18 ROUGHING IT IN SOUTHERN INDIA 



baggage, etc., came on in bullock-carts travelling at a very 

 slow rate, and covering on an average not more than two 

 miles an hour. Some, however, had been sent on ahead 

 with supplies. 



Amongst our post-bullocks, as far as we could prevent it, 

 there was no tail-twisting or breaking — the method adopted 

 all over India to induce these deliberate animals to hurry. 

 The poor creatures may be seen with their tails in perfect 

 zigzags owing to this practice. Nothing maddened me 

 more when travelling in a hired coach than to hear the 

 sickening snap and crack of the joints as the driver applied 

 this torture to his ' biles.' * He would not do it more than 

 once on that journey, you may be sure, though no doubt 

 he thought, privately, that he had some strange kind of 

 idiot as a fare ! 



On one occasion when we gave up riding, the track being 

 too steep, at least for my nerves, and not affording any 

 pleasant footing for the horses themselves if weighted, a 

 set of little people were in readiness to carry me in my 

 palanquin. They had engaged to do so, that is to say. 

 Very quaint they were ; not professional bearers, but 

 leather-workers, or rather tanners, and therefore of the 

 lowest caste, almost outcast, as one might express it ; for no 

 one else associates with them, their trade in the skins of 

 killed animals forbidding it. No other bearers were avail- 

 able just then or there for a short distance, or we 

 should never have employed the unpleasant little creatures 

 at all. 



Their native name I am not now sure of, though I think 

 it was ' Churmers ' : they were very dark-skinned, with 

 shocks of black hair ; small and squat and very lightly 

 clothed, and very, very evil-smelling. Two men of the real 

 bearer sort would have sufficed for such a light palanquin 

 as mine — with relays, of course — but it took four of these 



1 Bullocks. 



