HIGHLANDS OF CENTRAL INDIA.*
A MELANCHOLY interest attaches to the volume before us, by reason of the premature death of the gallant writer. Captain Forsyth was cut off at the early age of thirty-three, on the 1st of May last, during a temporary sojourn in London, and while the last sheets of his book were passing through the press. His official position as Conservator of Forests in the Central Provinces of India had given him opportunity of closely observing the interest- ing region he has described, and enabled him to indulge the keen sense of pleasure which sportsmen feel in pursuit of wild beasts. The Highlands which form the subject of the book are those numer- ous peaks and ranges that form the watershed of Central India, and lie on the 22nd parallel of north latitude, and between the 76th and 82nd degree of east longitude. They are the central and cul- minating section of a ridge of elevated country which stretches across the peninsula from near Calcutta to near Bombay, and separates Northern India or Hindostan proper from the Deccan or country of the south. The western half of this mountainous region snakes a triangle clearly defined by the fork of the Bombay railroad where it branches off at Bhosawul, to adopt the orthography of Captain Forsyth, in a northern direction to Jabalpoor, and in a southerly direction to Jagpoor. The hill country extends, accord- ing to Captain Forsyth, 450 miles eastward of the railway junction, and has an average width of about 80 miles. The principal streams flowing from the watershed are, on the north, the Son, a tributary of the Ganges; to the east, the Mahanadi, which falls into the Bay of Bengal ; to the south, flow the main feeders of the Godavery ; and to the west, the Narbada and the Tapti pursue parallel courses to the Arabian Gulf.
This region derives its interest not only from the sport it affords to the hunter, but from many historical associations. Here the aboriginal tribes took refuge before the advancing wave of Aryan conquest. Here they stood at bay, and in process of time com- mingled the blood of the invaders with their own. The ethnolo- gical and antiquarian indications of that ancient time did not escape the observation of our author, who has pointed out also
• The Highland' of Central India. Notes on their Forests and Wild Tribes, Natural History and Sports. By Captain J. Forsyth, Bengal Staff Corps. London : Chapman sad HalL 187L
remarkable evidences of the changes that have taken place in the vegetation of this singular region. The teak tree of the South (Vateria robusta) has been dispossessed by the Sal of North India, and in one remarkable instance is found in an isolated group in the Denwar valley, where the surrounding timber is teak. It was time that the Government should inter- vene for the preservation of the forests. Wholesale destruc- tion of the best trees for the purpose of making ashes for manure had become a common practice among the hill tribes. When the Central Provinces were constituted, it be- came evident something must be done to save the country from falling into a treeless, arid desert. Unfortunately the Administra- tion gave notice that after a certain time the forests would be brought under Government control and be strictly conserved. Immediately the contractors, like speculators in more Western regions, anticipated the market, and bribed the natives to cut down every teak tree that was to be found throughout the northern parts of the tract. Millions were felled of old and young trees, and were left on the spot to wait for the hour when the trunks would be required for railway operations. The hour never came, and the abandoned trees served in many cases only to feed the jungle fires, until the fragments that remained were gathered home in after years by the Forest Department.
There is, however, such a thing as excessive conservation, and we quote Captain Forsyth's view of this matter as of peculiar value, and pregnant with instruction to the Indian Govern- ment. The teak tree, be it understood, possesses, among other useful qualities, that of rapidly throwing up from its stumps a head of tall slender poles from twenty-five to thirty feet high, which the natives have been accustomed to use for generations in the construction of their small wooden habitations :—
" Our treatment of the question of the Teak forests is a good example of the difficulties in Indian administration which arise from the absence of accurate observation on the real requirements of the country, and the obstacles in the way of reconciling the condition of a low and almost stationary stage of society with nineteenth-century 'progress ' and high- pressure civilization.
