The Montgomery advertiser., 1904-12-25
DExTERTIY or THE HrNDoos.
They are Expert at Tumbling. Roue
 Dancing and Legerdemain

Oanedng and LegeRdemnin
 New Orleans Times -Dcraecrat.
 Tho dexterity of the Hindoos in tumbling, rope dancing and legerde- main Is SO much superior to that of Europeans and Japanese that the statements of travellers on the subject were much doubted until they were brought to exhibit their singular feats in this country. Nothing Is more com mon in India than to see young girls walking on their hands and feet, with the body bent backward. Another girl will bend backward, plunge her head into a hole about eighteen inches deep full of water and dirt, and bring up between her lips a ring that was buried in the mud. The women may frequently be seen dancing together on rope stretched over trestIes, the one playing on the vina, or Hindoo guitar; the other holding two vessels brimfu1 Of water. and capering about without spilling a drop. A plank Is some- times fixed to the top of a pole twen- ty-f1ve feet high, which Is set up- right; a man then climbs up it, springs backward, and seats himself upon the plank.
 Another mountebank balances him- self by the middle of the body on a bamboo pole. fifteen or eighteen feet high. He first sets 1t upright, and then climbs up 1t, with his legs and arms, as if 1t was a firmly rooted tree. On reaching the top he clings to it with his feet and hands, after fixing the center of the pole In the middle of his sash, and dances, moving about in all directions to the sound of music without the pole ever losing it's equilibrium. He then descends, takes a boy on his shoulders. climbs up the pole again. and stands on tho top on one leg. Sometimes a boy lies across the extremity of the bamboo and holds himself quite stiff for a considerable time. A man lifts up the pole and the boy in that state. ana moves them about in all directions without losing the balance.
 still more extraordinary feat Is performed by the Hindoo women. One of them will sometimes balance herself in a horizontal position, with her arms extended like person swimming, on the top of a bamboo pole ninety feet high, fixed to the ground. In a short time she seems to have lost her bal- ance and falls, to the no small terror of the spectators; but this is only one of her customary movements. She catches by one foot in a rope fastened to a bar which crosses tho middle of the pole and remains suspended, with her head downward.
 The Hindoos are not only extremely dexterous themselves, but they have found means to communicate their dexterfty to the very brutes. They train bullocks Tor buffaloes, for in stance, to the performance of a very difficult task. A Hindoo lies down up- on the ground on his back and places on the lower part of the stomach s piece of wood cut in the shape Of a series of spools. A buffalo, at the command of his master, sets first one foot and then the other on this piece of wood and then his two hinder feet in succession and balances himself up- on 1t. But this is not all; tho master of the buffalo places a second pedestal by the side of the first; the animal steps upon 1t in like manner. and when he has placed all four feet on this movable column hO balances himself upon 1t with wonderful dexterity. Goats are also taught to perform the trick, in which we know not whether most to admire the patience or the do- cility of the animal.