d huts inhabited by two very miserable
families.

Bundelkhand suffers more often and more severely from the want of
seasonable showers of rain than any other part of India; while the
province of Malwa, which adjoins it on the west and south, hardly
ever suffers at all.[5] There is a couplet, which, like all other
good couplets on rural subjects, is attributed to Sahdeo [Sahadeva],
one of the five demigod brothers of the Mahabharata, to this effect:
'If you hear not the thunder on such a night, you, father, go to
Malwa, I to Gujarat;'--that is, there will be no rain, and we must
seek subsistence where rains never fail, and the harvests are secure.

The province of Malwa is well studded with hills and groves of fine
trees, which intercept the clouds as they are wafted by the
prevailing westerly winds, from the Gulf of Cambay to the valley of
the Ganges, and make them drop their contents upon a soil of great
natural powers, formed chiefly from the detritus of the decomposing
basaltic rocks, which cap and intersect these hills.[6]

During the famine of 1833, as on all similar occasions, grain of
every kind, attracted by high prices, flowed up in large streams from
this favoured province towards Bundelkhand; and the population of
Bundelkhand, as usual in such times of dearth and scarcity, flowed
off towards Malwa against the stream of supply, under the assurance
that the nearer they got to the source, the greater would be their
chance of employment and subsistence. Every village had its numbers
of the dead and the dying; and the roads were all strewed with them;
but they were mostly concentrated upon the great towns and civil and
military stations, where subscriptions were open[ed] for their
support, by both the European and native communities. The funds
arising from these subscriptions lasted till the rains had set fairly
in, when all able-bodied persons could easily find employment in
tillage among the agricultural communities of villages around. After
the rains have fairly set in, the _sick_ and _helpless_ only should
be kept concentrated upon large towns and stations, where little or
no employment is to be found; for the oldest and youngest of those
who are able to work can then easily find employment in weeding the
cotton, rice, sugar-cane, and other fields under autumn crops, and in
preparing the lands for the reception of the wheat, gram,[7] and
other spring seeds; and get advances from the farmers, agricultural
c