Page:Castes and Tribes of Southern India, Volume 3.djvu/15

Rh road at the mercy of a typically obstinate jutka pony, which landed me in a dense patch of prickly-pear (Opuntia Dillenii), brought me to the foot of the hills at Sēthumadai, where I came under the kindly hospitality of Mr. H. A. Gass, Conservator of Forests, to whom I am indebted for much information on forest and tribal matters gathered during our camp life at Mount Stuart,situated 2,350 feet above sea-level, in the midst of a dense bamboo jungle, and playfully named after Sir Mountstuart Grant Duff, who visited the spot during his quinquennium as Governor of Madras. At Sēthumadai I made the acquaintance of my first Kādir, not dressed, as I hoped, in a primitive garb of leaves, but wearing a coloured turban and the cast-off red coat of a British soldier, who had come down the hill to carry up my camp bath, which acted as an excellent umbrella, to protect him from the driving monsoon showers. Very glad was I of his services in helping to convey my clothed, and consequently helpless self, across the mountain torrents, swollen by a recent burst of monsoon rain. The Kādir forest guards, of whom there are several in Government service, looked, except for their noses, very unjungle-like by contrast with their fellow-tribesmen, being smartly dressed in regulation Norfolk jacket, knickerbockers, pattis (leggings), buttons, and accoutrements. On arrival at the forest depôt, with its comfortable bungalows and Kādir settlement, I was told by a native servant that his master was away, as an "elephant done tumble in a fit." My memory went back to the occasion many years ago, when, as a medical student, I took part in the autopsy of an elephant, which died in convulsions at the London Zoological Gardens. It transpired later