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VILLAGE JBUKNINC IN JLNUIA.

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VILLAGE JBUKNINC IN JLNUIA. The special commissioner of the na; Afer*, writing from l'ooproo on March iSth, says Wilful fire i«ising is one of the saddest accorupani Clients f th lood scarcity wKi h is now prevalent i tinHighuut Tiihoot. No (natter what patt of the listrict the traveller visit., ho luuld that there is n'arcely a village in which ho.nes havo not been Ixif nt; some villages have been consumed altogether, md the wretched inhabitants m ike shift to live among the cuI,) embers within the shattered mu-i valla of what were once then dwellings, Some of the tires are no doubt accidental; a Hindoo cottage Minis built socially with the view to caching fire easily, and el:(' Jong drought h,!vs made everything H dry a. t:»l<r. But it is unquestionable th; t rnaiiy more of the tires arc kindled wilfully ly hungry, reckless Lyf~ that they may have the opportunity of steafln, "«e con- fusion. son e of the rice which they L. ;*son to know to be stored in the houses burnt. » ery few ,|,|>i eheiiMw.s for arson have been made, still wt. ().V; -;i'>ns obtained, for the natives seem to he hindered by some mysterious system of terrorism ton. making complaints, or aiding in the identiiica- tion of iuspe :ed persons. Not a night passes that :hclc ,;ou rot rise in the horizon the luiid glow If a t.v.n.ins; villiage: and I have frequently made efforts to reach the scene of a fire by riding ?.?sttaight-'M ^wssible on t,ie liht of it. But on thit great Icv.?p)Hin,distat;(t< e:drondy dc ept)ve. and I have made f?: a tire that has not seemed five miles off, only to tmd, when I had rid- den far more than that distance, that I seemed no nearer to it Lan when I had started. Last night, however, I L. looped to bo in the neighbourhood of village when the flames hurst out in it, and -rot on the ground in time to witness a very distress- ing spectacle. Mr. Wilson and I had been spending the after- noon in \Siting some villages to the south east of thi faetoiy. Day had gone, aud the moon had ii.ien, when we turned our hoives heads homewards for n long, rough rido over the ricetields. A :nooulight night in India is deli.ghtf^ ul. The fierce heat of the day has waned, and ■iven place TO a charming Inuiny coolness. The -!ootl of soft ].ir moonlight pours down upon the ca rtli, and ethert alises e veiy thin?; the bamboo groves SLfin in ttieii pde feathery beauty retreats tit for fairies; water in the titr)i,s i-hinnuers in the moon- rays like g) eat plates of silver. The moonlight n.akoa even the s jualid villages beautiful, and over ti" whole sc-ne there L" (OMO a delightful still- ness and <|uunude, broken only by the chirping of the night inserts and by the monotonous notes of a song that is being sung by the squatters around the tire it., (.ist;tit mango-grove. No longer do rlondtt of dust rise to stirfo the wayfarer, for the hot wind of the day li, ginen place to a light gentle air which comes laden with ft "btlr frayiaucc that deligiits the senses. We were riding along in silent enjoyment of the moonlight, when, suddenly. "Wilson uttered a loud exclamation. as he pulled up his horse from his swinging canter. Not a mile away, on our right, a long tongue of bright flame was shooting up into the pale moonlight. A village on fire shouted Wilson, and giving our horses the spur, wo headed straight for the blaze. Before we reached the scene it was apparent th t the fire was spreading fast, and it seemed to us that it must have been kindled in several places at once. As we nuarod the village there came borne to on the light wind the shouts of men and the wail of women. The village was a large one and the lire had broken out in its very centre. About the outljiiig cjftagea there squatted people gazing su- pinely on the blaze if they were excited, they certainly did not show their excitement, far less did they seem to have any notion of going to give help to arrest the progress of the llamcs. But the scene changed as wo fori ud our horses into the opttt space before the blaaing cottages, for by this time the tire, fiercely leaping from roof to roof, had got hold of several. Tliei e was a crowd "f people in this open space, looking vory weird in the wised light of the pale moonbsama and the red ghw of the fire. Th, uia of the shouting was deafening, but shouting or itself will not put out a tire. and shouting seemed the only III ;¡ns em- ployed. Under the people-tiee were huddled tho women and children, whose abode had been in the Ma/iisg cottages; the poor women sat weeping uid moaiiing, while the children screamed with tenor, But the old wouun were not thus inactive. It was fearsome to see ti e haggard beldames d irt ing in and out of the ourning cottages in their eitorts to save something of the family proporty. The ttamca singed the streaming grey eltloeks of a lean withered grandmother, i.s she ran into the very eye of tho fire and staggered out a moment later, carrying a small brass pot that was one of the family household gods. None helped the old women it seemed, indeed, that they did not want help, fearing thieves even more than tire. What, allk you, were the men of the family doing ? They were trying to save the store of rice to which the family bad trusted to avert starvation, and because of which this visitation of fire had fallen upon their dwelling. That dwelling I must describe. The low walls of a Hindoo cottage are built of mud, sometimes solid, sometimes plas- tered upon wattled straw and bamboo. The