Page:Wanderings of a Pilgrim Vol 2.djvu/323

 with a small spaniel I had given my relative,—a sharp cry from the dog brought the gentleman to the door; a short distance from the house he saw the spaniel in the mouth of a leopard, who carried him down the khud. Sancho was on the ground, having had his side cut open by a blow from the paw of the wild beast; the poor dog crawled to the feet of my friend, he took him up, and tried in vain to save his life—poor Sancho died.

A fine litter of spaniel pups once placed me in a dilemma: a friend thus settled the point. "It is as much a duty to cut a dog's tail according to his caste, as it is to have drawn the superfluous teeth of a young Christian. This answer to the question respecting the tails of the young pups must be sent at once, lest time and the habit of wearing a whole tail should attach them, the pups, too strongly to the final three-quarters of an inch, which I think they should lose: the object with a spaniel is not so much to reduce the length as to obviate the thin and fish-hooky appearance of the natural tail. There is no cause to mourn such severe kindness to these pups; grieve not for them! theirs is an age when pain passes with the moment of infliction, and if, as some crying philosopher has observed, 'We know no pleasure equal to a sudden relief from pain,' the cutting and firing will be all for the good of the little dogs." The price of a gūnth is from sixty to a hundred rupees: a good Almorah gūnth will fetch a hundred and sixty, or a fancy price of three hundred rupees. The common gūnths are used for fetching water from the khuds, but such is the dangerous nature of the mountain paths they descend, they are often killed by a fall over a precipice. The only animals fit for such work are mules, which may be bought at the Hurdwar fair, at a reasonable price. The beautiful gūnth Motī, whom I have before mentioned, was sent on an emergency to bring water from the khud: he fell over in returning with the heavy water bags and was smashed in the khud below—smashed! that is not my word, but picked up in intercourse with men, and is as shocking as a phrase I once made use of, "knocked over by a buffalo!"

This is too technical and gentlemanlike an expression; in