28 TWO YEAES IN THE JUNGLE. 



the railway engineer I once saw, who, caught and crushed beneath 

 his wrecked locomotive, with the scalding water pouring in a 

 stream over his wretched body, screamed in agony and implored 

 his friends to shoot him through the head. But no ; spades were 

 procured, he was dug out, lingered for hours, and the papers 

 calmly stated that he died in great agony ! Alas ! humanity has 

 not yet been educated up to the point which teaches that it is as 

 great an act of duty and kindness to end the miseries of a hopeless- 

 ly burned, boiled, or mangled man by a speedy and painless death, 

 as it is to mercifully put an end to the sufferings of a dumb brute. 

 Were my best friend to implore me to end his hopeless sufferings, 



1 would do it and take the consequences. And I beUeve the time 

 wiU come when mankind, as a class,, will be as merciful to man as 

 the more humane of us are to lower animals. 



There are few marine animals to be found in the vicinity of 

 Bombay, except the fishes in the Grand Market, and thither I made 

 a pilgrimage every morning. The most interesting sj)ecimen I 

 procured there was a large blue ray {Trygon sephen), weighing 80 

 pounds, with a body measuring 2 feet 8 uiches in length, by 4 feet 



2 inches in width, of which I prepared the skeleton. FJiinobati are 

 common, but it is a difficult matter to secure one entire, for the 

 moment one of these, or a shark, is landed in a market-stall, its fins 

 and tail are cut off to be dried and shipped to China, where the 

 Chinese eat them in soups and consider them a gi*eat deUcacy. By 

 dint of perseverance I secured one fine specimen [R. djeddensis), 5 

 feet 6 inches in length, the skin of which I preserved dry with salt. 



By the end of a week I had proved to my satisfaction that Bom- 

 bay was no place for me, and determined to go to Allahabad for 

 gavials and other things. My new servant was in doubt about the 

 advisability of going so far away, until one day he caught sight 

 of my guns, ammunition, and camp-outfit, when he suddenly 

 announced, "I no care, sir, I go Allahabad. I like see new 

 country, I like go shoot. I no care how I come back Bombay." 

 I had told him that I could not pay his way back to Bombay after 

 only two months on the Jumna, but that I would take him to Cal- 

 cutta with me if he would go. He suddenly became possessed of 

 a desire for travel and adventure (it overcomes the best of men 

 sometimes), and we quickly concluded a bai'gain. I agreed to pay 

 his expenses and give him 15 rupees per month, for which he was 

 to interpret, cook, skin crocodiles, and do anything that might need 

 to be done. I had found in the bazaars that he was as shrewd aa 



