/JV£f/A AND ITS NATIVE PRINCES. 
it should afterward continue to revolve, 
without any new impetus, and perform these 
alternate maneuvers for several seconds, is 
the inexplicable point. Our traveler attent- 
ively examined both the stick and the top, 
but could discover no trace of mechanical 
contrivance. 
These jugglers have a number of secret 
artifices of this description, which gain them, 
among the Indians, a reputation for sor- 
cery that proves greatly to their advantage. 
The acrobats go through all the feats familiar 
to Europeans at home, such as swinging on 
the trapeze, climbing and balancing poles, 
etc. ; but that which consists in receiving on 
the shoulder a ball of stone of great weight 
dropped from a very considerable height. 
without the juggler appearing at all hurt, was 
most astonishing. 
Religious mendicants of all sorts, each of 
whom has his special avocation, are little 
less notable than these jugglers. One ex- 
cites the pity of the public by showing him- 
self in the streets entirely naked, or covered 
only with a coating of ashes ; another shows 
proudly his arm, which sticks up bare and 
emaciated, the nails having grown through 
the hand ; while a number of them stand in 
the bazaars and sell amulets and charms, and 
ply many other lucrative trades. But every 
season there is at least one fakir, who con- 
trives, by some novel trick, to make him- 
self the lion of these religious circles. The 
year M. Rousselet visited Jeypoor, it was a 
Hiai 
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