any Indian foe.

Their language is beautifully simple, and regular in all the inflexions of its verbs and nouns: but it abounds in gutturals some of which are very difficult of pronunciation. It seems to have affinity in nothing to any of the eastern or western tongues, except in its adoption of many Hindooee words, to which it gives its own inflexions. It is entirely unwritten; and consequently the very names of letters, books, or writing apparatus, are unknown.

The only mode they have of counting time is by the seasons and moons; for the latter of which they have learned the Hindooee monthly names. But they know nothing of weeks, nor of the divisions of the day into hours or watches. They have, however, a name for mid-day, and for our three o'clock, both evening and morning.

Polygamy is allowed among them: but, from the quarrels and jealousies which such a state ingenders, is not, as one of them told me, much approved; nor, from the poverty of the people, very general. I saw one man, however, who had three wives; and I heard of another who had fourteen.

I saw three of their chiefs; but I could perceive no difference in their persons, demeanor, or clothes, from the bulk of the people. They are generally, from their having more money, greater

drunkards than the rest; and seemed to be very little respected by those around them: at least I could discern no external marks of honor paid them. They exact from their subjects a small tribute in grain at the close of the harvest season, varying according to the quantity reaped.

Hospitality is a virtue universally prevalent. Having no caste, they esteem all as brethren, and readily share with the stranger whatever articles of food they possess. As soon as we entered any of their villages, they voluntarily provided us with one of their huts, (two families retreating into one, as all were occupied,) and brought us abundance of fuel and food; and they look for no return. Money they never expect, as it is almost totally useless, unless they carry it to the plains.

No one, however, can admire their cleanliness. They seem seldom to wash either their bodies or their clothes. And their houses, from their cooking all their food within doors, and from their burning wood during the entire nights of the cold season, are not only black with soot and smoke, but swarm with bugs, and perhaps other vermin. So plentiful are the bugs, that a Hindoo Christian, who accompanied me, said, "Sahib, for two nights I have not slept. In this land is the reign of bugs."

In order to keep themselves warm during the cold nights, they bring several logs of wood, make a great fire in the centre of their room, shut the doors, put their cots around, allow the smoke to escape as it can, and go to sleep-fowls, goats, calves, and people all huddled together. The heat is sometimes almost unbearable, the house being like an oven. This is their universal prac

tice.

With the exception of drunkenness, the people may be said to be generally moral. Unlike the Hindoos, they have nothing of obsequiousness in their manners. They meet you as if they stood on the same level, and as if they were in a condition to befriend you as much, or even more than you could them and yet they show nothing of disrespect. The women, too, display little of that extreme bashfulness general in Hindoosthan. They shew themselves, without fear; and assemble to listen as well as the men. Nothing, however, like boldness is seen in their conduct. Their whole demeanour is, according to our European notions of propriety, fully entitled to the epithet of becoming. Seldom are either men or women guilty of falsehood: and, not expecting money or any thing else from you, rarely do they shew a covetous or deceitful disposition. Unless in the harems, and when intoxicated, abuse, quarrelling, and fighting hardly ever occur. The crimes of fornication and adultery (contrary to report) are known amongst them; but the perpetrators are generally viewed with abhorrence, and consequently such sins are not common. Theft is so rare, particularly among themselves, that they will point out almost every thief in the country, and the place of his abode. But their

drunkenness is beyond description. They brew two kinds of intoxicating liquors: one from the fruit of the M'howwa tree, and the other from the grain called gehoon-junaira. The last is the most common, and is denominated tuddee. They all drink of it— men, women, children, and even infants at the breast. They cannot, however, be called habitual drunkards, as they drink only at set times. Each village appoints its day, previous to which every family prepares its liquor, and invites the people of the adjoining village or villages to unite with them. They, in their turn, again do the same, each village thus inviting, and being invited four or five times yearly.

When all are assembled, the business commences; and a more dismal scene can hardly be witnessed. In every house they are drinking; and as they do not apply the vessel containing the liquor to their mouths, but pour it in from above at the distance of several inches, one frequently doing it to another, their faces, breasts, and clothes become saturated, as well as their stomachs. As soon as the liquor has begun to take effect, the men commence wandering up and down the village in companies, beating, as well as their drunken state will allow them, drums and cymbals, and making a noise like singing. The women sit at their doors on cots, rocking from side to side, and humming a kind of song. And all the children are to be found assembled in a separate house, imitating to the letter the worthy example of their parents. Frequently, too, on these occasions, they quarrel and fight: and as it impossible they can discriminate between right and wrong, the whole mass will, when any two commence their blows, rush in and strike right and left, just like what happens, on similar occasions, in a herd of bullocks. They continue their drunken riot as long as they can keep awake-which generally lasts a day and a night, and often longer.

They have but one kind of tuddee; yet they describe it by two names, medicine-tuddee and God-tuddee. The former, they say, they drink for their health's sake; and the latter for God's sake, or in his worship. At all their poojahs they drink. Tuddee is their real god; for without it they cannot worship. And they are not contented with a little. When they drink, it is for the sole purpose of becoming intoxicated to the highest degree.

The Priests.

They have only one class of men of the priestly order, who are styled by the name of Daimno. When one dies, any other man, by remaining in the jungle for a whole night, and returning in the morning with a load of bamboo and plantain-branches, and throwing them on the roof of his house, and allowing his hair to become matted, is recognised at the end of fifteen days, as a daimno. His office is to visit the sick, when called for, and to officiate at all poojahs; for which he is always well paid in cloth, food, cattle, or rupees, according to the circumstances of those employing him.

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