Concerning Animals and Other Matters by Edward Hamilton Aitken (surface ebook reader TXT) 📕

of this is enhanced by their gentleness and the softness of their movements.

But if you want to see them properly, you must be careful not to frighten them, for there is no creature more timid at heart than a snake. One will sometimes let you get quite near to it and watch it, simply because it does not notice you, being rather deaf and very shortsighted, but when it does discover your presence, its one thought is to slip away quietly and hide itself. It is on account of this extreme timidity that we see them so seldom.

Of the two hundred and thirty-seven kinds that I have referred to, some are, of course, very rare, or only found in particular parts of the country, but at least forty or fifty of them occur everywhere, and some are as plentiful as crows. Yet they keep themselves out of our way so successfully that it is quite a rare event to meet with one. Occasionally one finds its way into a house in quest of frogs, lizards, musk-rats, or some other of the numerous malefactors that use our dwellings as cities of refuge from the avenger, and it is discovered by the Hamal behind a cupboard, or under a carpet. He does the one thing which it occurs to a native to do in any emergency--viz. raises an alarm. Then there is a general hubbub, servants rush together with the longest sticks they can find, the children are hurried away to a place of safety, the master appears on the scene, armed with his gun, and the

Wee, sleekit, cowrin', tim'rous beastie,

trying to slip away from the fuss which it dislikes so much, is headed, and blown, or battered, to pieces. Then its head is pounded to a jelly, for the servants are agreed that, if this precaution is omitted, it will revive during the night and come and coil itself on the chest of its murderer.

Finally a council is held and a unanimous resolution recorded that deceased was a serpent of the deadliest kind. This is not a lie, for they believe it; but in the great majority of cases it is an untruth. Of our two hundred and thirty-seven kinds of snakes only forty-four are ranked by naturalists as venomous, and many of these are quite incapable of killing any animal as large as a man. Others are very rare or local. In short, we may reckon the poisonous snakes with which we have any practical concern at four kinds, and the chance of a snake found in the house belonging to one of these kinds stands at less than one in ten.

It is a sufficiently terrible thought, however, that there are even four kinds of reptiles going silently about the land whose bite is certain death. If they knew their powers and were maliciously disposed, our life in the East would be like Christian's progress through the Valley of the Shadow of Death. But the poisonous snakes are just as timid as the rest, and as little inclined to act on the offensive against any living creature except the little animals on which they prey. Even a trodden worm will turn, and a snake has as much spirit as a worm. If a man treads on it, it will turn and bite him. But it has no desire to be trodden on. It does its best to avoid that mischance, and, I need scarcely say, so does a man unless he is drunk. When both parties are sincerely anxious to avoid a collision, a collision is not at all likely to occur, and the fact is that, of all forms of death to which we are exposed in India, death by snake-bite is about the one which we have least reason to apprehend.

During a pretty long residence in India I have heard of only one instance of an Englishman being killed by a snake. It was in Manipur, and I read of it in the newspapers. During the same time I have heard of only one death by lightning and one by falling into the fermenting vat of a brewery, so I suppose these accidents are equally uncommon. Eating oysters is much more fatal: I have heard of at least four or five deaths from that cause.

The natives are far more exposed to danger from snakes than we are, because they go barefoot, by night as well as day, through fields and along narrow, overgrown footpaths about their villages. The tread of a barefooted man does not make noise enough to warn a snake to get out of his way, and if he treads on one, there is nothing between its fangs and his skin. Again, the huts of the natives, being made of wattle and daub and thatched with straw, offer to snakes just the kind of shelter that they like, and the wonder is that naked men, sleeping on the ground in such places, and poking about dark corners, among their stores of fuel and other chattels, meet with so few accidents. It says a great deal for the mild and inoffensive nature of the snake. Still, the total number of deaths by snake-bite reported every year is very large, and looks absolutely appalling if you do not think of dividing it among three hundred millions. Treated in that way it shrivels up at once, and when compared with the results of other causes of death, looks quite insignificant.

The natives themselves are so far from regarding the serpent tribe with our feelings that the deadliest of them all has been canonised and is treated with all the respect due to a sub-deity. No Brahmin, or religious-minded man of any respectable caste, will have a cobra killed on any account. If one takes to haunting his premises, he will propitiate it with offerings of silk and look for good luck from its patronage.

