SACRED BABOONS. 



'45 



guerillas destroyed a good many mahakhunds, whose 

 inmates were obliged to take refuge in the neighboring 

 towns; and during the great famine of 1878-79, when 

 the crops had twice failed throughout Bengal and the 

 western Carnatic, bands of destitute monkeys roamed 

 the country in quest of backshish, and were often seen 

 around the depots of the Great Trunk Railroad, glean- 

 ing the offal of the grain-cars and appealing to the 

 charity of the passengers. On the pike-roads holy 

 honumans used to follow the palanquins at a trot, hav- 

 ing found by experience that heretical travellers would 

 sometimes feed them for the edification of the natives. 

 In that time of great need many baboon-hospitals were 

 abandoned, and even the jugglers had to discharge their 

 dancing macaques, leaving them to pick up a living the 

 best way they could. The poor things used to dance 

 on the highway whenever they met a human being, and 

 the Benares Gazette gave a touching description of a 

 scene at the pier of the boat-bridge where two of the 

 little Terpsichoreans waltzed around a blind beggar and 

 every now and then approached him with beseeching 

 squeaks. 



An influx of high-caste monkeys has begun to gravi- 

 tate toward the larger cities, for, considering the enor- 

 mous extent of the country, the mahakhunds are, after 

 all, few and far between, and the charity or the re- 

 sources of the orthodox landed proprietors seem to 

 have declined under the influence of the British do- 



