newsmongers, idle loungers, merchants, sightseers--all the flotsam and
jetsam of the city. It is always a scene of wonderful colour and
movement. The sun strikes into the dusty ways on turbans of red, green,
and orange; on robes of white, pink and blue; on petticoats of rose and
saffron; on the bronze bodies of almost naked coolies who march along
beneath their loads. People of every colour--white, brown, black,
yellow--jostle each other in the crowded ways, and there is a
bewildering variety of tint and form in the striking and picturesque
scene.
[Illustration: A BAZAAR, DELHI. _Chapter XVI_.]
The shops are, as a rule, of the simplest nature in form--an archway, a
booth, a hole in a wall. Upon a low platform the trader spreads his
wares, squats beside them, and waits for customers. Let us stroll along
a row of shops and see what they have for sale. The first shop has a
crowd of customers, for it is a confectioner's, and the Hindoo, big or
little, old or young, has a very sweet tooth. The confectioner spreads
his wares on tiers of shelves or on a counter made of dried mud and
rising in steps, and at the back of his shop is a sugar-boiling furnace,
where he is busy on fresh supplies, pulling candy or making cakes of
batter fried in butter. He sells toffee covered with silver-leaf, candy
flavoured with spices, and many kinds of a sweet called luddu, made of
sugar and curded milk. This stall is not only a great attraction to the
children who have a pie (about one-third of an English farthing) to
spend, but to the flies also. The latter come in myriads to settle on
the sweet stuff, and though a boy is always at work with a whisk trying
to drive them away, he can never keep the place clear.
Opposite the confectioner's is the flour-seller, and he, too, is a very
busy man, for from his stall the everyday wants of the people are
supplied. Great numbers of the Hindoos never touch meat, and the
bunniah (the grain-seller) furnishes the whole of their food. He has a
great number of baskets, and these are piled high with barley, wheat,
lentils, flour, sugar, peas, rice, potatoes, nuts, dried fruits, and the
like. He also sells ghee (clarified butter) and sour milk. He has a
big pair of scales to weigh out his flour, sugar, peas, or whatever may
be called for, but no bags to pack them in: he leaves that to the
customers. One brings a cloth, another a basin, another a brass ewer
for milk. Many have nothing, and they carry away their purchases in
their hands, or, if that be impossible, flour is poured into the corner
of a shawl or the fold of a robe. One man unwraps his turban and knots
his purchases into various corners of it, twists it into shape again,
and goes off with his day's supply on his head. Butter and milk are
carried away in a green leaf dexterously twisted into the form of a cup.
The next shop is one which finds the grain-seller a very convenient
neighbour, for it is a shop which sells parched grain--a bhunja's shop.
At first glance there seems nothing in the place, then you notice a
large shallow pan set on a mud platform. Under the pan a fire burns,
and a woman steadily feeds the fire with dry leaves and husks. A second
woman is stirring the corn in the pan, and as the grain parches and
crackles a delicious smell fills the place, and passers-by sniff it, and
stop and throw down a small copper coin on the mud platform, which is
also the counter. Then they hold out their hands or a fold of a robe,
and receive the sweet-smelling parched wheat or maize, and go on,
munching as they walk.
Next comes a goldsmith's. Here is no glittering shop with ornaments and
precious vessels in the window, as in a London street, but an archway or
a booth of mud exactly like his neighbours'. The goldsmith himself is
at work with his blowpipe at a little brazier, softening and shaping a
piece of gold into a bangle for a customer. He is a busy man, for the
country women bring him their silver to be made up into the ornaments
they love, and he has always a store of ear-rings and bracelets to sell.
He sells his goods by weight, and weighs them in a most delicate pair of
scales, which he keeps in a sandalwood box. His weights are the oddest
things in the world--"tiny scraps of glass, a bean perhaps, an irregular
chunk of some metal, a bit of stick, a red and black seed, an odd morsel
of turquoise, and a thin leaf of mother-o'-pearl." His customers thus
have to take the weight on his word; and they do not always care about
that, for, as the saying goes, a goldsmith would cheat his own mother on
the scales. So that hot words often fly to and fro across the mud floor
of his little shop, and passers-by pause to listen to the fierce
dispute.
