MILCH GOATS
The goat's trick of picking up stray trifles is sometimes inconvenient. A Bengal saying runs, "What will not a goat eat or a fool say?" Two native merchants in Bombay were concluding a bargain, and while making payment a currency note for a thousand rupees fluttered to the ground and was promptly eaten by a goat.
A GUILTY GOAT
The receiver contended that the note had never reached him and the loss was not his, while the other insisted that it was the fault of the receiver's carelessness. A hasty Englishman might have insisted on a sudden autopsy of the goat, but these were high-caste Hindus, who never dreamed of such a thing, so they led the criminal between them to the Government Treasury, where, after due inquiry, I believe the loss was made good.
After death the goat seems to be as much with us as in life, for his skin, carefully withdrawn for this purpose, is borne as a water-vessel by the bhisti or water-carrier, and there are few more complete examples of adaptation. The legs, sewn up, form perfect attachments for the strap by which the bag is slung on the water-carrier's back, and the throat, which is a convenient neck to the huge bottle, is ingeniously closed by a thong, and is so supple that the bhisti can direct a thin stream into the mouth or hand of a thirsty passenger, or fill a decanter without spilling a drop, or water a road with a far-reaching spray like that of a watering-cart, or empty his burden into a bath-tub or a mortar-heap in a trice. Bhisti really means a person from Paradise, a prince, and is one of the half-ironical titles, like khalifa or caliph for a tailor, mehter or prince for a scavenger, thakur or lord for a barber, and raj or royal one for the bricklayer or mason, bestowed may be in time past as an acknowledgment of the dignity of labour; but a little English child will often say, "Here comes the bhisti with his beast!" It is a rather pitiful beast, more like a porpoise than a goat; yet at times when lying distended on the well-block, with the leg-stumps in the air, and the man pausing a moment to straighten his back before taking it up, I have thought a Levite at the altars of Israel may have looked like this.
THE GOAT-SKIN WATERBAG (MASHK)