Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 20, Number 23, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 November 1898 — COURAGEOUS HINDUS. [ARTICLE]

COURAGEOUS HINDUS.

They Fearlessly Attack Wild Anlmala and Reptiles. In some things the natives of Bengal and Behar are wonderfully courageous, and the bravest deed that 1 ever witnessed says a writer in Gentleman’s Magazine, was performed in the coolest manner possible by two of my own domestic servants. One morning, while seated in the veranda of my bungalow, a mad jackal rushed through the grounds and went under a rinsed godown, which was close to the bungalow’. I left the veranda for my gun, and on my return I discovered two pf my servants armed with hog spears creeping under the godown until they came within striking distance of the jackal, when they quickly transfixed him with their spears. The offer of a bank check on the Bank of England would not have induced me to act in the way that these brave fellow’s did. An old mihtar (sweeper), a man of the lowest caste in my service, who was nearly bent double with age, was the smartest hand at killing a venomous snake that I ever knew. The old fellow used to sit up at night in the fowl house for the purpose of destroying the cobras that came after the eggs; and one morning before dawn I stepped into the veranda of my bungalow in time to see him pulling a karait out of a hole with one hand, w’hich grasped the reptile’s tail, while in the other hand was held a stick, which promptly descended on the karit’s head as soon as it appeared in view. It wa§ all done very neatly and smartly, and as quietly as if the old man had been crushing a beetle.