The eight hundred thousand Gonds of the Gondwana are supposed to be members of the great autochthonal family of ancient India.  These hills of the Gondwana country appear to have been considered by the incoming Aryans for a long time as a sort of uncanny land, whose savage recesses were filled with demons and snakes:  indeed, in the epics of the Mahabharata and Ramayana this evil character is attributed to that portion of India lying south of the Vindhyas.  The forest of Spenser’s Fairy Queen, in which wandering knights meet with manifold beasts and maleficent giants, and do valorous battles against them in the rescue of damsels and the like—­such seem to have been the Gondwana woods to the ancient Hindu imagination.  It was not distressed damsels, however, whom they figured as being assisted by the arms of the errant protectors, but religious devotees, who dwelt in the seclusion of the forest, and who were protected from the pranks and machinations of the savage denizens by opportune heroes of the northern race.  It appears, however, that the native demons of the Gondwana had fascinating daughters; for presently we find the rajahs from the north coming down and marrying them; and finally, in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the keen urgency of the conquering Mohammedans sends great numbers of Rajputs down into the Gondwana, and a considerable mixture of the two bloods takes place.  With this incursion of Hindu peoples come also the Hindu gods and tenets; and Mahadeo, the “great god,” whose home had been the Kailas of the Himalayas, now finds himself domesticated in the mountains of Central India.  In the Mahadeo mountain is still a shrine of Siva, which is much visited by pilgrims and worshipers.

[Illustration:  THE GAUR, OR INDIAN BISON.]

The Gond—­he who lives back in the hills, far off from the neighborhood of the extensive planting districts, which have attracted many of those living near them to become at least half-civilized laborers in harvest-time—­is a primitive being enough.

“Only look,” said Bhima Gandharva, “at that hut if you desire to see what is perhaps one of the most primitive houses since ever the banyan tree gave to man (as is fabled) the idea of sheltering himself from the elements artificially.”  It was simply made of stakes driven into the ground, between which were wattled branches.  This structure was thatched with grass, and plastered with mud.

The Gond, like the American Indian, has his little patch of grain, which he cultivates, however, in a fashion wholly his own.  His sole instrument of agriculture seems to be the axe.  Selecting a piece of ground which presents a growth of small and easily-cut saplings—­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