From these causes, we are led to the consideration of those effects produced in hilly countries, by the waters in common use. Nor are we deceived in our expectation as to the results naturally arising from so forcible an agent. We find throughout the hilly country, that, exclusive of the diminutive features attached, all over the world, to the various classes of mountaineers, there is an additional tendency to departure from the ordinary bulk of the natives in the adjacent low lands, obviously induced by the diet, and most especially by the waters in use. It is remarkable that in Tomar, the back part of Chittrah, and Ramghur, where the immense extent of low woods almost debars population, and where the Hill people, known by the name of _Dhangahs_, subsist principally on rice, wild fruits, and, occasionally, a little game, and where they drink of water such as has just been described, collected either in small pools, or in artificial tanks, the inhabitants are extremely stinted in their growth, are squalid, troubled with wens, half devoured with a kind of scurvy, herpetic eruption, and appear even at a very early age to lose their vigor. They have, besides, a peculiar kind of opthalmia, partly induced by an excessive passion for liquor, there distilled in large quantities, and by their exposure to a damp, impregnated atmosphere; while in their huts, their whole happiness seems to consist of an intense fumigation, chiefly from green-wood, such as would wholly suffocate one not habituated from his birth to so admirable an imitation of the fumes of Tartarus.
The difference between these haggard objects, and the inhabitants of the plains from which the mountains take their rise, requires no comment. It most forcibly arrests the traveller’s attention, causing him to doubt whether, within the short interval of perhaps six or seven miles, he may believe his senses, which pourtray to him a change from vigorous and personable manhood, to a decrepid, hideous, and dwarfish, state: more resemblant of the Weird Sisters than our imaginations can conceive, or than our best comedians can represent.
Some tanks, dug by the more charitable persons of property, are on a very extensive scale, covering perhaps ten or twelve acres. Many of these are of great antiquity, and have been very deep, perhaps thirty feet, but, by the growth of vegetable matter, added to the heavy bodies of sand and dust that nearly darken the air in the dry season, of which much falls into the waters, their depth is considerably reduced: in some, various shoals appear, indicating the accumulation of rubbish, and in a manner reproaching those who use the element with indolence and ingratitude. In such places fish abound, and grow to an astonishing size, sometimes affording excellent angling, but their flavor does not correspond with their looks; for the most part they are intolerably muddy. The quantity of weeds, the shoals, and various posts being generally sunk in different parts of the tank, armed with tenter-hooks, for the purpose of preventing poachers from robbing the stock, are insuperable bars to the use of nets. Boats are not in use in such places, and there seems to be no attention in any respect to any thing relating to such waters, except that the _shecarries_, or native sportsmen, exercise much ingenuity and skill in their depredations among the wild geese, wild ducks, teal, widgeons, &c., with which all the waters of India are profusely stocked during the winter months; when every unfrequented puddle is covered with wild fowl, which often alight during the dark nights on waters situated in the very hearts of cities, in which sometimes tanks are seen of such size, as to secure the birds, when collected near the centre, from the reach of small shot. This, though not to be classed with daily occurrences, is by no means singular.