JUGGLERS BEFORE THE PRINCE OF WALES.

Globe, Volume V, Issue 562, 6 April 1876, Page 3

JUGGLERS BEFORE THE PRINCE OF WALES.

Although the Prince of Wales saw snake charmers and jugglers at Bombay, The Times correspondent says he was scarcely prepared for the clever exhibition in the hall of the Government • house, Madras. The Indian juggler has no elaborate apparatus of furniture, tables, and chairs, and no such confederate in his tricks as the ornamental attendant or the man in the crowd who comes to the front on demand in London. At the utmost he has a withered old ragged scarecrow like himself to assist in his deceptions, but he generally is alone, He is all but naked ; there is n, dirty cloth round his loins and a cotton rag over his shoulders, and his whole stock-in-trade consists of a little stick, an earthenware vessel, and a few baskets. He can hide nothing, for he has no place to put anything in, but he is among the first performers of the art in the world, and it certainly contributes to the effect of his wonders that they are done without any suspicious surroundings. The Prince sal down in the entrance hall close to the steps. The Duke sat beside him, and Lady Anna Gore Langtou and His Grace’s daughters and nieces and the members of the suites and staff witnessed the performances, which were directe.l by Ramchandre Rao, commissary of police, one of the most clever and thoroughgoing Brahmins I have yet met in India, Hirst Madhar Sahib squatted down before the Prince, and put down a small basket on the carpet about the size of those in which a lady would carry Berlin wool. It was empty, of course. Madhar Sahib was almost undressed —his arms were quite bare, He turned his basket down and chattered at it, then turned it over, and lo ! there was an egg on the carpet, which was handed round to be looked at. Then he put the basket over the egg and chattered again, turned it over, and To 1 out walked a pretty pigeon, so tame that it let itself be caught by hand. Next Madhar produced another egg from beneath the basket, and then placed it under the basket—anyone could see that the latter was a thin, frail composition, without cover or false bottom. Then, after incantations, he raised the basket, and out strutted the first pigeon and another exactly like it, and went pouting over to the spectators. Other things did Madhar Sahib, but none so striking, for peas under a thimble have before now exercised the finest intellects, and baffled the greatest intelligences in England. Poolee, who came next, I think, was a performer of extraordinary merit. After some tricks of no great novelty, but executed with much neatness, lie converted himself into a magazine of horrors ; took live scorpions, which he handled with impunity, out of his mouth ; spat out stones as large as plums, one after the other, or showed them between his lips and swallowed them ; then evolved from depths unknown a carpenter’s shop full of nails, large and small, and coils of string, till there was a pile of his products before the Prince. After him came Kamatchee, a strong limbed and rather comely young woman, who began her performance by taking up a handful of dust from the roadway, which she piled up in a conical heap on the carpet before the Prince. Into this heap she stuck two pieces of wire or long needles. She then squatted down, took her right big toe in her left hand, and twisted her leg over her head, and repeated the feat with her left leg and her right band. Next she stood upright with her heels to the little heap of dust, and giadually twisted herself back till she could put her hands on the ground, and then, bending right over the heap, brought down her face lower and lower till her eyes were close to the needles, which, literally in the twinkling of an eye, were caught up by her eyelids ? She took the needles out, showed them to the company, and salaamed. Two very curious people next made their appearance, simple, but, as it proved, hard-headed pheasants, named Syed Khadir and Momee Sawmy. Their stock-in-trade consisted of a few cocoanuts. These were handed round to the company to examine. Then Syed took up one, threw it up in the air, and as it fell met it with the top of his naked skull, whereupon the cocoanut flew in pieces with a loud report, scattering the milk all over the place. Momee did the same, and several

nuts were thus brought to ruin on their skulls. To ray great comfort, a small relative of these gentlemen picked up the fragments and put them in a small bag for home use. Yaloyoodhura, Syed (Jassim. and Imam Sahib then exhibited their powers as snake charmers, and no less than seven cobras, several of the very largest size, were at one time dancing with furious eye and hissing tongue to the tootlings of the gourd, within a few i dies of the company, and a ragged little girl, taking a rock snake by the tail, twisted it round her neck, and at once demanded baksheesh, or its Tamil equivalent, from the Prince. The snakes were, of course, de prived of their fangs ; but it was not quite comfortable, all the same, for of the malice and desire to kill of the cobras there could be no doubt, and they struck again and again at the arms and logs of their charmers, Vencatamoodoo and Mauree. who followed, were spinners of salvers, and did whatever they pleased with Hat metal dishes ; but Vencatamoodoo, with knives and balls, was a marvel of dexterity, and quite surpassed the grand operator of my youth, Ramo Samec, in case and terrible rapidity. It was inte ided to close up with Ghoodoo’s exhibition of the basket trick. The young woman was also there, aud the fatal noose was already thrown over her, when time was called, but Ghoodoo performed next morning, and was, I am told, quite admirable. The girl, bound hand and foot, was forced into a shallow basket, into which she was compressed with difficulty. Then a lid was placed upon the basket, aud Ghoodoo proceeded to inveigh against the girl in no measured terms, as if he were a counsel in the Divorce Court, and finally, in a rage, leaped on the basket lid aud crushe d it in, then trampled on it—mind, it rested on the floor—then, seizing a sword, thrust it down aud through the basket again and again, and pretended to gloat over the blood on the blade. But a sharp-eyed lady, who did not permit her attention to be diverted for a moment, saw the girl glide like a shadow out of the basket when the eyes of the audience were turned on a little child, whom Ghoodoo seized among the crowd of natives, aud pretended to behead with his sword for seme complicity with the woman in bonds. At all events the trick was done so well that the spectators could scarcely credit their senses when they saw the basket was quite empty.