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I left and went out to the gate where the snake-charmers were juggling with a dozen hissing cobras. It was pleasanter to look at them. That night an eminent English artist, temporarily in Benares, discoursed to me at length though vaguely on the beauties of Hindu religious theory, but what I had seen during the day did not help his argument.
But the scent grew stronger, and he began to dream of cobras, that danced with a woman and struck at her so swiftly that she had to become two women in order to avoid them; and Rewa Gunga came and laughed at both and called them amateurs, so that the woman became enraged and drew a bronze-bladed dagger with a golden hilt.
Practically my whole life has been spent in the Himalayan solitudes, traveling on foot from one quiet cave to another. For a while I maintained a small ashram outside Hardwar, surrounded on all sides by a grove of tall trees. It was a peaceful spot little visited by travelers, owing to the ubiquitous presence of cobras." Keshabananda chuckled.
Soon we heard loud shoutings from the direction of the tank, and saw a long string of native servants carrying brown chatties of hot water towards the pond. We found that the courteous House-Baboo had informed the midshipmen that the holes in the banks of the tank were the winter rest-places of cobras.
The father of the family always eats first. When he has eaten, the mother and children sit down to eat. The women do most of the work. So the girls have to learn to work. But the men and boys do all the sewing. How queer this seems! There are a great many wild beasts in India tigers, leopards, cobras, and crocodiles. The tigers are very fierce.
Moreover, they are very aggressive, more so than any other snakes in the world, except possibly some of the cobras. As, in addition, they are numerous, they are a source of really frightful danger to scantily clad men who work in the fields and forests, or who for any reason are abroad at night. The poison of venomous serpents is not in the least uniform in its quality.
At least that is what happened to the smallest debutante of our party, Miss Sallie Glide, at one of the dances given in honor of the San Francisco Delegates. And a little further on a snake charmer giving his cobras an airing, was encountered.
The policeman fumbled with the lock, threw back the lid, and simultaneously gave vent to a terrific yell, as he flung himself violently backwards. For from the open box rose the writhing forms of half a dozen big cobras, their hoods flattened and arched, vicious and ready to strike, whilst over one of the corners came gliding the broad flattened head and bloated body of a huge puff-adder.
We also saw some bunis, snake-charmers, with dozens of various snakes round their waists, necks, arms, and legs models well worthy of the brush of a painter who intended to depict the image of a male Fury. One jadugar was especially remarkable. His head was crowned with a turban of cobras.
He is probably somewhere about the place charming cobras or arresting avalanches, or indulging in some of those playful freaks he says he learned in Edinburgh. We have had a great good time the last two days. He has not disappeared, or swallowed himself even once, or delivered himself of any fearful and mysterious prophecies. We have been talking transcendentalism.
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