"In the cry for great timber for our railways we totally forgot or neglected the demand of the masses of the population for small timber for their houses and many other purposes. We shut up every acre of the teak-producing country we could, and referred them to inferior sorts of wood, all the best species besides teak having been tabooed along with it. "The other species of timber, when used young, mostly decay in a year or two in an Indian climate ; and so the people were put to a vast unnecessary expenditure of labour in renewals, while we strove, by pruning and preserving, to make large timber grow out of the scrubby coppice-wood which had before supplied their wants ; and as it proved, strove entirely in vain.
" This pollarded teak will not grow straight and large, prune we never so wisely. It will grow to a certain size, the size the natives require it ; but after that it decays and twists into every variety of tortuous shape. " What we should have done was to reserve the best forests for timber purposes proper, and apply to the rest—the vastly greater part of them —only such measures as would ensure the best and quickest production of coppice-wood for the requirements of the people. It has been said that they should learn to do as European natives do, convert large trees to smaller scantlings by the saw, as it is an undoubted fact that forests yield a larger aggregate supply of timber when the trees are allowed to mature. The argument is one of a sort too readily applied to many Indian subjects. Theoretically it is true enough, and in the distant future it may be realized. But in the meantime, the people have not the capital wherewith to do it, even if the large timber were growing ready for them, which it is not. We have taken one step rightly enough, in strictly reserving limited areas of the best forest to reproduce large timber. But wo have not released the rest, nor applied to it a method which aims at the continued reproduction of small timber, for which the teak tree is so admirably fitted by nature. Vast expense is still incurred in attempting to conserve it all after a fashion, and the problem of cheap and efficient management of these forests will never, in my opinion, be satisfactorily worked out until we revise our system altogether, with this object kept in view."
The condition of the Hill tribes is described as greatly improved by comparatively recent acts of the Administration. The drunken- ness and recklessness occasioned by the pernicious power of the spirit- dealers are much diminished. Captain Forsyth knew two Gonda or Korkoos who in 1867 cleared thirty acres of light land and sowed it with tillee (sesamum). They borrowed 80 rupees (28) to buy bullocks and implements, and two manees (1,920 lbs.) of millet to eat. The interest on the money debt was twenty rupees, and double the quantity of grain had to be paid back at harvest. Having no rent to pay and doing all the labour themselves, they repaid their debt with interest by the sale of the first year's produce, and remained possessors of a little money and a stocked farm that brought them in £10 apiece yearly, an income sufficient to keep them in comfort. One instance of this kind in humble life must give encouragement to every enlightened administrator in India, who knows too well the amount of wretchedness and degra- dation that has been produced among the million in that country by careless and unjust government. Many characteristic features of native temper and disposition are to be observed in the crowded pilgrimages to sacred places made every year. Captain Forsyth witnessed one of these, when forty thousand pilgrims swarmed through the Denwar valley to visit the great shrine of Siva, in the Mahadeo hills. He describes the scene as resembling an English fair or crowded racecourse, with amusements of all kinds going on, but without licentiousness or drunkenness. The conical stone (Lingam) that represents the god is enshrined in a large natural cavern, running three hundred feet into the bowels of the hill, and washed by a clear stream of cold water issuing from a cleft at the farther end. To reach this holy spot the pilgrim has to climb up rugged paths in the rock to a height of 2,000 feet, and he re- turns, happy and grateful, to the valley below with his two earthen pots that the Brahmans have filled with holy water from the stream. In former days devotees were permitted to offer themselves in sacrifice to the bloody Kali by jumping off a cliff near this shrine, but the British Government forbade the cruel rite. An extract from a MS. account of one of the last of these immolations in Newar, written by Captain Douglas in 1822, is given at p. 173. The popular error that the mysteries observed at the shrine of Siva are obscene must now be deemed exploded, for Captain Forsyth confirms the observations of Mr. R. Elliott on that head in his book on Mysore, reviewed in these columns ; and the able correspond- ent of the Times newspaper, in describing a recent visit to Juggernaut, affirms that he did not see a semblance of immorality.
We have left ourselves no space for any of the sporting adven- tures, of which there are many in the volume, described with much spirit. Indeed the whole book is extremely well written, terse, clear, and picturesque, and it affords another instance of the kind and degree of culture and ability that has been happily introduced into the government and regulation of British India.
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