[Illustration:  BANJARIS.]

It is not long since the Gonds had arrived at a melancholy condition under the baleful influences of the kulars, or liquor-dealers, who resided among them and created an extraordinary demand for their intoxicating wares by paying for service and for produce in liquor.  The kulars have, however, been thrown into the background by wise efforts toward their suppression, and matters have improved for the poor autoch-thones.

We spent our first night in our chapaya, my companion having so arranged matters that we were quite independent of the bungaloos which the Englishmen have erected at suitable distances along the great roads for the convenience of travelers.  The night was clear; betwixt the corner pillars which upheld our canopy a thousand friendly salutations from the stars streamed in upon us; the tranquil countenance of my friend seemed, as he lay beside me, like the face of the Past purified of old errors and calm with great wisdom got through great tribulation, insomuch that betwixt the Hindu and the stars I felt myself to be at once in communication with antiquity and with eternity.

Thus we pursued our ambulatory meditations through the Gondwana.  If we had been sportsmen, we should have found full as varied a field for the bagging of game as for that more spiritual hunt after new ideas and sensations in which we were engaged.  Gray quail, gray partridges, painted partridges (Francolinus pictus), snipe and many varieties of water-fowl, the sambor, the black antelope, the Indian gazelle or ravine deer, the gaur or Indian bison, chewing the cud in the midday shade or drinking from a clear stream, troops of nilgae springing out from the long grass and dwarf growth of polas and jujube trees which covered the sites of abandoned villages and fields,—­all these revealed themselves to us in the most tempting situations.  But although I had been an ardent devotee of the double-barrel, the large and manly tenderness which Bhima Gandharva invariably displayed toward all animals, whether wild or tame, had wrought marvels upon me, and I had grown fairly ashamed—­nay, horrified—­at the idea that anything which a generous and brave man could call sport should consist wholly in the most keen and savage cruelties inflicted upon creatures whom we fight at the most unknightly odds, we armed, they unarmed.  While I knew that our pleasures are by the divine order mostly distillations from pain, I could not now help recognizing at the same time that this circumstance was part of an enormous plan which the slaughter of innocent creatures in the way of “sport” did in nowise help to carry out.