Page:Castes and Tribes of Southern India, Volume 3.djvu/23

Rh make a rough lean-to shed covered over with leaves, and keep a small fire burning through the night, to keep off bears, elephants, tigers, and leopards. They are, I am told, fond of dogs, which they keep chiefly as a protection against wild beasts at night. The camp fire is lighted by means of a flint and the floss of the silk-cotton tree (Bombax malabaricum), over which powdered charcoal has been rubbed. Like the Kurumbas, the Kādirs are not, in a general way, afraid of elephants, but are careful to get out of the way of a cow with young, or a solitary rover, which may mean mischief On the day following my descent from Mount Stuart, an Oddē cooly woman was killed on the ghat road by a solitary tusker. Familiarity with wild beasts, and comparative immunity from accident, have bred contempt for them, and the Kādirs will go where the European, fresh to elephant land, fears to tread, or conjures every creak of a bamboo into the approach of a charging tusker. As an example of pluck worthy of a place in Kipling's 'Jungle-book,' I may cite the case of a hill-man and his wife, who, overtaken by night in the jungle, decided to pass it on a rock. As they slept, a tiger carried off the woman. Hearing her shrieks, the sleeping man awoke, and followed in pursuit in the vain hope of saving his wife. Coming on the beast in possession of the mangled corpse, he killed it at close quarters with a spear. Yet he was wholly unconscious that he had performed an act of heroism worthy of the bronze cross 'for valour.' The Kādirs carry loads strapped on the back over the shoulders by means of fibre, instead of on the head in the manner customary among coolies in the plains; and women on the march may be seen carrying the cooking utensils on their backs, and often have a child strapped on the top of their household goods. The dorsal position