take twenty fat
bullocks and offer them as a sacrifice." As we would see these "twenty
fat bullocks" time and again, I confess, with a feeling of reluctance,
that some of the gilt and rose tint was rubbed from our childish
pictures, and that a realistic artist drawing from the life before him
would not deck out the patient subject in quite our extravagant colors.

The color of the Indian bullock varies. Some are a dirty white,
some a cream color, some almost pink, and a few are of the darker
shades. They are about the size of our cows, seldom as large as a
full-grown ox. Their horns, which are generally tipped with curiously
carved knobs, and often painted in colors, are as diversified in
their styles of architecture as are the horns of our cattle, though
they are more apt to be straight and V-shaped. Their necks are always
"bowed to the yoke," to once more use biblical phraseology, and seem
almost to invite its humiliating clasp. Above their front legs is the
mark of their antiquity, the great clumsy, flabby, fleshy, tawny hump,
always swaying from side to side, keeping time to every plodding step
of its sleepy owner. This seemingly useless mountain of flesh serves
as a cushion against which rests a yoke. Not the natty yoke of our
rural districts, but a simple pole, with a pin of wood through each
end, to ride on the outside of the bullocks' necks. The burden comes
against the projecting hump when the team pulls. To the centre of this
yoke is tied, with strong withes of rattan, the pole of a cart, that
in this nineteenth century is generally only to be seen in national
museums, preserved as a relic of the first steps in the art of wagon
building. And yet as a cart it is not to be despised: all the heavy
traffic of the colonies is done within its rude board sides. It has
two wheels, with heavy square spokes that are held on to a ponderous
wooden axle-tree by two wooden pins. A platform bottom rests on the
axle-tree, and two fence-like sides.

The genie of the cart, the hewer of wood and drawer of water, is a
tall, wiry, bronze-colored Hindu. He has a yard of white gauze about
his waist, and another yard twisted up into a turban on his head. The
dictates of fashion do not interest him. He does not plod along year in
and year out behind his team for the pittance of sixty cents per day,
to squander on the outside of his person. Not he. He has a wife up near
Simla. He hopes to go back next year, and buy a bit of ground ba