SACRED BABOONS. l ^ 



visit; their caprices must be tolerated as the dispensa- 

 tions of beings entitled to the most respectful deference, 

 and unbelievers soon learn to consult their own interests 

 by avoiding an open violation of that rule. It is far 

 safer to thrash a Hindoo than to kick a sacred baboon; 

 forgiveness of personal injuries is a duty, but all wor- 

 shippers of Brahm will risk their lives in defending his 

 favorites. A Hindoo offering violence to a sacred cow 

 would be promptly stoned ; an Englishman would be 

 hooted, pelted, and before long probably waylaid and 

 killed. If he could defy them, they would ostracize him, 

 maltreat his servants, and secretly annoy him in every 

 possible way. When Captain Elphinstone's Scotch gar- 

 dener crippled a bhunder-monkey, the natives howled 

 around the officers' quarters for fifty or sixty successive 

 nights, besides carrying the baboon in procession and 

 nursing him like a sick prince. In Bengal, baboons 

 and crocodiles enjoy, in fact, all the privileges which 

 the bigotry of our ancestors accorded to the monastic 

 orders, common quadrupeds at least the prerogatives 

 of a modern clergyman. 



The results give a fair idea of the natural disposition 

 of wild animals before their habits were biassed by the 

 influence of the Panic emotion, the terror which man 

 himself may have experienced in the imagined presence 

 of a mischievous divinity. Lizards do not dart out of 

 your way, but just crawl aside to let you pass; a fish- 

 hawk will alight on your gate and allow you to approach 



