My friend now mentioned to the Khansamah, a very old but very active and intelligent man, the sight we had seen on the road—the regiment of monkeys.
"Ah!" exclaimed the old man, "it is about the time."
"What time?"
"Well, Sahib, about every five years that tribe comes up the country to pay a visit to this place; and another tribe comes about the same time from the up-country—the hills. They meet in a jungle behind the old Hindoo temple, and there embrace each other as though they were human beings and old friends who had been parted for a length of time. I have seen in that jungle as many as four or five thousand. The Brahmins say that one large tribe comes all the way from Ajmere, and another from the southern side of the country, and from Nepal and Tirhoot. There were hundreds of monkeys here this morning, but now I do not see one. I suppose they have gone to welcome their friends."
The sowars who had been deputed to follow the tribe now rode up, and reported that in the vicinity of the old temple there was an army of apes—an army of forty thousand! One of the sowars, in the true spirit of Oriental exaggeration, expressed himself to the effect that it would be easier to count the hairs of one's head than the number there assembled.
"Let us go and look at them," I suggested, "and by the time we return the lady may be stirring."
"But we will not go on foot," said my friend; "we will ride the sowars' horses. In the first place, I have an instinctive horror of apes, and should like to have the means of getting away from them speedily, if they became too familiar or offensive. In the second place, I do not wish to fatigue myself by taking so long a walk in the heat of the day."
We mounted the horses, and were soon at the spot indicated by the sowars. There were not so many as had been represented; but I am speaking very far within bounds when I state that there could not have been fewer than eight thousand, and some of them of an enormous size. I could scarcely have believed that there were so many monkeys in the world if I had not visited Benares, and heard of the tribes at Gibraltar. Their sticks, which were thrown together in a heap, formed a very large stack of wood.
"What is this?" my friend said to one of the Brahmins; for since his appointment he had never heard of this gathering of apes.