Bundelkhand suffers more often and more severely from the want of seasonable showers of rain than any other part of India; while the province of Malwa, which adjoins it on the west and south, hardly ever suffers at all.[5] There is a couplet, which, like all other good couplets on rural subjects, is attributed to Sahdeo [Sahadeva], one of the five demigod brothers of the Mahabharata, to this effect:  ’If you hear not the thunder on such a night, you, father, go to Malwa, I to Gujarat;’—­that is, there will be no rain, and we must seek subsistence where rains never fail, and the harvests are secure.

The province of Malwa is well studded with hills and groves of fine trees, which intercept the clouds as they are wafted by the prevailing westerly winds, from the Gulf of Cambay to the valley of the Ganges, and make them drop their contents upon a soil of great natural powers, formed chiefly from the detritus of the decomposing basaltic rocks, which cap and intersect these hills.[6]

During the famine of 1833, as on all similar occasions, grain of every kind, attracted by high prices, flowed up in large streams from this favoured province towards Bundelkhand; and the population of Bundelkhand, as usual in such times of dearth and scarcity, flowed off towards Malwa against the stream of supply, under the assurance that the nearer they got to the source, the greater would be their chance of employment and subsistence.  Every village had its numbers of the dead and the dying; and the roads were all strewed with them; but they were mostly concentrated upon the great towns and civil and military stations, where subscriptions were open[ed] for their support, by both the European and native communities.  The funds arising from these subscriptions lasted till the rains had set fairly in, when all able-bodied persons could easily find employment in tillage among the agricultural communities of villages around.  After the rains have fairly set in, the sick and helpless only should be kept concentrated upon large towns and stations, where little or no employment is to be found; for the oldest and youngest of those who are able to work can then easily find employment in weeding the cotton, rice, sugar-cane, and other fields under autumn crops, and in preparing the lands for the reception of the wheat, gram,[7] and other spring seeds; and get advances from the farmers, agricultural capitalists[8] and other members of the village communities, who are all glad to share their superfluities with the distressed, and to pay liberally for the little service they are able to give in return.