236 
SCENES IN INDIA. 
most singular exertions of voice and gesture to drive 
them forward. They seemed perfectly to understand 
both his signals and appeals, regularly advancing as he 
directed them. We were startled at his approach. 
This cowherd, for such he really was, being employed 
by the ryots or farmers of the country to take care of 
their cattle, was the most consummate piece of human 
deformity that nature in the wildest extravagance of 
her caprice ever sent into the world : — he was posi- 
tively hideous. He had something, though very little, 
the appearance of a human being, yet apparently be- 
longed to the quadrumanus order of animals, for he 
went on all fours, though he occasionally erected his 
unearthly-looking body, and stood before us in all the 
hideousness of the most monstrous abortion. We 
walked up to some huts at a short distance amid 
the ruins with which the neighbourhood abounds, 
and upon inquiring about this unsightly shape — 
“ If shape it might be called, which shape had none,” 
it actually approached and squatted itself within a 
yard of my heels. It was a human monster, born of 
human parents, and reared by them, as we were in- 
formed, with the greatest care and tenderness. It was 
about five-and-twenty years old, strong, healthy, 
and very tractable, but speechless ; and this evidently 
from organic imperfection, as its sense of hearing was 
not in the least impaired. Thfe head was tolerably 
perfect, though the features were extremely repulsive ; 
but the cerebrum was so much depressed that 
the head seemed almost to terminate with the eye- 
brows. The body was out of all proportion, being 
