Several Times We Met With Lonely Pedestrians, Men And Young Women,
Coming Down Mataran On Their Way Home After A Day's Work.
It often
happens that some of them never reach home.
The police unconcernedly
report that the missing man has been carried off by a tiger, or
killed by a snake. All is said, and he is soon entirely forgotten.
One person, more or less, out of the two hundred and forty millions
who inhabit India does not matter much! But there exists a very
strange superstition in the Deccan about this mysterious, and only
partially explored, mountain. The natives assert that, in spite
of the considerable number of victims, there has never been found
a single skeleton. The corpse, whether intact or mangled by tigers,
is immediately carried away by the monkeys, who, in the latter case,
gather the scattered bones, and bury them skillfully in deep holes,
that no traces ever remain. Englishmen laugh at this superstition,
but the police do not deny the fact of the entire disappearance
of the bodies. When the sides of the mountain were excavated,
in the course of the construction of the railway, separate bones,
with the marks of tigers' teeth upon them, broken bracelets, and
other adornments, were found at an incredible depth from the surface.
The fact of these things being broken showed clearly that they
were not buried by men, because, neither the religion of the Hindus,
nor their greed, would allow them to break and bury silver and gold.
Is it possible, then, that, as amongst men one hand washes the other,
so in the animal kingdom one species conceals the crimes of another?
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