The Gónd also raises pumpkins and beans; and this vegetable diet he supplements with game ensnared in the dhyas, to which peafowl, partridges, hares and the like resort. Many of the villages, however, have a professional huntsman, who will display the most incredible patience in waiting with his matchlock for the game to appear.
Besides these articles of diet, the aborigines of the Góndwana have their mhowa tree, which stands them in much the same multifarious stead as the palm does to its beneficiaries. The flowers of the mhowa fall and are eaten, or are dried and pressed, being much like raisins: they also produce a wine by fermentation and the strong liquor of the hill-people by distillation. Of the seed cakes are made, and an oil is expressed from them which is an article of commerce.
In addition, the poor Gónd appears to have a periodical godsend resulting from a singular habit of one of the great Indian plants. The bamboo is said to undergo a general seeding every thirty years: at this period, although, in the mean time, many individual bamboos may have passed through the process of reproduction, it is said that the whole bamboo growth of a section will simultaneously drop its leaves and put forth large panicles of flowers, after which come great quantities of seeds much like rice. These are gathered for food by the inhabitants with all the greater diligence in consequence of a tradition—which, however, does not seem to be at all supported by facts—that the general seeding of the bamboo portends a failure of the regular crops. The liberal forests of the Góndwana furnish still other edibles to their denizens. The ebony plums, the wild mango, the seeds of the sál tree, the beans of the giant banhinia creeper, a species of arrowroot, and a wild yam, are here found and eaten.
It is not long since the Gónds 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 Góndwana. 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 nilgaé springing out from the long grass and dwarf growth of polás 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.
The truth is, although I had been for some days wavering upon the brink of these conclusions in a quiet way, I found the old keen ardor of the sportsman still burning too strongly, and I had started out with a breech-loader, intent upon doing much of the Góndwana route gun in hand. It was not long before a thoughtless shot operated to bring my growing convictions sharply face to face with my decreasing practice, and thus to quite frown the latter out of existence. It happened in this wise: One day, not far from sunset, I was walking idly along behind the chapaya, in which Bhima Gandharva was dreamily reclining, when suddenly a pair of great sáras cranes rose from the low banks of a small stream and sailed directly across the road. Quick as thought—indeed, quicker than thought; for if I had thought, I would not have done it—I fired, and brought down one of the monstrous birds. As I started to approach it, Bhima Gandharva said, in a tone just a trifle graver than usual, "Stop! wait a moment," and at the same time halted the chapaya. The mate of the bird I had shot, seeing him fall, alighted on the same spot, then flew up, then returned, flew up again, returned again, with an exhibition of sad and lingering affection of which I had not dreamed, and which penetrated me beyond expression; so I stood half stolid outwardly and wholly ashamed and grieved inwardly. "The sáras," said my friend, "is the type of conjugal affection among the Hindus. The birds nearly always go in pairs; and when one is killed, the other invariably makes those demonstrations of tenderness which you have just seen."
As we journeyed along in the dusk came notes from another pair of feathered lovers, "chukwa, chukwi," "chukwa, chukwi," in a sort of mournful alternation. They were the branning ducks, he on one side, she on the other side of the stream, as is their habit, whence they are fabled to be a pair of lovers who must yearn unavailingly through the long nights from opposite banks of the river.
That night, when Bhima Gandharva was asleep, I gently arose, took my double-barrel—thou dear Manton! how often has not Jonesville admired thee returning from the field at late evening slanting at a jaunty angle high above my bagful of snipe or of quail as the case might be!—yes, I took this love of a gun, together with the cartridges, accoutrements and all other rights, members and appurtenances thereunto belonging or in any wise appertaining, and slid the whole lot softly into a deep green pool of the very stream from which had flown my sáras.