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They met a troop of long-haired, strong-scented Sansis with baskets of lizards and other unclean food on their backs, their lean dogs sniffing at their heels. These people kept their own side of the road', moving at a quick, furtive jog-trot, and all other castes gave them ample room; for the Sansi is deep pollution.

"Lunatic I the old fellow is as sane as you or I; and he has some ground of complaint against those Sansis. I asked if he would like a native superintendent of police with some men to make inquiries, but he objected on the grounds the police were rather worse than smallpox and criminal tribes put together."

Beneath his gaze Calcutta paraded its congress of peoples a comprehensive collection of specimens of every tribe in Hindustan and of nearly every other race in the world besides: red-bearded Delhi Pathans, towering Sikhs, lean sinewy Rajputs with bound jaws, swart agile Bhils, Tommies in their scarlet tunics, Japanese and Chinese in their distinctive dress, short and sturdy Gurkhas, yellow Saddhus, Jats stalking proudly, brawling knots of sailormen from the Port, sleek Mahrattas, polluted Sansis, Punjabis, Bengalis, priests, beggars, dancing girls; a blaze of colour ever shifting, a Babel of tongues never stilled, a seething scum on a witch's brew of humanity....

He was perpetually "going Fantee" among the natives, which, of course, no man with any sense believes in. He was initiated into the Sat Bhai at Allahabad once, when he was on leave; he knew the Lizard-Song of the Sansis, and the Halli-Hukk dance, which is a religious can-can of a startling kind.