Page:Life in India or Madras, the Neilgherries, and Calcutta.djvu/518

452 household calling on me one morning, told me that there was to be a funeral ceremony for a deceased member of his tribe, on a hill some five miles distant, and offered to be my guide to the place. Having never witnessed a scene of the kind, I accepted his invitation, and in company with one or two companions started for the place chosen for the funeral rites.

It was a lovely day, the sun shining brightly on hill and valley, and our guide strode rapidly on to point out the way, while we followed up hill and down on horses. The mound-like eminences which we crossed were mostly destitute of wood and of animal life. Though in the forests there are deer, elk, jackals, leopards, and other beasts, you see but little of them in passing over the hills by day. Occasionally, on a sunny slope, we would see the mund of some Todar family, with a herd of a hundred or a hundred and fifty buffaloes feeding near it. As we approached them, the ungainly creatures would raise their heads, snuff the air, and rolling their wild black eyes, draw together as if to attack us. A charge upon them with shouts, however, always put them to flight. On many of the hill-tops ancient burial-places, in the form of circular stone-walled cairns, are found;