e possessions
of a certain dhani; who, besides being the chieftain of the Bhimalah
tribe, was the personal "chum" of our Babu, and a "great thief and
highway robber," according to the assertions of the said Babu.

"But why do you intend taking us to the place of a man whom you consider
as a thief and a robber?" objected one of us timidly.

"He is a thief and a brigand," coolly answered the Bengali, "but only in
the political sense. Otherwise he is an excellent man, and the truest
of friends. Besides, if he does not help us, we shall starve; the bazaar
and everything in the shops belong to him."

These explanations of the Babu notwithstanding, we were glad to learn
that the "chum" in question was absent, and we were received by a
relation of his. The garden was put at our disposal, and before our
tents were pitched, we saw people coming from every side of the garden,
bringing us provisions. Having deposited what he had brought, each of
them, on leaving the tent, threw over his shoulder a pinch of betel and
soft sugar, an offering to the "foreign bhutas," which were supposed to
accompany us wherever we went. The Hindus of our party asked us,
very seriously, not to laugh at this performance, saying it would be
dangerous in this out-of-the-way place.

No doubt they were right. We were in Central India, the very nest of
all kinds of superstitions, and were surrounded by Bhils. All along the
Vindya ridge, from Yama, on the west of the "dead city," the country is
thickly populated by this most daring, restless and superstitious of all
the half-savage tribes of India.

The Orientalists think that the naive Bhils comes from the Sanskrit root
bhid, which means to separate. Sir J. Malcolm supposes accordingly that
the Bhils are sectarians, who separated from the Brahmanical creed,
and were excommunicated. All this looks very probable, but their tribal
traditions say something different. Of course, in this case, as in every
other, their history is strongly entangled with mythology; and one has
to go through a thick shrubbery of fancy before reaching the tribe's
genealogical tree.

The relation of the absent dhani, who spent the evening with us, told
us the following: The Bhils are the descendants of one of the sons of
Mahadeva, or Shiva, and of a fair woman, with blue eyes and a white
face, whom he met in some forest on the other side of the Kalapani,
"black waters," or ocean. This pair had several sons, one of whom, as
hand