The goat

pected of picking up more than alms. kneels as a salaam; sometimes he stands with all four feet carefully adjusted on a pile of hour-glassshaped blocks of wood, and he serves as charger to the monkeys, who put on caps and coats and are jerked to and fro by their chains in a sort of dance, their hungry eyes intently watching the crowd for

something to eat. They are Rajas going to court, they are Lord Generals-in-Chief going to fight, they are champions and swordsmen; and they do everything with sad indifference to the accompaniment of a droning mechanical patter intoned with an air of profound boredom. While confessing that this performance always makes me melancholy, I must admit that children, for whom it is intended, and who ought to be good judges, are delighted by it.

To some generations of Anglo-Indian children as well as countless hosts of native little ones it has given a vast amount of gratification.

Dogs are so entirely neglected that the ordinary fetch-and-carry tricks of an English spaniel or retriever are looked at with astonishment, and you are listened to with polite incredulity when you describe the performances of a good collie with sheep.

I have mentioned the elephant in another place, but while cordially acknowledging that Indian mahouts have a complete and most intimate mastery and knowledge of their own peculiar beast, I would point out that it is naturally docile and gentle, and that American and English circus trainers make the creature do more than the most skilful mahout has taught.

It is seldom in Northern India that the bulls led about by the quasi-religious mendicants known as "Anandi" do more than shake their heads or kneel at a sign of command. With a clever boniment or patter even this much might be made entertaining, but the patter is seldom clever. In Southern India a bull and a cow are sometimes made to enact a quarrel and a reconciliation, but there is not a showman in Europe who would consider the animals taught to any purpose. So little contents an audience of rustic Indian folk, and when you call your bull Rama, and your cow Sita, and they are, to begin with, sacred and most cherished objects, there is obviously no need for elaborate performances.

As to horses, they are not so much trained as constrained, with the often cruel constraint of a timorous hand. No animal throughout India is brought to that wonderful pitch of education shown by the horses employed in railway shunting yards in England, where trains are made up. At a word these fine animals put forth a measured strength

to set a carriage in motion, at a gesture they stop or turn; they seem to know the intricate points of the rails as well as the signalman; and, their service done, they take up of themselves their own place in the labyrinth of iron, standing unmoved while the locomotives go roaring and screaming past.

No, the Oriental is not a firstrate animal trainer. With almost boundless patience, he has no stead

fastness of aim, nor has he sufficient firmness of hand and will to secure confidence and obedience.

Yet, while the art of training may not be very thoroughly understood, the tribes which have to do with jungle life are often wonderful trackers and highly skilled in woodcraft. Many English sportsmen in their talk, and some sporting writers in their books, fail to do justice to the courage and skill of the unarmed assistants on whom they depend for success. There are many chases in which the honours ought to go to the bold and patient trackers who mark down the game day after day, and manage to drive it up to the guns of the wellfed English gentlemen, waiting serene and safe with a battery of the best weapons London gunsmiths can provide. This mistake in taste and judgment is not made by such masters as Sir S. Baker and Mr. Sanderson, who show a friendly sympathy with their assistants.

CHAPTER XV

OF REPTILES

"And death is in the garden awaiting till we pass,

For the krait is in the drain-pipe,

The cobra in the grass."

Anglo-Indian Nursery Rhymes.-R. K.

to Vishnu, and the hoods of his thousand heads

In

are clustered like the curls of a breaking wave in a canopy over the form of the Creator. rustic ceremonies, survivals of the antique prime,