down lawlessness and strife and introduced peace and the arts, and the civilisation he brought to the country penetrated to some degree into the vast wild regions of Central India. He insisted on his supremacy being acknowledged by the chiefs of the remote regions, but otherwise left them to manage their own affairs. A great development in the resources of the central regions followed. A great highway between Upper India and the Deccan through a gap in the Satpuras was constructed. A great city arose in the Tapti Valley, which became the seat of Government of the southern province of the empire. The rich lands and the great valleys in these territories were reclaimed. The heavy lands of the Nerbuda Valley and those of the Berars were quite beyond the primitive resources of the aborigines. But the Hindu immigrants were well versed in such matters. The Gonds retired before this invasion to the higher plateaux, where their hunting instincts and rude system of raising coarse grains by the method of shifting cultivation, here called dhya, could still find scope. The elevated plateaux were next invaded, and their black level soils cultivated with wheat and cotton. But round and above these were hills of rugged unculturable country covered with forests which remained in the possession of the aborigines. The country had reached some degree of prosperity at the time the Mahomedan power began to decline in the latter part of the eighteenth century, the Maratha power coming to supplant it. The hordes from the Deccan soon began to overrun the Gond country, and the three principalities were broken up and disappeared. The Maratha Confederacy at length fell out over the division of their plunder, and matters grew worse in the hilly regions. The hill-chiefs from having been the despoiled became the despoilers, and appalling anarchy reigned, culminating with the organisation known as the Pindari bands, whose hand was against everyone. This state of affairs lasted for nearly twenty years, and large areas of reclaimed country went out of cultivation and became covered with jungle. In 1818 we at length broke the power of the Marathas and stamped out the Pindari bands. But we found that as the result of twenty-five years of internecine warfare the fair territories of this region were ruined. Saugor and Nerbuda were the portions of the area which came under British administration at this period, the territory of Nagpur only coming to us in 1854 on the failure of heirs to the Rajah. During the warfare which had raged in the Central Indian

Region the aborigines had earned the reputation of being savage and intractable. This reputation was merely the outcome of the lawless period of the quarter of a century which preceded British rule. They proved themselves a remarkably peaceful and law-abiding people under British rule, only asking to be allowed to roam and hunt in their jungles undisturbed; practically no outburst of any importance had taken place amongst them after the British assumed sway over the country. The chiefs were early secured in their feudatory position, with the full proprietorship of such territories, both in the hills and in the plains, as they could establish a title to; and for many years the management of their internal affairs was left in their hands. In fact, we followed the policy of the great Akbar. And for very much the same reason. Our early administrators had their hands more than full with the work of restoring prosperity to the destroyed areas in the open country; they had no time to spare for the aborigines in the forest-covered hills or their affairs. So little was known about them or the country they occupied that as late as the 'fifties of the last century the Gonds were described as a people going naked, or clothed in leaves, living in trees and practising cannibalism. Mr. C. Grant, C.S., in the earliest issue of the Central Province's Gazeteer, wrote: "So lately as 1853, when the great trigonometrical survey of India had been at work for half a century, and the more detailed surveys for some thirty years, Sir Erskine Perry, addressing the Bombay branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, wrote, At present the Gondwana highlands and jungles comprise such a large tract of unexplored country that they form quite an oasis in our maps.' Captain Blunt's interesting journey in 1795, from Benares to Rajamandri, gives us almost all the information we possess of many parts of the interior."

At the close of the period here reviewed "unexplored was written across vast tracts in our best maps; and though lying at our very doors unexplored they were. The civil officers of those days had no time to penetrate into their wild recesses and perhaps little inclination. For the accounts of these regions which they obtained from their Hindu or Mahomedan subordinates, inhabitants of the plains country were not calculated to stimulate their curiosity, save in rare instances, to penetrate their fastnesses. For the plainsmen of India regarded the jungles with horror and terror as the abode of demons, wild men and wild beasts, and fever accom

TRACTS

R. S. Pearson in "Indian Forester," Vol. XLVI

panied by discomforts in travelling not to be faced if they could be avoided.

As will be shown in a subsequent chapter it was left to the early and energetic activities of the newly appointed Forest Officers of the infant Department to first explore and describe the beauties and value of this fascinating region.

Towards the end of the period here dealt with difficulties were being experienced in the Punjab in obtaining timber for the operations of the Public Works Department, and the enquiries instituted were to lead to the development of the beginnings of a policy of conservation of the forests in the plains and hills. But so far unchecked exploitation of accessible areas had been in force, with its accompaniment of extensive firing of forest areas and unrestricted grazing.

The same practices continued in the forests of the NorthWestern Provinces and Bengal. In the latter province owing to the absence of wood fuel in the plains cow dung had long been used as fuel in lieu of being utilised as manure. Allusion has already been made to the fact that Wallich in his report on the Tenasserim forests in 1827 stated that even the vast sâl forests of Hindustan have begun of late to fail." The Assam Forests were practically unknown at the period, although the Bengal Khedda Department, whose headquarters were at Dacca, had carried on the former native Government's practice of trapping elephants in the Tipperah Hills and Chittagong Hill Tracts.

A word must be said, however, on the interesting plantations on the Western and Eastern Jumna Canals commenced as far back as 1820-21 and 1830-31 respectively. Captain R. Baird Smith, Bengal Engineers, wrote as follows on these plantations in the Calcutta Review, No. 23:

"The formation of plantations early occupied the attention of the British Superintendents of the Western Jumna Canal. Something was done by Captains Blane and Tickel; but it was left to Colonel Colvin to proceed systematically in this useful duty. An allowance of 2000 rupees, afterwards increased to 3000 rupees per annum, was allotted to the plantations, and they have been spread over all parts of the canals to which water could reach. The trees planted are chiefly the Sissu, the Toon, the Kikur, the Cirrus, the Saul and the Teak, all furnishing woods of value for economical purposes. The revenue derived from the plantations has more than covered all expenditure upon them; and their ultimate value will be