about three thousand pounds per annum, for keeping the town sweet and clean, for keeping up the police, and for repairing the roads. Every morning the town was swept ; and all the sewage was buried in a farm which had been set aside for the purpose outside the walls. The farmer, a low-caste man, paid four hundred per cent. higher rent than his neighbours; and yet he made a fortune by his crops, which succeeded each other in rapid succession all the year round. Cucumbers, egg-plants, potatoes, Indian corn, capsicums, cauliflowers, peas which I could hardly push my way through, and the edible grass known as Sorghum saccharatum, which completely hid me and my horse as I rode beside it. At first we thought the purchasers in the bazaar would object to consume the produce raised upon this highly manured land; but the farmer knew his countrymen better than we did. He disposed of every grain he raised; for the people bought it fast enough and asked no questions.

The town was kept very clean by the municipality, but whether the natives benefited by the plan is not quite certain. It is certain they remonstrate against contributing to the tax,

48

POTATOE CULTIVATION.

preferring to keep their money and their dirt. If there is any truth in the theory of natural selection and survival of the fittest, the natives of Monghyr, who have lived among bad odours for centuries, require a certain amount of sulphuretted hydrogen in order to keep them well and happy. What is good for Europeans is not necessarily good for them, as can be very easily demonstrated in the Monghyr bazaar. One of my clerks was a fat jovial fellow but very dirty; and the municipal officers were always bringing charges against him for refusing to keep his premises clean; so I went one day to see the place. I could hardly enter the house, the stench was so dreadful, and I found that this jovial and apparently healthy fellow's bed was over an open drain.

The cultivation of potatoes gains ground every year, and would be extended much more than it is but for the difficulty in preserving seed-potatoes through the rainy season. It is a profitable crop, an acre yielding six tons of potatoes worth twenty pounds. The unenclosed nature of the country is a constant source of irritation to the market-gardeners, and a feud, arising from conflicting interests, exists between

them and the Ghosis, or dairymen, in Monghyr. A Ghosi sets up a dairy without either capital or land. His lean kine are let loose at night, and left to forage for themselves; wandering over the country, snatching a mouthful of early peas or potatoes from every field. The poor market-gardeners sit up all night to drive their persecutors away, and occasionally take them to the pound where sixpence is paid by their owners for their poor consolation to the whose crop has been damaged to the extent of several pounds.

release; a very

market - gardener

The theory of natural selection and survival of the fittest is well illustrated by these cattle; for a race of long-legged cunning cattle has sprung up which are able to forage for themselves during the night, and as a rule defy all efforts to capture them. I had practical experience of the existing evil soon after my arrival at Monghyr; for one of the Ghosi's cows entered my garden on a moon-light night in December, and ate up four rows of young peas which had been planted in order to feast my friends at Christmas. When I got up at daybreak next morning I saw the cow still

feasting on my peas; and on raising an alarm it jumped the garden wall and galloped off across country. It so happened that my horse was standing saddled at my door, ready for my morning ride; so I at once gave chase, and galloped after the retreating cow as hard as my horse's legs could carry me. It would almost be worth while importing these Ghosis' cows to hunt with English stag-hounds, for never after stag or fox had I such exciting sport as I had after this long-legged cow. Hedges and ditches, and watercourses were left behind in rapid succession, for the cow seemed able to surmount every obstacle. At last we reached the bazaar, which fortunately contained very few people at that early hour, or numbers must have been knocked over before the flying cow. At last I fairly ran her to ground in the centre of a labyrinth of bazaar. Seeing an open door she bolted into the house, upsetting the owner, who was running out to see what was the matter. When the man got up he declared at first that the cow did not belong to him, but subsequently he acknowledged that it did, and when I told him of the damage it had done he

upon

THE CATTLE OF MONGHYR.

51

cursed it and its ancestors up and down dale in a frightful manner, but he threw all the blame his cow-herd, a half starved boy, who had been sleeping in the cow-shed all night. Although, as chief officer in the district, I made it a rule never to punish or prosecute anyone for an offence committed against myself, I found on inquiry that the damage done by the ghosis' cows was immense, and could be tolerated no longer; so I put a stop to the nuisance by encouraging the market-gardeners to prosecute, and fining the persons convicted in my court the full amount of damage done, and handing the money over to the owner of the field. After two or three convictions, the dairy-men, finding this method of feeding their cattle expensive, tied up their cows at night, and fed them properly at their own expense by day.

Nothing in India denotes the poverty of the people so much as their miserable cattle, which, if they had fair play, would thrive as well in India as in Europe, or Australia. But they, like their owners, have increased beyond the supply of food. The land-holders never think of keeping part of the village lands for