s a rule but a poor impostor. He goes about with one
fangless cobra, one rock snake, and one miserable mongoose, strangling
at the end of a string. My dweller in tombs was richer than all his
tribe in his snakes, and in his eyes. I have never seen anybody else
with real cat's eyes: eyes with exactly that greenish yellow luminous
glare which you see when you look at a cat in the dark. They gleamed and
rolled in the evening sun, over a row of shining teeth, as their owner
squatted down before me, liberating one after another from little bags
and baskets an amazing multitude of snakes, which he fetched in batches
from the interior of the tomb, till the very ground seemed alive with
them[4]. Some of them he handled only with the greatest respect, and by
means of an iron prong. Outside the Zoo (where they lose in effect) I
never saw so many together before: and it is only when you see a number
of these reptiles together that you realise what a strange uncanny
being, after all, is a snake: and as you watch him, lying, as it were,
in wait, beautiful exceedingly, but with a beauty that inspires you with
a shudder, his eyes full of cruelty and original sin, and his tongue of
culumny and malice, you begin to understand his influence in all
religions. I was wholly absorbed in their snaky evolutions, and buried
in mythological reminiscences, when my _garuda_ roused me suddenly, by
saying: _Huzoor_, look!

[3] _Hawa_, in Canarese, is the name of Rahu.

[4] I did not count them, but there were several dozen,
nearly all different. I have reason to believe that this
man must have been one of the disciples of a former very
celebrated snake charmer, who was known all over India.

He leaned over, and administered with his bare hand a vicious dig to a
magnificent hamadryad, that lay coiled upon itself in its open basket.
The creature instantly sat up, with a surge of splendid passion,
hissing, bowing, and expanding angrily its great tawny hood. The
_garuda_ put his _pungi_ to his lips, and blew for a while upon it a low
and wheezy drone,--the invariable prelude to a little _jadoo_, or black
art,--which the beautiful animal appeared to appreciate: and then,
pointing with the end of his pipe to the "spectacles" on its hood, he
said, with that silky, insinuating smile which is characteristic of the
scamp: _Huzoor, dekho, namas karta_[5]:--

_Nagki phani, chand ka dukh
Uski badi, ap ka sukh_[6].

[5] _See, he ma