Concerning Animals and Other MattersAitken, Edward Hamilton
History
Concerning Animals and Other Matters
Aitken, Edward Hamilton
Animal behavior; India -- Social life and customs; Natural history
Her children are tricked out with more fancy. The little brown girl, who
yesterday had not one square inch of cloth on the whole of her tiny
person, comes out a _petite_ miss in a crimson bodice and a white skirt,
with her shining black hair oiled and combed and plaited and decked with
flowers, and her neck and arms and feet twinkling with ornaments. Her
brother of six or seven looks as if he were going to a fancy-dress ball
in the character of His Highness the Holkar. His small head is set in a
great three-cornered Maratha turban, and his body, a stranger to the
feel of clothes, is masked in a resplendent purple jacket. The young men
of the village, such of them as are not gone a-fishing, have donned
clean white jackets. Beyond that they will not go, contemning
effeminacy.
About nine o'clock, when the sun is now well up, the distant sound of a
tom-tom is heard, and the first of the returning fleet of _muchwas_
appears at the mouth of the creek. A long line of red and white flags
extends from the top of the mainyard to the helm and streamers flutter
from the mastheads. A monster bouquet of marigolds is mounted on the
bowsprit, branches of trees are stuck about in all possible situations,
and three or four large fishes hang from the bow, trailing their tails
in the water. With the exception of the man at the helm, who sits
stolid, minding his business, and one youth who plays the tom-tom, the
crew are standing in a ring, gesticulating with their arms and legs, or
waving wands and branches of trees. Some have half of their faces
smeared with red paint. If a boat passes they greet it with a shout and
a sally of wit or ribaldry. The other _muchwas_ follow close behind,
with every inch of white sail spread and all a-flutter with flags and
streamers: it would be difficult to imagine a prettier spectacle, and
the tom-toming and the happiness beaming on the faces of the crews are
almost infectious. One feels almost compelled to wave one's hat and cry,
"Hip, hip, hooray!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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