20
of water remains throughout the year, in others it becomes extremely scanty in
the hot leather, and where this happens the people have daily to scrape out the
mud at the bottom of the hole and let a little clear water trickle in. The water
in the rivers is soft and sweet, and the same may be said of the spring and well
water when it is plentiful.
69. The soils of the trap vary in different positions : in the valleys
generally and in some extensive uplands we have. " regur " or " black cotton soil,"
containing a large proportion of decomposed vegetable matter, spongy, and
retentive of moisture; and very fertile, especially where it overlies the deep clay
of the valleys. On the flat tops of the hills, in the narrow bottoms betweeen
them, and over a wide extent of upland, we have " moorum," chiefly disintegrated
nodular trap, light and friable everywhere, thickly strewn with stones, and con-
taining little vegetable matter, producing in the rains a growth of long coarse
grass, which however quickly dries up and becomes brown. The hills are in
many parts covered with trees, and there is an almost continuous tract of jungle
from Lucknadown to Mundlah and from thence to Jubbulpore; the trees however
are everywhere small, and the valleys and uplands, even where the soil is good,
are singularly bare of trees. The peculiar nature of the vegetation of the trap
is thus described by Mr. Blanford in Vol. VI. of "the Memoirs of the Geological
Survey of India ;"—"The peculiarity consists in the paucity of large trees and the
abundance of grass, which is frequently 3 to 4 feet in height. This grass dries
almost immediately after the end of the monsoon and forms a natural hay, the
principal food of the herbivorous animals of the country, both wild and domestic.
The paucity of trees appears due to several causes,—the wanton destruction of the
forests by wood-cutters,—the annual burning of the grass,—and its luxuriant
growth which must choke the young trees. Locally, on the upland fiats the
small depth of soil also is unfavourable to the growth of large trees. Those
trees which do occur, moreover, are almost without exception deciduous, and
lose their leaves very early in the season, while many do not put forth new
leaves till the beginning of the rains. The result is that throughout the cold
weather, from November till March, all the trap country presents an uniform
straw coloured surface, with but very few spots of green to break the monotony;
while in March, April, and the greater portion of May, after the grass is mostly
burnt, the blacksoil, black rocks, and burnt grass, present an aspect of desolation,
unbroken often by a single green leaf, for more than a month after Eastern India
is bright with fresh foliage. The only season when the trap country has any
beauty is during the rains."
70. The population of this tract of country is very sparse. In the
Lucknadown tehseel it is 80 to the square mile, in Mundlah it is only 36. In
the hilly tract Gonds and Purdhans and grazing Aheers form the larger propor-
tion of the population. In the more cultivated parís there is a greater admixture
of Hindoos, chiefly Lodhees, Koormees, Aheers and Gaolees, In the more
barren parts kodoo and khootkee, cheap kinds of millet, form the staple food
of the population; in the richer country wheat is more used.
71. The trap country is not I think generally unhealthy ; malaria is no
doubt prevalent in the valleys in the autumn months, but neither the severer
forms of remittent fever, nor the continued fever that prevails in other formations
in the spring and hot weather, are common in the trap. The Gonds, who form
the largest proportion of the inhabitants of hill tracts, are a very hardy and brave
race ; they heave however a great dread of cholera, often deserting their villages
on its first appearance ; and, as will appear in the sequel, not without reason.
72. The villages are almost always-situated on bare rock on the crests or
slopes of the hills. They consist of a collection of mud huts thatched in two lines