Beyond the goldsmith's stands the shop of a cloth merchant, and this is
a very fine shop, one of the grandest in the bazaar. So large is the
merchant's stock that his booth is really big, or he fills three or four
archways with his piles of calico and woollen. Here you may buy the
strong woollen and cotton cloths of the country, made well and dyed in
quiet, tasteful colours--goods which will wash and wear for year after
year. But, alas! you may also buy from an even greater store of the
poorest and cheapest goods which Manchester can turn out--cottons which
will be of the flimsiest as soon as the dressing is washed out of them,
cheap gaudy woollens made of shoddy, and silks of no greater strength
than the paper which enwraps them. For the craze for cheapness has
invaded the Indian bazaar as elsewhere, and the splendid old silk
muslins, the brocade which would last for a century, the woollen shawl
that was handed down from mother to daughter, find few or no buyers
nowadays.
The druggist (the pansari-ji) contents himself with one small room, but
it is packed from floor to ceiling with a thousand odds and ends--drugs,
medicines, spices, one can hardly tell what. He wraps his more precious
wares in scraps of paper, and stows them away in baskets, boxes, pots,
and pigeon-holes in the wall. He prides himself on keeping everything in
stock in his line, and one writer speaks of testing a pansari-ji by
asking for cuttle-fish bone, "and lo! there it was--just two or three
small broken pieces in a paper screw." The druggist may be the doctor
of his quarter as well, and a favourite method of cure will be to write
a mysterious talisman on a scrap of paper or a betel-leaf. This is
rolled into a pill and swallowed by the patient. Opium he sells
largely, and at evening he dispenses the sleep-compelling drug to knot
after knot of customers.
The fruit-dealer's shop makes a beautiful patch of colour in the bazaar,
with its heaps of golden oranges, of purple plums, of speckled
pomegranates, of jackfruits and guavas, and many other kinds. But, as a
rule, the fruit-dealers and greengrocers like a stall in a more open
place, where they can pile their big melons up in a heap, and spread
their wares in the lee of a wall, and throw an awning over to keep the
sun off.
Now comes the cookshop, where rows of turbaned customers are squatted on
the floor with bowls before them, and the busy cook is at work over a
fireplace fed with dried leaves. He fries cakes of rice in oil, he
spits half a dozen scraps of meat on a wooden skewer, and roasts them
over charcoal. Then a big pot simmers over the fire of leaves, and the
smell of a "double-onioned" stew is wafted across the place to mingle
with a thousand other queer smells of the bazaar. He sells vegetables
done up into all kinds of shapes, and made hot to the taste with plenty
of curry; he pickles carrots; he has sweetmeats and great stores of
pillau, a dish of meat cooked in rice. He has plenty of customers, for
his prices are very low.
Then there is the kobariya, the marine-store dealer of the bazaar, whose
shop is heaped with second-hand clothes, scrap-iron, and odds and ends.
Mrs. Steel gives a vivid description of the wares of the kobariya:
"Old things, and still older things, upside down, higgledy-piggledy,
hang on the top of each other: a patent rat-trap shouldering a broken
lamp, an officer's tunic sheltering a pile of tent-pegs, a bazaar pipkin
on top of some priceless old plate, a parrot's cage filled with French
novels, a moth-eaten saddle keeping company with an old sword, and over
all, sufficient scrap-iron to furnish forth a foundry; and in an old
caldron, incense spoons, little brass gods, prayer measures, sacred
fire-holders, all mixed up with battered electro-plated forks, hot-water
jug lids, and every conceivable kind of rubbish."
*CHAPTER XVII*
*IN THE JUNGLE*
The jungle, the Indian forest, is the home of many wild creatures, and
the sportsman who goes into it in search of them often has to take his
life in his hands. This is true, above all, if he is pursuing the tiger,
the most ferocious beast that India knows, the king of the jungle. It
is true, there are lions in India, but not many, and the Indian lion is
of no great importance: the tiger is the beast of beasts.
The tiger is a terrible scourge to the Indian herdsman: a big brute will
often take up his quarters near a village, and levy a regular toll on
the village herds, killing cow after cow, and buffalo after buffalo. He
is often perfectly well known, and the villagers see him about the
roads, or crossing their fields, or gliding through the jungle without a
sound on his soft pads. If a dozen of them are together they do not fear
him: they march right through his haunts, shouting and singing, rattling
sticks on the bamboo-trunks, and beating drums, and he gets out of the
way and stops there. This is if he be an ordinary tiger, a
cattle-killer; but if a man-eater haunts the neighbourhood, then the
ryot's soul is filled with fear. He dares scarcely leave his house: to
leave the village is to face a terrible danger; he knows not when the
monster may steal upon him.
