"Yes, of course."
"Then, if your ox stood still and shook his head up and down, making the bell ring, the mill would still be going?"
"Ah, sir," says the oilman, "my ox does not read logic."
The water lift used in the Punjab, known among Europeans as the Persian wheel (apparently because it is the ancient Egyptian Sakieh, and not a Persian invention at all), is also driven by blindfolded oxen walking in a circle, and I have heard the click of a tappet on the cogs spoken of as taking the place of the bell as a tell-tale. It is true this catch is called the Kūtta or dog by farmers, but its real function is that of a stop to prevent the wheel laden with water pots from slipping back when the cattle stop. Moreover, its tick-tack is the lightest note in the travail of the uneasy Persian wheel, which fills the air with a groaning, creaking, whining drone of complaint for a quarter of a mile round. The cessation of this sound arrests the ear as surely as the sudden stoppage of the engines of a steamship, so there is no need for the bark of the little wooden dog. There are two or three centuries and thrice as many leagues between this primitive machine and the last triumphs of mechanism in the Western world, but you shall find a "dog stop" even in the latest American type-writer.
I remember, when a child, sitting in a corner of a blacksmith's smithy in a Yorkshire village watching horses being shod. One day, talking to his friends, the smith laid a hand on the horn of his bellows and cried, "Yance I shod a bull." He explained that the animal had to travel to fairs and shows and was liable to become footsore. Much I silently marvelled, after the fashion of children, how the feat was done, for the bull I knew most intimately was a fearsome beast, safe to stroke in his stall, but awful in croft or garth. Since then the shoeing of oxen has grown familiar, for Indian cart bullocks, working on hard roads, are usually shod. Two plates go to each foot, and in some regions a turned-up tip protects the toe. The ox is thrown to be shod and held down while the farrier works on the feet tied together in a bunch round a stick stuck in the ground. Plough cattle and cultivators' cattle generally are very seldom shod.
SHOEING AN OX
Before macadamised roads made Britain wheelable, the pack-horse had a place of honour now only indicated in a few inn-signs here and there. It will be long, however, before India parts with her pack-oxen in spite of roads and railways, for the continent is vast, and ancient customs are hard to kill. The heavily-laden ox-cart still plods along roads parallel with the rail and underbids it for traffic, and the one-horse ekka or gig plies with passengers between towns connected by the iron road. Yet, though they may be slow to give in, it is plain that on the great high-roads of commerce where formerly the Banjāri with their long trains of pack bullocks laden with goods, unladen cattle for sale, big watch dogs for guard, and a host of women, were the organised carriers, the competition of the iron horse will make itself felt. As a matter of fact many of them are already settling down to agriculture and other pursuits. They are a folk apart, with gypsy characteristics, and are credited with strange customs and beliefs. For a long time there will be regions where their trade must be carried on, and there are few more picturesque sights than is presented by one of their trains either in motion, winding slowly through the broken country of Central India, or among the castle-crowned hills of Rajputana, or halted for the night in one of their neatly arranged camps. The men, reputed to be as honest as their oxen, are well set up and have a wild air peculiar to their race, while the sunburnt women, free in gait, and brave in brightly coloured clothing, wear an immense profusion of ornaments, bangles, and anklets in beads, brass, and glass. As much pains are spent on the bedizenment of the oxen as on the adornment of their mistresses. The horns are encased in hempen sheathings woven in zig-zag patterns of brick-red and black and ornamented with shells and tassels. Over the beast's forehead is a shaped frontlet of cotton cloth broidered with patterns in colour with pieces of mirror sewn in, and crowned by a Kalgi or aigrette of peacock feather tips. The pack saddle is of hempen stuff woven in patterns of red, and has a high peak in front, something like those seen in France and Spain, with a patch of inwoven pattern and a peacock feather tip. Large necklaces of blue and white beads like birds' eggs, terminating in a pendent heart-shaped brass plate, go round the neck, and lower down is a broad hempen collar with a bell. Over all is sometimes spread a coverlet of stout cotton cloth embroidered in sampler work stitching of coloured thread with circular mirrors let in. The packs themselves are brown, with wide bands of black or darker brown. All this, merely written down, may seem garish, but artists, learned in tones and qualities of colour, might have prescribed the tints, and the effect when seen in the bright lights and wide areas of Indian landscape is simply delightful.
OOPLA (COW-DUNG FUEL)