“At one of the stations where my husband was quartered, snakes were very numerous, and we used to keep a mongoose in the house to destroy them. It is a pretty little animal, a species of ichneumon with catlike habits and a very prying disposition. The common idea is, that if bitten by a venomous serpent, it runs to find a particular herb, which prevents the venom taking effect. This, however, is not really the case, the mongoose depends upon its own vigilance and great agility for escaping from the fangs of even the most active serpent, for if bitten, it would die like any other animal.
“I should not like to see men allowing snakes to put their tongues in their mouths, even though I knew that the fangs had been taken out,” observed Fanny. “But I should like to see the jugglers you were speaking of, mamma, who performed such wonderful tricks.”
“I was mentioning the Indian gipsies or Nutts, as they are called, who travel as those in England used to do, from one end of the country to the other, and appear to have no settled home. A party arrived one day at our station, and offered to exhibit their tricks, and your papa gave them leave to do so.
“There were among them several persons of all ages. First an old man took his seat on the ground and began violently beating a drum, shouting out that we should soon see what we should see. Meantime a young man and a boy had fixed firmly in the ground a bamboo nearly thirty feet high, and while thus engaged, another man singing in a monotonous voice, was running round and round it. Presently a woman who was standing by, leaped on the shoulder of the running man, who did not stop, but continued his course as before, rapidly increasing his speed. In another minute she had leaped on his head, and there she stood with perfect steadiness, while he ran still faster, and the old man beat the drum louder and louder, shrieking all the time, even more shrilly than before, till the noise became almost deafening.
“While our senses were somewhat bewildered by the sound, the boy ran up to the running man with a large earthen pot, which the latter in a wonderful way placed on his head; the woman having, I suppose, in the meantime put her feet on his shoulders, for before I could follow her movements she appeared standing on the top of the pot, the man still running round as before.
“The man who had been fixing the pole in the earth, now advanced, and taking up a heavy stone ball which it would have required a strong man to lift even a few inches from the ground, began playing with it, catching it now on one shoulder, now on the other, then in his hands, and on his arms and feet. Next he threw up two ivory balls, quickly adding others in succession, till there were no less than eight kept in motion at the same time, flying up in the air.
“The first party, who had in the meantime been resting, now arranged a flat circular brass dish, of considerable size, on which were placed four pillars about three inches high. These were connected by four sticks, with other sticks above them, and then more pillars, and so on, till there were fully thirty pillars one above another, with a brass dish on the top of all. We thought it surprising that this structure could stand as it did, but greater was our amazement to see it lifted on the man’s head while he was circling round the post, and still more astonished were we, when the woman sprang like lightning up in the air and stood on the top of all, as steadily as if she was on the ground, while the man continued rapidly circling round.
“After this, one of the men leaped on the shoulders of the other, who was standing close to the pole, and then the woman making use of them as a ladder, sprang to the very top of the pole, on the point of which she lay in a horizontal position, when one of the men who had followed her, touching her foot, she began to spin round and round, like the card of a pocket compass on its point.
“The men performed a variety of other tricks, but those I have mentioned are the most wonderful.
“Here was no room for deception, though many of the tricks performed by Indian jugglers are really the result of clever sleight-of-hand.”