The man-eater goes about his work in dreadful silence. The ordinary
tiger will often make the jungle ring again with his hoarse, deep roar;
not so the man-eater. The latter glides without a sound, and under
cover of a patch of bamboos or a clump of reeds, up to the wood-cutter
felling a tree, or up to the peasant in his rice-field, or up to a woman
fetching water from the well. Silent as death, he bounds upon his
victims and fells them with a single stunning blow of that huge paw
driven by muscles of steel. The great white fangs are buried for an
instant in the throat, then the body is lifted in the mouth as a dog
lifts a rat, and is carried away to the lair, where he makes his
dreadful meal.
Most remarkable stories are told of the ferocity and daring of
man-eating tigers. They have been known to venture boldly into a
village by night and carry off sleepers who had sought a cool couch out
of doors in the summer heats, and by day they have made fields and roads
quite impossible places to venture into. Villages and whole tracts of
country have at times been deserted by their inhabitants owing to the
ravages of these ferocious creatures, and when an English sportsman
arrives to tackle the savage beast he is hailed as a deliverer.
There are two favourite ways of hunting a tiger. The first depends on
the fact that he must drink. The sportsman, by means of native watchers,
discovers the pool or water-hole where the tiger quenches his thirst.
Then in a field near at hand is built a machan, a little platform where
the hunter may watch and wait for his prey. He climbs into the machan
at sunset, and waits till the tiger comes to drink at some time between
the dark and the dawn, when a fortunate shot will put an end to the
marauder.
The other way--a far more exciting and picturesque fashion--is to pursue
the tiger upon elephants. The sportsmen are in open howdahs, and the
elephants crash their way through the long grass, the reeds, the young
bamboos, in search of the tiger. At last the tiger is driven into the
open, and bullet after bullet is poured into his body by the marksmen.
He is rarely killed at once, and in his agony he will often turn upon
his pursuers with terrible fury. This is the moment of danger. With
the horrible coughing roar of a charging tiger, he hurls himself with
tremendous bounds upon his foes. His eyes blaze like green emeralds,
his great fangs glitter like ivory. At springing distance he leaves the
ground and shoots through the air like a thunderbolt, full upon the
nearest elephant. Now is the time to try the sportsman's nerve and
steadiness of aim. Unless the tiger be struck down by the heavy bullet,
he will land with teeth and claws upon the flank of the elephant,
striking and tearing with terrible effect at his foes.
[Illustration: A NATIVE WOMAN WEARING NOSE ORNAMENT. _Page 57_.]
More lives have been lost, however, by sportsmen following up a wounded
tiger on foot. The tiger lies apparently stiff and still, as if already
dead. The hunter comes too near, and finds that there is a flicker of
life left. Before he can retreat, the wounded beast puts forth its last
strength to spring upon him and take a terrible revenge for its
injuries.
We said that the tiger is the king of the Indian jungle. There are some
observers who dispute this; they award the palm to the elephant.
Certainly there can be no more majestic sight than a herd of wild
elephants in their native jungle. They move slowly along, staying now
and again to crop the young shoots or to spout water over themselves at
a pool or river. The huge grey bodies, on the round, pillar-like legs;
the great flapping ears; the swinging, curling trunks; the rolling,
lumbering walk, present a scene of great interest, heightened by the
antics of the baby elephants, the calves, who trot along by their
mothers and frisk around the herd.
The Indian elephant is rarely pursued and shot--it is far too valuable;
but the capture and taming of these mighty creatures is very exciting
and interesting work. In Central India, especially in Mysore, their
capture is usually carried out by means of a kheddah, a kind of pound.
Two huge fences are built in the forest in the shape of a mighty V. The
wide end of the V is often a mile or more across, and into this end a
herd of wild elephants will be driven by great numbers of beaters. The
elephants are urged forward to a large enclosure, into which the narrow
end of the V opens. Once they are in this, a great gate is dropped
behind them, and they are imprisoned.
