Page:Life in India or Madras, the Neilgherries, and Calcutta.djvu/464

404 Not the least numerous, and certainly to a stranger the most amusing, portion of the population of Bangalore, is the multitude of monkeys that make their homes on the houses, trees, and walls. Not two or three consumptive creatures, such as we see in menageries at home, or the more miserable victims of organ-grinders, twitched and tortured into a fictitious animation; but scores and hundreds of them, all life and mischief, running over house-tops, dropping into the street, scampering up the cocoanut-trees, evidently quite at home, and looking with up-drawn eyebrows at the white-faced stranger who has intruded upon their domains. So numerous are they, that the people cannot roof their houses with tiles, as in most Hindu towns, for their mischievous fellow-citizens would break and carry off the tiles. They are as troublesome to the residents of the place as they are amusing to the mere visitor; for they steal all they can lay their hands upon, even snatching food from the children. They seem to consider themselves lords of the manor; and at one time in my walk, came dropping from the eaves of the houses and from the trees, and followed at my heels, grinning, showing their teeth, and barking in so threatening a style,