Page:Castes and Tribes of Southern India, Volume 3.djvu/41

Rh forest officer of a philanthropic turn had a very high opinion of the sturdy independence and blunt honesty of the Kādir, but he once came unexpectedly round a corner, to find two of them exploring the contents of his portmanteau, from which they had abstracted a pair of scissors, a comb, and a looking glass." " The Kādirs," Mr. (now Sir F. A.) Nicholson writes,* " are, as a rule, rather short in stature, and deep-chested, like most mountaineers; and, like many true mountaineers, they rarely walk with a straight leg. Hence their thigh muscles are often abnormally developed at the expense of those of the calf Hence, too, in part, their dislike to walking long distances on level ground, though their objection, mentioned by Colonel Douglas Hamilton, to carrying loads on the plains, is deeper-rooted than that arising from mere physical disability. This objection is mainly because they are rather a timid race, and never feel safe out of the forests. They have also affirmed that the low- country air is very trying to them." As a matter of fact, they very rarely go down to the plains, even as far as the village of Ānaimalai, only fifteen miles distant from Mount Stuart. One woman, whom I saw, had been as far as Palghāt by railway from Coimbatore, and had returned very much up-to-date in the matter of jewelry and the latest barbarity in imported piece-good body-cloth. With the chest- girth of the Kādirs, as well as their general muscular development, I was very much impressed. Their hardiness, Mr. Conner writes, † has given rise to the observation among their neighbours that the Kādir and Kād Ānai (wild elephant) are much the same sort of animal.