Now the work of taming them begins. Tame elephants take a great share
in this, and show much cleverness in bringing their wild brethren into
captivity. Two or three tame elephants, each with a driver on its back,
will surround a wild one, and hustle and push it towards a strong tree.
Now a man slips down from the back of a tame elephant, and slips a noose
of strong rope round the leg of the wild one. This is dangerous work,
and the man has to be very quick and skilful. The rope is now thrown
round the tree, and drawn tight. Other ropes are soon fastened, and the
huge wild creature is made a prisoner.
The task of taming him at once begins. From the first the men move
about the captive and talk to him, to accustom him to their sight and
presence. They give him plenty of nice things to eat, and from the
first he does not refuse food, except in very rare cases. Very often
within a couple of days the elephant is taking pieces of sugar-cane and
fruit from the hands of his keepers. Now the friendship grows rapidly.
The men begin to pat and caress the huge captive as they sing and talk
to him, and within a couple of weeks his bonds are loosened, and he is
led away between two tame companions to complete his education.
There is one elephant that no one tries, or dares to try, to capture.
This is the "rogue," and he is pursued and shot at once, if possible. A
rogue elephant is a savage, vicious brute who has left the herd and
taken to a solitary life. They are very dangerous, and many of them
will attack either man or beast that may come in their way. Their great
size and vast strength render them easy conquerors over all they meet,
and a rogue elephant is the dread of the neighbourhood where he roams.
To hunt him is a very dangerous sport. He is very wary, very cunning,
and quite fearless. If fired upon he charges full upon his foes, and,
unless a well-directed bullet brings him down, the death of the hunter
is certain. The rogue hurls him down and tramples upon him, smashing
the body beneath his huge feet.
*CHAPTER XVIII*
*IN THE JUNGLE (*_*continued*_*)*
Through the jungle bound also the swift deer and the graceful antelopes,
who so often have to fly before the pursuit of their fierce neighbours
the tiger and the panther. The panther, when wounded, is actually more
feared by the hunter than is the tiger. The panther is much smaller
than the tiger, and his grey skin, dotted with black spots, enables him
to hide himself easily among the tangle of the forest undergrowth, for
he resembles a patch of shade. His limbs are long and powerful, and he
is the nimblest of all the jungle dwellers. He can run like a leopard
and climb like a monkey.
He often lies in wait for his prey on a broad, low-hanging branch; then,
as the deer passes below, he springs full upon it, and bears it to the
ground. He is very savage, and always full of fight, and his ferocity
is employed with wonderful cunning. Two men have been known to fire
upon a panther and hit it. They were apparently safe, each in a machan
set in a tall tree. The wounded brute has darted up one tree and clawed
the man there in fearful fashion; then, quick as lightning, it has
descended, climbed into the second tree, and attacked its second
assailant. No other animal does this. As a rule, a wounded beast makes
a blind rush; but the panther seems to reason, to calculate.
The bear is just the opposite. The natives consider him the most stupid
of animals. They say he is so stupid that he does not know enough to
get out of the way. He will stretch himself in the warm dust of a
jungle path, and lie there until, in the dusk, the passer-by stumbles
over him. Then he is angry. He rises and strikes out with his long
claws, and often deals terrible wounds, for he strikes at the head. One
writer speaks of seeing a man whose face was torn away--every feature
gone--with a single stroke of a bear's paw. But it is easy to avoid
this. On such a path a native sings or shouts as he walks along. The
bear is aroused by the noise, and moves away into the jungle.
The wild boar gives great sport over the plains and among the hills of
India. He is hunted on horseback, just as the fox is hunted in England,
save that each rider has a spear with which to strike at the big, savage
beast. When he turns at bay he is a very dangerous animal. First he
"squats"--that is, he turns round and sits on his haunches--thrusting
out his snout, armed with great sharp tusks, towards his pursuers. Then
he picks out a horseman, and charges him furiously. A fine hand with a
spear will now stop him with a thrust in a vital part; but if the thrust
fails, the boar will often fetch down horse and rider.
Then comes a time of great danger, for the boar will rip up both horse
and man with swift turns of his keen tusks unless his attention be drawn
aside by other attacks. In the end he falls under many spear-thrusts.
