They Shoot Much For Their Amusement
With Bows, Which Are Curiously Made Of Buffaloe's Horn, Glewed Together,
Their Arrows Being Made Of Small Canes, Excellently Headed And
Feathered, And Are So Expert In Archery, That They Will Kill Birds
Flying.
Others take great delight in managing their horses.
Though they
have not a quarter of a mile to go, they will either ride on horseback
or be carried, as men of any quality hold it dishonourable to go on foot
any where.
In their houses, they play much at that most ingenious game which we
call chess, or else at draughts. They have likewise cards, but quite
different from ours. Sometimes they are amused by cunning jugglers, or
mountebanks, who allow themselves to be bitten by snakes which they
carry about in baskets, immediately curing themselves by means of
certain powders which they smell to. They are likewise often amused by
the tricks of apes and monkeys. In the southern parts of Hindoostan,
there are great numbers of large white apes, some of which are as tall
as our largest greyhounds. Some of those birds which make their nests on
trees are much afraid of the apes, and nature has instructed them in a
subtle device to secure themselves, by building their nests on the most
extreme twigs, and hanging them there like purse-nets, so that the apes
cannot possibly come to them.
Every city or great town in India has markets twice a-day, in the cool
of the morning just after sun-rise, and again in the evening a little
before it sets; and in these they sell almost every thing by weight.
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