A Popular Account of the Manners and Customs of IndiaAcland, Charles
History
A Popular Account of the Manners and Customs of India
Acland, Charles
India -- Description and travel; India -- Social life and customs
A friend has just made me a present of a very small kind of monkey,
about nine inches high, of a light-brown colour. His antics are
often very amusing. I fasten him by a chain to a thick pole in the
compound, at the top of which is his house. He will sometimes turn
his waterpot upside down and sit on it in the gravest possible
manner. He will then perhaps stoop down and gather a blade of grass,
and examine it as attentively as though he were inquiring to what
species and genus it belonged. Perhaps by this time several large
knowing-looking crows, something like English magpies, will have
collected round him, holding their heads on one side and looking as
if they were listening very attentively to his lecture on botany.
Presently you would see the sly little monkey turn his eye to see
how near they are, and then with one bound he will catch hold of the
nearest crow by the neck; but the crow is the stronger of the two
and always gets away safe. These crows are as common as sparrows
and quite as tame, for they will hop into the verandah and pick up
anything the parrots drop. We have two parrots; they are of a kind
very common here; so I told a man to go out and catch me a couple, as
I wanted to teach them to talk. He did so, and they are now getting
very tame. I gave him a few pice for his trouble. They are of a
kind that I do not remember ever to have seen in England. The upper
mandible is red, the lower black. From the lower mandible extends on
each side a broad black stripe, to where we suppose the ears to be;
and there is another black stripe from one eye to the other. These
stripes give the bird a very peculiar appearance. The upper circle
resembles a pair of tortoiseshell spectacles.
I had a young hyæna given to me, which I made every endeavour to
tame, giving him milk and food, but nevertheless as soon as I
approached he flew at me. As he has scarcely any teeth I did not fear
him, but took him in my arms, being careful to keep a tight hold on
his neck. He slept during the day, but showed an inclination to go
out at night, but, not being permitted to do so, continued making the
most extraordinary noises resembling the sobbing of a child in pain.
The servants were all afraid of him. Having kept us awake that night,
I resolved the next to try him outside the house, and accordingly,
fastening him up, I gave him a box to sleep in. The next morning I
found he was dead. The servants declared he had been killed by a pack
of jackals, but I shrewdly suspected they themselves to have been
guilty.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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