Читать книгу Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. IV, No. 19, Dec 1851 - Various - Страница 5

The ichneumon, called in India the neulah, benjee, or mungoos, is known all over that country. I have seen it on the banks of the Ganges, and among the old walls of Jaunpore, Sirhind, and at Loodianah; for, like others of the weasel kind, this little animal delights in places where it can lurk and peep – such as heaps of stones and ruins; and there is no lack of these in old Indian cities.

That the neulah is a fierce, terrible, blood-thirsty, destructive little creature, I experienced to my cost; but notwithstanding all the provocation I received, I was led to become his friend and protector, and so finding him out to be the most charming and amiable pet in the world.

In my military career (for I was for a long time attached to the army) I was stationed at Jaunpore, and having a house with many conveniences, I took pleasure in rearing poultry; but scarcely a single chicken could be magnified to a hen: the rapacious neulahs, fond of tender meat, waylaying all my young broods, sucking their blood, and feasting on their brains. But such devastations could not be allowed to pass with impunity; so we watched the enemy, and succeeded in shooting several of the offenders, prowling among the hennah or mehendy hedges, where the clucking-hens used to repose in the shade, surrounded by their progeny.

After one of these battues, my little daughter happened to go to the fowl-house in the evening in search of eggs, and was greatly startled by a melancholy squeaking which seemed to proceed from an old rat-hole in one corner. Upon proper investigation this was suspected to be the nest of one of the neulahs which had suffered the last sentence of the law; but how to get at the young we did not know, unless by digging up the floor, and of this I did not approve. So the little young ones would have perished but for a childish freak of my young daughter. She seated herself before the nest, and imitated the cry of the famished little animals so well, that three wee, hairless, blind creatures crept out, like newly-born rabbits, but with long tails, in the hope of meeting with their lost mamma.

Our hearts immediately warmed toward the little helpless ones, and no one wished to wreak the sins of the parents upon the orphans; and knowing that neulahs were reared as pets, I proposed to my daughter that she should select one for herself, and give the others to two of my servants.

My daughter's protégée, however, was the only one that survived under its new régime; and Jumnie, as she called her nursling, throve well, and soon attained its full size, knowing its name, and endearing itself to every body by its gambols and tricks. She was like the most blithesome of little kittens, and played with our fingers, and frolicked on the sofas, sleeping occasionally behind one of the cushions, and at other times coiling herself up in her own little flannel bed.

In the course of time, however, Jumnie grew up to maturity, being one year old, and formed an attachment for one of her own race – a wild, roving bandit of a neulah, who committed such deeds of atrocity in the fowl-house as to compel us to take up arms again. If she had only made her mistress the confidante of her love! – but, alas! little did we suspect our neulah of a companionship with thieves and assassins; and so leaving her, we thought, to her customary frolics, we marched upon the stronghold of the enemy. Two neulahs appeared, we fired, and one fell, the other running off unscathed. We all hastened to the wounded and bleeding victim, and my little daughter first of all; but how shall I describe her grief when she saw her little Jumnie writhing at her feet in the agonies of death! If I had had the least idea of Jumnie's having formed such an attachment, I should have spared the guilty for the sake of the innocent, and Jumnie might long have lived a favorite pet; but the deed was done.

The neulahs, like other of the weasel kind – and like some animals I know of a loftier species – are very rapacious, slaying without reference to their wants; and Jumnie, although fond of milk, used to delight in livers and brains of fowls, which she relished even after they were dressed for our table.

The natives of India never molest the neulah. They like to see it about their dwellings, on account of its snake and rat-killing propensities; and on a similar account it must have been that this creature was deified by the Egyptians, whose country abounded with reptiles, and would have been absolutely alive with crocodiles but for the havoc it made among the numerous eggs, which it delighted to suck. For this reason the ichneumons were embalmed as public benefactors, and their bodies are still found lying in state in some of the pyramids. Among the Hindoos, however, the neulah does not obtain quite such high honors, although the elephant, monkey, lion, snake, rat, goose, &c., play a prominent part in the religious myths, and are styled the Bâhons, or vehicles of the gods.

