ii8 A BOOK OF MORTALS 



bad for the next day's work, if their weary limbs seemed 

 too stiff to start afresh. Shot by hundreds lest the Boers 

 should find them recovered by rest. 



But it is in India that we learn really the dependence of 

 man upon cattle. There, from one end of the land to the 

 other, every atom of his food is, in one way or another, the 

 product of their patient toil. In the earliest dawn the 

 plough-oxen are at work in the level fields, seen like white 

 shadows against a primrose sky. There, at late eve, the 

 monotonous hum of some oil or sugar press, hidden in dark 

 corners or amid dense leafage, tells of that patient toil still, 

 and in the dead of night the unceasing song, which, to the 

 western ear, recalls so closely the opening notes of " Home, 

 sweet Home," goes on and on and on as the water wheel sends 

 the birthplace of all things to the parched gaping earth. 



This unending toil is the Secret of Sanctity. In 

 India the people still say, with BufFon : " In regard 

 to maintenance, the excellence of the ox is superior to 

 that of any other creature ; for he restores to the earth 

 as much as he takes from it : he even enriches and im- 

 proves the ground on which he fiseds. Without the aid 

 of this useful animal both the poor and the opulent would 

 find great difficulty in procuring subsistence. The earth 

 would remain uncultivated, our fields and gardens become 

 parched and barren. The ox is the very source and 

 support of agriculture. Formerly he constituted the whole 

 riches of mankind, and he is still the basis of the riches of 

 nations which subsist and flourish in proportion to the culti- 

 vation of their lands and the number of their cattle. For in 

 these all real wealth consists. Every other kind, even gold 

 and silver, being only fictitious representations, having no 



