Page:Wanderings of a Pilgrim Vol 1.djvu/387

 natural to the animal); the pursuers were attracted, they observed the ghirgit looking over the well; they imitated his example, they discovered the Imām, they murdered him! Ever to be accursed, never sufficiently to be beaten be the ghirgit!"

Mohammud ordered a chameleon to be killed, and said, "it was a chameleon which blew the fire into which Nimrod threw Abraham." "Whoever shall kill a chameleon at one stroke shall have one hundred good acts written for him; and whoever kills one at two strokes shall have less than one hundred good deeds written for him; and whoever shall kill one by three strokes shall have less written for him than the second."

His Highness forbade the killing of four animals, the ant (before stinging), the bee, the woodpecker, the starling. It is criminal in a Shea, and indeed with Soonees, to kill pigeons, though they are recommended to eat them!

An alligator, seven feet in length, was caught in the Jumna, below our house, a few days ago; I had it prepared with arsenical soap, stuffed, and set out in the verandah, where it grins in hideous beauty, nailed down upon the carpenter's large table, where it will remain until it stiffens into proper form.

My cabinet of curiosities and fondness of horrors ensured many a strange present from absent friends. A small military party were dispatched to capture a mud fort; on reaching the spot no enemy was to be discovered; they entered with all due precaution against ambush; an enormous tiger in a cage was the sole occupant. The tiger was sent down per boat to me,—the first prize of the campaign; on my refusal to accept the animal, he was forwarded to the accoutrement-maker of the officer, in Calcutta, in liquidation of his account! The tiger was sold at length to an American captain for 250 rupees, which just or very nearly paid the expenses of boat-hire, servants, meat, &c., contracted on his the tiger's account. Such changes in his way of life must have puzzled his philosophy; the capture, the Ganges, and sea voyage ending in North America, will give him a queer idea of the best of all possible worlds; but he well deserves it, being a cruel, treacherous, bloodthirsty brute.

My eccentric friend also wrote to say he had at length