In Hindoostan the ichneumon is not supposed to kill the crocodile, though it is in the mouth of every old woman that it possesses the knowledge of a remedy against the bite of a poisonous snake, which its instinct leads it to dig out of the ground; but this on dit has never been ascertained to be true, and my belief is that it is only based on the great agility and dexterity of the neulah. Eye-witnesses say that his battles with man's greatest enemy end generally in the death of the snake, which the neulah seizes by the back of the neck, and after frequent onsets at last kills and eats, rejecting nothing but the head.

The color of the Indian neulah is a grayish-brown; but its chief beauty lies in its splendid squirrel-like tail, and lively, prominent, dark-brown eyes. Like most of the weasel kind, however, it has rather a disagreeable odor; and if it were not for this there would not be a sweeter pet in existence.

So far the experience of an Old Indian; and we now turn to another authority on the highly-curious subject just glanced at – the knowledge of the ichneumon of a specific against the poison of the snake. Calder Campbell, in his recent series of tales, "Winter Nights" – and capital amusement for such nights they are – describes in almost a painfully truthful manner the adventure of an officer in India, who was an eye-witness, under very extraordinary circumstances, to the feat of the ichneumon. The officer, through some accident, was wandering on foot, and at night, through a desolate part of the country, and at length, overcome with fatigue, threw himself down on the dry, crisp spear-grass, and just as the faint edge of the dawn appeared, fell asleep.

"No doubt of it! I slept soundly, sweetly – no doubt of it! I have never since then slept in the open air either soundly or sweetly, for my awaking was full of horror! Before I was fully awake, however, I had a strange perception of danger, which tied me down to the earth, warning me against all motion. I knew that there was a shadow creeping over me, beneath which to lie in dumb inaction was the wisest resource. I felt that my lower extremities were being invaded by the heavy coils of a living chain; but as if a providential opiate had been infused into my system, preventing all movement of thew or sinew, I knew not till I was wide awake that an enormous serpent covered the whole of my nether limbs, up to the knees!

"'My God! I am lost!' was the mental exclamation I made, as every drop of blood in my veins seemed turned to ice; and anon I shook like an aspen leaf, until the very fear that my sudden palsy might rouse the reptile, occasioned a revulsion of feeling, and I again lay paralyzed.

"It slept, or at all events remained stirless; and how long it so remained I know not, for time to the fear-struck is as the ring of eternity. All at once the sky cleared up – the moon shone out – the stars glanced over me; I could see them all, as I lay stretched on my side, one hand under my head, whence I dared not remove it; neither dared I looked downward at the loathsome bed-fellow which my evil stars had sent me.

"Unexpectedly, a new object of terror supervened: a curious purring sound behind me, followed by two smart taps on the ground, put the snake on the alert, for it moved, and I felt that it was crawling upward to my breast. At that moment, when I was almost maddened by insupportable apprehension into starting up to meet, perhaps, certain destruction, something sprang upon my shoulder – upon the reptile! There was a shrill cry from the new assailant, a loud, appalling hiss from the serpent. For an instant I could feel them wrestling, as it were, on my body; in the next, they were beside me on the turf; in another, a few paces off, struggling, twisting round each other, fighting furiously, I beheld them – a mungoos or ichneumon and a cobra di capello!

"I started up; I watched that most singular combat, for all was now clear as day. I saw them stand aloof for a moment – the deep, venomous fascination of the snaky glance powerless against the keen, quick, restless orbs of its opponent: I saw this duel of the eye exchange once more for closer conflict: I saw that the mungoos was bitten; that it darted away, doubtless in search of that still unknown plant whose juices are its alleged antidote against snake-bite; that it returned with fresh vigor to the attack; and then, glad sight! I saw the cobra di capello, maimed from hooded head to scaly tail, fall lifeless from its hitherto demi-erect position with a baffled hiss; while the wonderful victor, indulging itself in a series of leaps upon the body of its antagonist, danced and bounded about, purring and spitting like an enraged cat!

"Little graceful creature! I have ever since kept a pet mungoos – the most attached, the most playful, and the most frog-devouring of all animals."

Many other authors refer to the alleged antidote against a snake-bite, known only to the ichneumon, and there are about as many different opinions as there are authors; but, on the whole, our Old Indian appears to us to be on the strongest side.