A CAMEL IS A VERY EVEN-TEMPERED ANIMAL—ALWAYS UGLY.
From the camels we pass on to the horses, about three hundred of them, housed in comfortable box-stalls around the walls. Dainty Arab ponies, sleek and well kept, but with a leg dangling limp and useless. They crowd about you for caresses, for the Arab pony is a pet by long generations of breeding, and he craves attention like a house cat, rubbing against you, and pleading with his soft brown eyes for a lump of sugar or a bit of salt. Great rawboned "Walers," as the horses which are imported from Australia for the use of the English army are called, stand side by side with the shaggy rough little hill ponies, which are apt to be vicious, and make but a poor showing in comparison with the lovable, graceful Arabs. Some dozens of gray donkeys, looking as forlorn and dejected as only donkeys can look, yet fat, sleek, and lazy, complete the equine section.
All this time we have been threading our way among broken-legged and broken-winged ducks, cats of all sizes, ages, and colors, and in all stages of decrepitude, solemn storks standing on one leg, gulls fighting over some scrap of food that has been thrown to them, tiny striped squirrels scampering up and down the trees, pigeons without number, and monkeys everywhere. It seemed to me that there were enough monkeys to stock all the menageries in the world.
The monkeys, the gulls, the parrots, the storks, and the squirrels are not legitimate occupants of the Pingra Pol, but they have discovered a place where they are kindly treated and well fed, and where that despised and detested creature, man, has to turn out for them instead of making them fly or scamper out of his way, and they are not slow to realize its advantages. One has to witness it to appreciate the malicious joy a bedraggled stork can find in standing directly in the middle of the path and refusing to budge while the unfortunate human carefully skirts round his storkship in the mud. Then the bird raises his head, ruffles, out his neck feathers, and winks a wicked wink of triumph, and you feel that they make entirely too much of animals in India.
But we have not nearly finished the Pingra Pol yet. From the horse enclosure we pass into a much larger court, devoted to animals of the cow kind. Here are upwards of fifteen hundred water-buffaloes, trotting-bullocks, sacred Brahmin cows, oxen, some deer and antelope, and innumerable goats. With the exception of the water-buffaloes, the motley collection is hardly worth looking at; they are fat, lazy, and appear to be perfectly contented. The water-buffaloes, which I recently saw described at a travelling circus as "the ferocious Bovapulous from the jungles of India," is a most grotesque beast—a smooth skin of faded black with hardly a hair on it, stretched over so clumsy a carcass that it looks as if it were badly stuffed, a great head bearing a pair of the most ferociously villanous horns, and lit up by as mild a pair of light blue eyes as ever beamed from the countenance of a Quaker. The combination of the piratical horns and the peaceful eyes gives the beast a strange, contradictory appearance. It is a harmless creature, and when not wallowing in the mud, it trudges patiently after its owner from house to house, and furnishes the best milk procurable in India, unless you happen to have the rare good fortune to secure the produce of an imported English cow. These poor beasts are almost all broken-legged, and while it is satisfactory to see that they apparently suffer no pain, they are too contented to rouse much sympathy.
With the dogs, however, it is different. There are three or four hundred of them confined in great cages in a large court-yard, and they are the only occupants of the Pingra Pol who do not seem satisfied to remain there. They are all yearning for human companionship, and the barks and yelps which greet the visitor as he passes their cages are most pitiful. "Take me away with you; I will be a good dog for you; take me with you," is the burden of the canine chorus, and the expression of dull despair that succeeds the hope that lights each doggy face is enough to melt the heart of the most rabid dog-hater. There are a few good dogs here—setters, Great Danes, and mastiffs, and other imported animals which have been injured and sent here by their owners—but the most of them are what are known in India as "dogs of sorts," meaning all sorts, or, as a friend of mine said, "the most thoroughbred mongrels he ever saw." But some of these mongrel curs make the most faithful and affectionate canine companions, and it is surprising the accession of dignity and self-importance that will come to the humblest "yaller purp" of the streets when he is adopted by a good master. The English residents use the native mongrels to hunt jackals, as they use fox-hounds for foxes in England, and the pluck and endurance of the unpromising-looking beasts surprise a good many Englishmen who have been used to hunting behind the carefully bred fox-hounds of the mother-country.
But a globe-trotter can't be encumbered with pets, and we pick our way out of the Pingra Pol, carefully avoiding the ducks, pigeons, and other small fry which squat unconcernedly in our path, and dodging as best we can the sticks and straws which the ever-active monkeys try to drop on our heads.
"Well, what do you think of one of the oldest charities in the world?" inquired my Parsi friend, as we passed through the gateway and seated ourselves in the bullock gharry.
"It is very interesting, but it must cost a deal of money to keep all those animals after they have ceased to be of any use," I answered.
"Yes; but we cannot kill them, and if one recovers so that it can be worked, or if there is healthy increase, they are given to deserving persons who will treat them kindly. The Pingra Pol is supported by voluntary contributions from the Jains, Parsis, and other Hindoo sects; there are others in Ahmedabad, Jeypoor, and other large cities. In Ahmedabad, which is the headquarters of the Jain sect, they have a building for fleas. When a pious Jain catches a flea among his scanty garments, he does not do as you cruel Occidentals do, ruthlessly crush the poor insect. Oh no! He carefully carries it to the Pingra Pol, and deposits it in the flea-house, where every day a brawny coolie is paid to spend a few hours and give the inmates a square meal," and my friend laughed as if he were not in thorough sympathy with the extreme customs of the Jains.