state of things it is difficult for us to realize; but the
monotonous tale of disaster and suffering is not yet complete. Beerbhoom
was, to all intents and purposes, given over to tigers. "A belt
of jungle, filled with wild beasts, formed round each village." At
nightfall the hungry animals made their dreaded incursions carrying away
cattle, and even women and children, and devouring them. "The official
records frequently speak of the mail-bag being carried off by wild
beasts." So great was the damage done by these depredations, that "the
company offered a reward for each tiger's head, sufficient to maintain a
peasant's family in comfort for three months; an item of expenditure it
deemed so necessary, that, when under extraordinary pressure it had to
suspend all payments, the tiger-money and diet allowance for prisoners
were the sole exceptions to the rule." Still more formidable foes were
found in the herds of wild elephants, which came trooping along in the
rear of the devastation caused by the famine. In the course of a few
years fifty-six villages were reported as destroyed by elephants, and as
having lapsed into jungle in consequence; "and an official return states
that forty market-towns throughout the district had been deserted from
the same cause. In many parts of the country the peasantry did not dare
to sleep in their houses, lest they should be buried beneath them during
the night." These terrible beasts continued to infest the province as
late as 1810.

But society during these dark days had even worse enemies than tigers
and elephants. The barbarous highlanders, of a lower type of mankind,
nourishing for forty centuries a hatred of their Hindu supplanters, like
that which the Apache bears against the white frontiersman, seized the
occasion to renew their inroads upon the lowland country. Year by year
they descended from their mountain fastnesses, plundering and burning.
Many noble Hindu families, ousted by the tax-collectors from their
estates, began to seek subsistence from robbery. Others, consulting
their selfish interests amid the general distress, "found it more
profitable to shelter banditti on their estates, levying blackmail from
the surrounding villages as the price of immunity from depredation, and
sharing in the plunder of such as would not come to terms. Their country
houses were robber strongholds, and the early English administrators of
Bengal have left it on record that a gang-robbery never oc