--and
perhaps, by the way, thus destroying in a few hours a whole cargo
of teak trees worth more than all the crops of his agricultural
lifetime--he hews down the growth, and in the dry season sets fire to
the fallen timber. The result is a bed of ashes over a space of two or
three acres. His soil is now ready. If the patch thus prepared happens
to be level, he simply flings out a few handfuls of grain, coarse
rice, kutki (ponicum) or kodon (paspalum), and the thing is done. The
rest is in the hands of the god who sends the rains. If the patch be
on a declivity, he places the grain at the upper part, where it will
be washed down by the rains over the balance of the field. Next year
he will burn some more wood--the first burning will have left many
charred stumps and trunks, which he supplements with a little wood
dragged from other parts of the forest--on the same spot, and so
the next year, by which time it will become necessary to begin a new
clearing, or _dhya_. The _dhya_ thus abandoned does not renew the
original growth which clothed it, like the pinelands of the Southern
United States, which, if allowed to run waste after having been
cleared and cultivated, clothe themselves either with oaks or with a
wholly different species of pine from the original growth. The waste
_dhya_, which may have perhaps nourished a splendid growth of teak,
becomes now only a dense jungle.

The Gond also raises pumpkins and beans; and this vegetable diet
he supplements with game ensnared in the _dhyas_, to which peafowl,
partridges, hares and the like resort. Many of the villages, however,
have a professional huntsman, who will display the most incredible
patience in waiting with his matchlock for the game to appear.

Besides these articles of diet, the aborigines of the Gondwana have
their mhowa tree, which stands them in much the same multifarious
stead as the palm does to its beneficiaries. The flowers of the mhowa
fall and are eaten, or are dried and pressed, being much like raisins:
they also produce a wine by fermentation and the strong liquor of the
hill-people by distillation. Of the seed cakes are made, and an oil is
expressed from them which is an article of commerce.

In addition, the poor Gond appears to have a periodical godsend
resulting from a singular habit of one of the great Indian plants.
The bamboo is said to undergo a general seeding every thirty years: at
this period, although, in the mean time, many individual