require excessive moisture, can be successfully cultivated. This area
is the great cotton-growing tract of the Province, and at present the
most wealthy. The valleys of the Wainganga and Mahanadi further east
receive a heavier rainfall and are mainly cropped with rice. Many small
irrigation tanks for rice have been built by the people themselves,
and large tank and canal works are now being undertaken by Government
to protect the tract from the uncertainty of the rainfall. South of
the plain lies another expanse of hill and plateau comprised in the
zarmindari estates of Chanda and the Chhattisgarh Division and the
Bastar and Kanker Feudatory States. This vast area, covering about
24,000 square miles, the greater part of which consists of dense
forests traversed by precipitous mountains and ravines, which formerly
rendered it impervious to Hindu invasion or immigration, producing
only on isolated stretches of culturable land the poorer raincrops,
and sparsely peopled by primitive Gonds and other forest tribes,
was probably, until a comparatively short time ago, the wildest
and least-known part of the whole Indian peninsula. It is now being
rapidly opened up by railways and good roads.

2. Constitution of the population.

Up to a few centuries ago the Central Provinces remained outside the
sphere of Hindu and Muhammadan conquest. To the people of northern
India it was known as Gondwana, an unexplored country of inaccessible
mountains and impenetrable forests, inhabited by the savage tribes
of Gonds from whom it took its name. Hindu kingdoms were, it is true,
established over a large part of its territory in the first centuries
of our era, but these were not accompanied by the settlement and
opening out of the country, and were subsequently subverted by the
Dravidian Gonds, who perhaps invaded the country in large numbers from
the south between the ninth and twelfth centuries. Hindu immigration
and colonisation from the surrounding provinces occurred at a later
period, largely under the encouragement and auspices of Gond kings. The
consequence is that the existing population is very diverse, and is
made up of elements belonging to many parts of India. The people of
the northern Districts came from Bundelkhand and the Gangetic plain,
and here are found the principal castes of the United Provinces and the
Punjab. The western end of the Nerbudda valley and Betul were colonised
from Malwa and Central India. Berar and