sloped roof is a framework of bamboo thatched with straw. The furniture consists of a charpoy, or bedstead or twa, a few blankets, and several k-Mks, or grain receptacles. These h>il:es are made of baked mud, in shape they resemble very thick squat churns, and they stand in corners raised from off the floor III pedestals of stones. When they arc filled the lid;, are sealed down with mud, and the grain, when wanted, is drawn off through a hole neii the bottom, the plug of which i, a handful of mud laid oil moist. Those plugs had been knocked out, and the grain was :streaming on to the rloov, on wlii h burning fragments from the blazing roof wet, falling thick. The men of the cottage had got some baskets, and were catching in them as much rice as they could, carrying it where the women sat, and then rushing back for more. But it was not for this that the place had lkdl fired. The cordon of clamouring lirahuiins and Rajpoots Lad been drawiug closer and closer to the burning house, and presently there was a rush. The men who were ssving their rice got hustled somehow into tho back- ground, and a little mob of hungry despjra- loes tumbled in under the blazing roof. Some caught up abodily, and carrying it out into the open, let it fall. The rice, of which it was full. stveamtd out into the dust, and then the wolfish instinct got the mastery, and the whole crowd dived at it madly, fighting and tearing ea-h otliei for the handsful of mixed rice and dirt. Some cowered tlat on the ground, covering little heaps which hey had raked together, but w:u>;li they felt w< ',I be wrested from them, if they moved and • .posed them. Others scooped dust and rice tog. er into the corners of their dhoties, and then, V.■.hering up the edges of the clatij, made a bolt ith this instalment of irregular sal- vage. It v. impossible to interfere, for the people were laaddened by greed and the opportun- ity of pillage. All we couid do was to stand by the wretched women who were moaning under the people-tree, and do what we might to protect for them at least the few basketsful that had been saved before the dam of robbery and licence broke. Meanwhile the fire was spreading rapidly. For- tunately the wind was very light, but, nevertheless, there was enough of it to fan the flames not a little. For auht that the efforts of the villagers availed the whole village might have been con- vamcd. The owners of the cottages in what may he called the line of tire had begun to fetch a trifle of water from the tank in their gaylas," or brass driuking vessels. They might as well havo used a penny squirt. Mr. Wilson and I attempted to pull the roof from off a threatened cottage, be- lieving that by doing so we should have arrested the spread of the flames; but tho people to whom the cottage belonged objected strenuously, al- though they might have put the roof on again next morning without the slightest harir haviug been done. But they preferred to let the roof stand until the fire came and licked it, whijh it presently did. with a keen relentless activity in which there »eemed something devilish. In all six cottages were burned down. and maro would have shared the same fate but for the c ourage of a single native- n low caste itiin, who had no particular intenst in saving the e^tt.(g?s o Jhahmin ryots, but who seemed to have a n.itura' liking for danger. When I saw him first he was on the slope of :t cottage roof, over against whi,.h another roof was blazing fiercely. The man was stark naked,for the tongues uf tlame lapped round him, -"< that if he had worn his cloth it must have c.v\ght nre. From below, people were handing him up > ay Las full of water, which he poured on the loof on which he stood, wherever it caught tire. For many minutes he kept abreast of his work; but in the end the flames were too nimble for him. They laid hold of the roof iu several places at the same ti ne, and he could only extinguish one blaze at a time. H, sto(IÙ his ground till the fames were actually rising around him, and then jumped to the grouud, a good doal scorched indeed, but neither seriously the worse nor at all conscious apparently that he had ben doing anything out of the common. His gallantry excited no enthusiasm on the part of the onlookers, and, indeed, the apathy had been so great that the supply of water handed up to him had been but scauty. Two houses turther on. the tame man turned up, carrying out the same tactics. On the toof of it he had got while as yet the next house had not caught; and thus he had time to damp the thatch before the tire began to threaten him. It tried very hard to get a hold upon the loof which he was defending, and it seemed that several times he would be beaten back from this trench as he had been from the previous one; but courage and perseverance conquered. I do not suppose the fire Lasted altogether tor an hour and a half, and had there been wind the whclc village would have been burnt down ia a quarter of the time. By the time we left, the people whu owned the cottages owliest destioved were sweeping out' the charred embers, and preparing to bivouac under the remnant left upstanding of the waUs of what had but an hour before been their homes. Theft had gone on while tie lire lasted; and :ph we rode homeward we passed people :m the road who had evidently been concerned in it, and weie on their way to neigh- bouring villages with their plunder. I havo little doubt that when the distress becomes more severe, attempts will be made to set fire to the golahs iu which the Government graiu is stored.

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