THE PEOPLE OF INDIA 217

quaintness of the Toda “mands” or villages nestling
under the lee of aboriginal jungle; their wildly fantastic rites
and ceremonies amidst the grim relics of an age of rude
stone monuments—all these combine to attract attention
to the Todas. But politically they are not of the least
importance ; and even ethnographically they must yield
in interest to those Dravidian people (the Gonds) who
occupy the wildest recesses of jungle-covered India, and
who to this day set up monoliths and a crude imitation
of dolmens over the remains of their buried dead.
That part of India which lies east of the lower Godavari
Valley, the wilderness of hills and highland that enclose
the great tributary of the Godavari, called the Indravati,
south of the Mahanadi, may well be called “darkest India.”
Here there are thousands of square miles of country belonging
 to the dependency of Bustar into which the European
 has seldom penetrated. Neither the fascinations of
sport (for these districts swarm with big game), nor the
exigencies of civil administration, are sufficient to attract
the white man into those unvisited jungles if they can be
avoided, for they are perhaps the most pestiferous jungles
of India. The survey of that country was only carried
out at a lamentable cost of life, both European and native.
There, hidden away in reed-covered plains, in cane brakes
and teak forests, often at a considerable altitude above sea
(where the western flanks of the Eastern Ghats are approached),
 are rude wattle-and-stick-built villages, hiding
a people who wear but little clothing, and who flee from
their homes into the rocks and stones of the nearest hills
as soon as a stranger approaches. They live in the forest,
and on it. There are spasmodic attempts at cultivation
by the rude processes of axe and fire here and there, and,
on the fringe of Gondwana, near the Godavari, or near the
coast, there are open spaces of rice cultivation. But the
mainstay of the central Gonds is the jungle produce—
roots, berries, and the products of the chase. They are
skilful hunters and excellent shots with bow and arrow,
and as they find bison and buffaloes, spotted deer, marsh
deer and other smaller species, with bears, tigers, wolves, and