A walk through an open piece of jungle is very beautiful. The bamboos
with their feathery crowns, the many trees covered with beautiful
flowers, the merry bands of monkeys which skip from branch to branch,
all draw the eye and the attention; but, at the same time, it is best to
watch where you are going. All of a sudden your native guide stops you
and tells you to step carefully. You look, and see something in the
path among the sand looking like a dirty little stick. But do not tread
on it. It is the deadliest snake in India, and its bite means certain
death. Or you think you would like to sit down on a fallen tree to
rest. Well, do not sit on that log which seems to have a bright patch
of fungus growing about the middle of it. Throw a stick at the patch
first. Ah! it uncoils, and a venomous reptile slides into the grass
with angry hiss.
Look out, too, for the hooded cobra, who will sometimes dispute the way
with you, rearing himself on his lower coils, and erecting his swelling
hood, and "meaning venom." But the most wonderful snake of all is the
huge python, the boa-constrictor, 20 to 25 feet long, and with a body as
thick as a man's thigh. This huge snake destroys its prey by pressure,
winding its coils round the creature's body, and crushing it to death.
Then it swallows the body entire.
Another creature greatly dreaded by the natives belongs partly to the
land and partly to the water. This is the alligator--a hideous grey
brute, with huge jaws, furnished with long rows of teeth, and a long
tail of immense power. On land the natives trouble little about this
great reptile, for his legs are short and his powers of pursuit are
small; but in the water or on the sandy margin it is a very different
affair. Be careful where you bathe or draw water. A single sweep of
that powerful tail will hurl you into the stream, and the alligator,
lurking in the shallows, has seized you for his prey. Above all, it is
necessary to be careful when walking along the pleasant sandy bank which
often borders a river. Here and there grey logs seem to be lying on the
sand. They may be logs or they may be alligators sunning themselves.
In the latter case, if the walker be on the land side, well and good;
but if he incautiously ventures between the alligator and the river, it
is at the peril of his life. With the aid of his powerful tail, the
frightful reptile hurls himself across the sand for a short distance at
wonderful speed, then his mighty jaws open and close upon his victim,
and the latter is dragged under water in the twinkling of an eye.
The tiger himself, unmatched in combat with any other beast of the
jungle, sometimes falls a prey to the alligator. Coming to drink at the
river, the king of the jungle is seized by the waiting reptile. A
terrific struggle follows. Unable to wrench himself from those mighty
jaws, the tiger uses his terrible fangs and claws on the alligator's
back. Here for once they fail on that coat of horny scales. The tiger
does not know that the alligator is soft beneath, and there could be
ripped up by his claws of steel, and he continues to spend his strength
in vain. Inch by inch he is dragged into the river, and once under
water, he is lost. He swiftly drowns, and the alligators feast on his
body.
*CHAPTER XIX*
*IN AN INDIAN VILLAGE*
We have spoken of temples and palaces and the magnificence of Kings and
nobles, but now we must turn to the homes of the common people, and see
how they live and work. Anyone who adopted the idea that India is a
land of general riches and splendour would be making a very great
mistake. The vast mass of the people live, not merely in the simplest
fashion, but also in the poorest fashion, for the land can scarce
produce enough food to satisfy the wants of its teeming millions. If
the rains should fail and a crop go wrong, there is famine at once over
wide districts, and vast numbers perish.
An Indian village is a collection of small huts, with walls of mud and
roof of thatch. At break of day the men, the ryots, go out to labour in
the fields which surround the place, putting their bullocks into the
light wooden plough, which scarcely does more than scratch the soil. In
the shallow furrow thus formed they sow the grain, and then with hoe and
mattock they clean the weeds from a crop which is already springing up.
These few simple tools serve all the purposes of the husbandman, just as
they served his forefathers a thousand years ago.
The women of the village go to the well to draw water, passing on their
way the village temple, where they offer fruits and flowers to the stone
image of the Hindoo god, in whose honour the temple was built. When they
have drawn their water, they return home to cook food and to work in the
small compound which surrounds each mud hut. Here they grow trees,
which yield the mango, plantain, guava, and other fruits.
As they go back to their homes they cast looks of deep interest at the
door of a house where a figure is seated. It is a Brahmin sitting in
dharna, for this is an out-of-the-way village where old customs cling
fast.
[Illustration: A NATIVE BULLOCK CART. _Page 86_.]