up. Ponies, too, are always worked far too young; and their miserable
legs get frightfully twisted and bent. The petty shopkeepers, sellers
of brass pots, grain, spices, and other bazaar wares, who attend the
various bazaars, or weekly and bi-weekly markets, transport their goods
by means of these ponies.

The packs of merchandise are slung on rough pack-saddles, made of
coarse sacking. Shambling along with knees bent together, sores on
every joint, and frequently an eye knocked out, the poor pony's back
gets cruelly galled; when the bazaar is reached, he is hobbled as
tightly as possible, the coarse ropes cutting into the flesh, and he is
then turned adrift to contemplate starvation on the burnt-up grass.
Great open sores form on the back, on which a plaster of moist clay, or
cowdung and pounded leaves, is roughly put. The wretched creature gets
worn to a skeleton. A little common care and cleanliness would put him
right, with a little kindly consideration from his brutal master, but
what does the _Kulwar_ or _Bunneah_ care? he is too lazy.

This unfeeling cruelty and callous indifference to the sufferings of
the lower animals is a crying evil, and every magistrate, European, and
educated native, might do much to ease their burdens. Tremendous
numbers of bullocks and ponies die from sheer neglect and ill treatment
every year. It is now becoming so serious a trouble, that in many
villages plough-bullocks are too few in number for the area of land
under cultivation. The tillage suffers, the crops deteriorate, this
reacts on prices, the ryot sinks lower and lower, and gets more into
the grasp of the rapacious money-lender. In many villages I have seen
whole tracts of land relapsed into _purtee_, or untilled waste, simply
from want of bullocks to draw the plough. Severe epidemics, like foot
and mouth disease and pleuro, occasionally sweep off great numbers;