( 50 THE PALLERS
want and misery , liovv much more gratefully would they appreciate the lot that Providence has assigned to them !
As for myself , for the first ten or twelve years that 1 was in India , I lived in such abject poverty that I had hardly sufficient means to procure the bare necessaries of
life ; but even then I was as happy and contented as I am now that I am better off . Besides the consolations which my religion gave me under these trying circumstances , my reason found me others in the reflection that nineteentwentieths of the people among whom I was living were bearing far greater trials of all kinds than any that I was called on to endure .
Besides the Pariahs , who are to be found all over the Peninsula , there are in certain provinces other clashes composed of individuals who equal and even surpass them in depravity of mind and customs , and in the contempt in which they are held . Such , for instance , is the caste of Palters , who are only found in Madura and in the neighbourhood of Cape Comorin . The Pallers consider themselves superior to the Pariahs , inasmuch as they do not eat the flesh of the cow ; but the Pariahs look on them as altogether their inferiors , because they are the scum of the Left-hand faction , whilst they themselves are the
mainstay of the Right-hand .
These two classes of degraded beings can never agree , and wherever they are found in fairly equal numbers , the disputes and quarrels amongst them are interminable .
They lead the same sort of life , enjoy an equal share of public opprobrium , and both are obliged to live far apart
from all other classes of the inhabitants .
Amongst the forests on the Malabar coast there lives
a tribe which , incredible as it may seem , surpasses the two of which I have just spoken in degradation and squalid misery . They are called Puliahs , and are looked upon as below the level of the beasts which share this wild country with them . They are not even allowed to build themselves huts to protect themselves from the inclemencies of
the weather . A sort of lean-to , supported by four bamboo poles and open at the sides , serves as a shelter for some of them , and keeps off the rain , though it does not screen them from the wind . Most of them , however , make for