Barakur.—Advantages of its Situation. 179 to prevent the savages from extending their operations. south of the Trunk Road, and exciting the whole aboriginal population to rise in arms. In the great hurly-burly, which has made the name of Sepoy hateful to the whole world, the chimeras of a neighbouring petty chieftain created here a tempest in a tea-pot.' 6 Hardly five-and-twenty shops now make up the bazar at Barakur. Grain is chiefly vended in them, and salt imported from the Lower Provinces. Small quantities of oil-seeds, tobacco, ghee, and other local products are also exposed for sale. The same that Raneegunge was twenty-five years ago, is Barakur now -a solitary outpost of civilization in a region of barbarians. But the place bids fair to be a mart of great trading activity-to be a considerable outlet for the products of the hill-regions. The local advantages of its situation, to be heightened the more by the extension of the Railway, would attract here large numbers of men for business. The spot is particularly suited for manufactories of lac-dye and shell-lac. The raw material can be worked upon here at a cheap value. Paddy and sugar-cane are now sparingly grown for want of a market, but increased demand would give the impetus to an increased cultivation. Hides, horns, and beeswax can be had here in abundance. Timber, which has become a valuable commodity in the Indian market, can be largely procured from these districts. There are fine pasture lands, and cattle might be reared with great success. The mineral wealth of the region is inexhaustible. Scarcely any land-owner now appreciates the ores of iron or the veins of copper lying in his estate, and takes them into the account in estimating the value of his property. But time shall give to the Indians their own Birmingham and their own Sheffield. The future of the Jungle Mehals presents a glowing picture to the imagination. The route now passes through wastes, heaths, and forests. Two hundred years hence, its sides would be dotted with villages and manufacturing towns. Many thousands of square miles, which are now overgrown with woods, and given up to the bear and leopard, would appear hereafter a succession of orchards, corn-fields, tea-gardens, and sugarplantations. In a region of twenty miles in circumference, there are seen now a few straggling huts of reeds and thatches. The traveller in the twentieth century would find all this space covered with neat bungalows, pleasant country-seats, warehouses, and shops. Macaulay has painted the present of England. Young Bengal anticipates the prospective of India. The serai, deriving its name from the Barakur, is not without some of the features of a Santhal village. The site is upon a rising ground, by the side of a pure and gushing hill-stream, watering a finely-wooded valley. Cossipore, on the Hooghly, is not a more delightful spot than Barakur on the river of that name. The serai is built of long huts, having that peculiar appearance which distinguishes the cabin of a Santhal from the homestall of a Bengal peasant. The huts are some thirty or forty in number, so arranged, facing each other in two rows, as to form a pretty street one A Santhal Village. 181 house deep. To almost every house is attached a pigsty, a cattle-shed, and a dovecot. Surrounding the village are patches of luxuriant cultivation denoting the fertility of a virgin soil. The Santhal does not live wedged together in a mass, excluding sunshine and ventilation, and killing himself by typhoids and cholera. He seems to have intuitive ideas of sanitation. His mode of location eminently illustrates the principles of health carried out in practice. A Santhal village is not without interesting features in an Indian landscape -a Santhal clearance has a park-like appearance.' * The Santhal is a curious specimen of the human species-an interesting subject for the ethnologist. He belongs to the Tamulian family of mankind-a race existing from pre-historic, perhaps antediluvian, ages, *The following is the sketch of a Santhal village. 'Sundani Kulan is a fine large Santhal village, situate close under the hills, and surrounded by sheets of mustard cultivation. The village is about one mile in length; being one long street one house deep, with about one hundred family enclosures; each enclosure occupying from four to five log-wood houses. These enclosures are made with the green boughs of the sakua; planted in the ground and tied together they keep each family distinct from its neighbours; they generally contain a Santhal and his wife, several married children and their families; a pig-sty, buffalo-shed, and a dove-cot; a wooden stand holds the water-pots, the water from which is used for drinking or cooking; there is also a rude wooden press for expressing oil from the mustard seed. In a corner of the yard there will be a plough, or a couple of solid-wheeled carts, whilst numbers of pigs and poultry are seen in every direction. Each of these enclosures contains on an average ten souls, thus giving a population of one thousand to Sundani. The street is planted on each side with the sohajna, which tree is a great favourite with the Santhal. The numerous pig-styes and great abundance of poultry in the village proclaim the absence of caste amongst this free and unshackled and un-priest-ridden tribe.'-Notes upon a Tour through the Rajmahl Hills, by Captain Walter S. Sherwill, Revenue Surveyor. and the progenitors of which were the ancients of our ancient Aryans. He is the descendant of a cognate branch of those who are styled in the oldest hymns of the Rig-Veda, a work forty centuries old, under the denomination of Dasyas-afterwards the Asuras of the Poorans. The 'dark complexion, and flat nose, and small eyes' of the Vedic Dasyas, are yet visible in their posterity of the nineteenth century. The Santhal has the honour of being aboriginal to India. It was his forefathers who first occupied and inhabited the land, then known under the name of Colar.* From them the country was usurped by invaders from the Ariana of the Greek geographers. The Aryan followers of Brahma first settled in the Punjab-the Supta Sindhoo of the Vedas, and the Hupta-Hindo of the Zendavesta. In the course of ages, they gradually moved down the valleys of the Jumna and Ganges, driving before them the ancestors of the present Bheels, Coles, and Santhals, to retire into the woods and mountains. There the race has lived and lingered for ages-there the race lives and lingers to this day. The aboriginal Santhal has marked distinctions from an Aryan Hindoo. He has a different facial and craniological conformation. The dialect he speaks bears not the remotest affinity with the language which forms the primal root of human speech from the Bay of Bengal to the Baltic, and the banks of the Shannon. The Santhal is a naked savage, who knows only to hew *This was the earliest name of India in the opinion of Col. Wilford. See his Comparative Essay on the Ancient Geography of India.' Description of the Santhals. 183 wood and till the soil. He has neither any alphabet nor any arithmetic. He has no architecture, none of the useful or ornamental arts. If his race were swept to-day from the earth, there would remain to-morrow no monument, no laws, no literature, to record the past existence of his nation. The poor fellow has no recognized entity among mankind, is beyond the 'pale of civilization,' is excluded from the comity of nations' -and his very existence is ignored. Those living at Barakur are not easily made out from the Bengalees sojourning amongst them. The same dark skin, the same naked habits, and the same squalid poverty, mark as much the rustic Hindoo as the primitive Santhal. Hybrid manners and speech have tainted the purity of the aboriginal type, and local intermixture has made faint the line of demarcation separating the two races. In going through the bazar on foot, we attracted a group of the savages, who spoke to us in their native tongue, mingled with Bengalee phrases and Hindoostanee words. They appeared to have fallen into many of the habits of their Bengalee neighbours, to have taken to begging that they did not know before, and to have lost the honest simplicity and nobility of the true barbarian. In a place like this, situated on the highroad, the influx of travellers cannot fail to produce its usual work of demoralization. But after all, the Santhal is not to be missed, with his unfamiliar form, his strong original features, and his non-Hindoo peculiarities. He is singled out by his short make, his thick lips, high cheek-bones, flat nose, |