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The Eleventh Lesson: Hindu Wonder-Working.1341
This snake feat is often dispensed with by some of the leading fakirs, who
consider it too crude and worthy only of the lower order of performers or
snake charmers.
Then the fakir rises, and taking a slender long rope from his assistants, he
casts the knotted end high into the air. The rope spins out its length for
several minutes, rising higher and higher until the knotted end is lost to
sight. Finally it stops, and the lower end is left dangling a few feet above
the ground, as if suspended by some invisible hook or beam far above the
ground. Then the fakir bids his smallest assistant climb up the rope, which he
does, nimbly passing up and up, until he too fades from sight. Then the fakir
claps his hands, and lo! the rope itself vanishes. After a wait of a few minutes
the boy who has disappeared comes rushing into the circle of the crowd as
if coming from a great distance, and all out-of-breath. Sometimes this feat
is varied, and terminated by the boy appearing high up in the air, as a tiny
speck, and then gradually descending to the ground by means of the rope.
This feat has several variations, but the general outlines are the same.
Then the fakir proceeds to perform the celebrated Mango Feat, so often
witnessed by English travelers in India. He begins by building up a little
hillock of earth, into which he places a mango seed. Then he begins his chant,
accompanied by the drums and cymbals, and a waving of his hands over
the little pile of earth. In a few moments a little sprout of green manifests
itself from the top of the pile, and growing rapidly soon reaches the height
and appearance of a young mango bush, which still keeps on growing until
it has reached the size and maturity of a full grown mango tree, with leaves
and blossoms. Then the blossoms change into young fruit, which ripens
before the eyes of the crowd, until finally it is picked and passed around the
crowd to be eaten. Then the fakir reverses the process, and the tree begins
to shrink and retire into itself until finally it has again resolved itself into the
original seed which was planted in the hillock. In some cases the fakir varies
the feat by bidding the people hold carefully in their hands the mangoes