About snakes other than the cobra the average native concerns himself so little that he does not know one from another by sight. They are all classed together as _janwar,_ a word which answers exactly to the "venomous beast" of Acts xxviii. 4; and though they are aware that some are deadly and some are not, any particular snake that a _sahib_ has had the honour to kill is one of the deadliest as a matter of course. I have never met a native who knew that a venomous snake could be distinguished by its fangs, except a few doctors and educated men who have imbibed western science. In fact they do not think of the venom as a material substance situated in the mouth. It is an effluence from the entire animal, which may be projected at a man in various ways, by biting him, or spitting at him, or giving him a flick with the tail.

The Government of India spends a large sum of money every year in rewards for the destruction of snakes. This is one of those sacrifices to sentiment which every prudent government offers. The sentiment to which respect is paid in this case is of course British, not Indian. Indian sentiment is propitiated by not levying any tax on dogs, so the pariah cur, owned and disowned, in all stages of starvation, mange and disease, infests every town and village, lying in wait for the bacillus of rabies. Against the one fatal case of snake-bite mentioned above, I have known of at least half a dozen deaths among Englishmen from the more horrible scourge of hydrophobia. In the steamer which brought me home there were two private soldiers on their way to M. Pasteur, at the expense, of course, of the British Government.


X


THE INDIAN SNAKE-CHARMER

We must wait for another month or two before we can think of the winter in this country in the past tense, but in India the month of March is the beginning of the hot season, and the tourists who have been enjoying the pleasant side of Anglo-Indian life and assuring themselves that their exiled countrymen have not much to grumble at will now be making haste to flee.

During the month the various hotels of Bombay will be pretty familiar with the grey sun-hat, fortified with _puggaree_ and pendent flap, which is the sign of the globe-trotter in the East. And all the tribe of birds of prey who look upon him as their lawful spoil will recognise the sign from afar and gather about him as he sits in the balcony after breakfast, taking his last view of the gorgeous East, and perhaps (it is to be feared) seeking inspiration for a few matured reflections wherewith to bring the forthcoming book to an impressive close. The vendor of Delhi jewellery will be there and the Sind-work-box-walla, with his small, compressed white turban and spotless robes, and the Cashmere shawl merchant and many more, pressing on the gentleman's notice for the last time their most tempting wares and preparing for the long bout of fence which will decide at what point between "asking price" and "selling price" each article shall change ownership. The distance between these two points is wide and variable, depending upon the indications of wealth about the purchaser's person and the indications of innocence about his countenance.

And when the poor globe-trotter, who has long since spent more money than he ever meant to spend, and loaded himself with things which he could have got cheaper in London or New York, tries to shake off his tormentors by getting up and leaning over the balcony rails, the shrill voice of the snake-charmer will assail him from below, promising him, in a torrent of sonorous Hindustanee, variegated with pigeon English and illuminated with wild gesticulations, such a superfine _tamasha_ as it never was the fortune of the _sahib_ to witness before.

_Tamasha_ is one of those Indian words, like _bundobust_, for which there is no equivalent in the English language, and which are at once so comprehensive and so expressive that, when once the use of them has been acquired, they become indispensable, so that they have gained a permanent place in the Anglo-Indian's vocabulary. It is not slang, but a good word of ancient origin. Hobson-Jobson quotes a curious Latin writer on the Empire of the Grand Mogul, who uses it with a definition appended, "ut spectet Thamasham, id est pugnas elephantorum, leonum, buffalorum et aliarura ferarum." "Show" comes nearest it in English, but falls far short of it.

The _tamasha_ which the snake-charmer promises the _sahib_ will include serpent dances, a fight between a cobra and a mungoose, the inevitable mango tree, and other tricks of juggling. But to a stranger the snake-charmer himself is a better _tamasha_ than anything he can show. He is indeed a most extraordinary animal. His hair and beard are long and unkempt, his general aspect wild, his clothing a mixture of savagery and the wreckage of civilisation. He wears a turban, of course, and generally a large one; but it is put on without art, just wound about his head anyhow, and hanging lopsidedly over one ear. It and the loose cloth wrapped about the middle of him are as dirty as may be and truly Oriental, though erratic. But, besides these, he wears a jacket of coloured calico, or any other material, with one button fastened, probably on the wrong buttonhole, and under this, if the weather is cold, he may have a shirt seemingly obtained from some Indian representative of Moses & Co.

On his shoulder he carries a long bamboo, from the ends of which hang villainously shabby baskets, some flat and round, occupied by snakes, others large and oblong, filled with apparatus of jugglery. The members of his family, down to an unclothed, precocious imp