SACRED BABOONS. 



I 5 I 



and while the colonel talked to the receiving-clerk, his 

 leopard strolled out to the platform, where a little street- 

 Arab had fallen asleep upon a pile of gunny-bags. The 

 moment he approached that pile a troop of baboons 

 leaped upon the platform, and, instantly surrounding 

 the boy, faced the intruder with bristling manes and 

 menacing growls, evidently resolved to defend their 

 little relative at the risk of their own lives. 



But the trouble is that the Hindoos reciprocate such 

 sympathies : the foreigners are strong and the natives 

 weak, but we are few and they a great many, and ex- 

 perience has shown that it does not pay to hurt their 

 pets. Lord Clyde ridiculed the idea of punishing a 

 man for shooting a wild cow: it is now seven years in 

 the penitentiary. Rough, no doubt, but a lesser evil 

 than the revolt that would otherwise be sure to follow. 

 The Sepoy insurrection originated in a quarrel of that 

 sort : beef-XsMow had been employed in lubricating the 

 cartridges which the native soldiers were required to 

 use. And in the eyes of a Brahmin a honuman is quite 

 as sacred as a cow, and the crime of killing him (though 

 less easily proved) quite as unpardonable. " Bhara 

 Nur /" — "Mercy, mercy!" — is a frequent cry in the 

 streets when a European domestic rushes out of a house 

 in hot pursuit of a four-handed culprit. " Sahib ! Nenna 

 san ghatta!" — "We will make restitution, sir!" — they 

 cry, if it appears that the sacred long-tail has got away 

 with something; "hold! spare him for the sake of 



