Harkness, Henry: A description of a singular aboriginal race inhabiting the summit of the Neilgherry Hills, or Blue Mountains of Coimbatoor, in the Southern Peninsula of India (London, 1832)

DISTRESS OF THE WIFE. /I

wild. Such a moment was a perilous one among a people
so uncivilized, and possessed of strong feelings. " I will
flee the mountains," he exclaimed, "and seek refuge
among those of my race who have absconded to the plains,
—but the boy!—he is dying!"—and again he would re-
lapse into gloomy despondency. It was perhaps lucky
that it was a boy, for in the alternate gloom, and sudden
flashes of passion, depictured in the countenance of the
father, the demon of infanticide seemed to urge her
horrid rite, and had the infant been of the other sex,
might have worked her will long before any of the cir-
cumstances came to our knowledge.

This act of violence on the part of the complainants,
was too gross to require minute investigation at the
moment; facts spoke out, and authority was soon obtained,
to enforce restitution, first of the wife, and then of the
herd. We were present when the wife returned, and
received again her child from the arms of its father. She
told us that her father and seven or eight others came to
the morrt while Pinpurz was absent, and while some of
them drove away the herd, which was grazing at a short
distance, others, among whom was her father, desired her
to leave the infant on the ground, and to follow them.
She refused for a long time to do so, when her father
stepped out, and threatened to carry her. To avoid being
touched by her father,* she was obliged to obey, and in

* The nature of the relationship will afterwards appear. He was
one of the husbands of her mother.