The daily morning journal and courier., 1906-11-22
CATTLE STEALING,
Tn India the Art is Brought Near to
 Perfection.

Perfection.
 In the sparsely cultivated and prac- tically barren tracts along the rivers Ravi and Sutlej, in the plains 1f the Punjab, are to be found perhaps the most expert cattle thieves in the world. There are several tribes in that neigh borhood whose principal means of live lihood is cattle stealing The male members are, in fact, brought up to it, and regard it as an honorable heredi- tary calling, while it is a rule amlng some of them not to allow youngster to wear a pugri (turban) until he has shown himself to be a man by appro- priating some one else's animal, be it camel, horse bullock, COW, donkey, goat or sheep.
 Cattle theft is more or less common throughout India, but it is brought to 8 fine art in the Punjab.
 In the tract 1 have mentioned there are systems of depots and lines to which animals are taken when stolen. The actual thief delivers an animal at one of the depots and it is at once handed over to some one else, who passesit down the line, so that in single night it can be taken away to long distance, In exchange for one of these stolen animals the thief will later on receive another, which has been bagged perhaps a hundred and fifty miles away down the line.
 The professional, among his other achievements Is able to track in quite a marvellous manner. He can read marks and signs on the ground as cas- fly as an educated person can the words in a book, while he will recog- nize a benson by his footprints just as an ordinary person would recognize an- other by his face or general appear ance. For this reason he often finds it profitable to track animals stolen by others than his friends. A good track CT can sometimes follow the tracks of a thief and stolen bullock or camel as far as fifty or sixty miles in a day, pro- vided that they have passed across the bpen jungle and the thief has not been too cunning,
 Animals are generally stolen in the daytime, when they are grazing, and at night when they are in hut or some kind of inclosure. In the former case the loss is generally not discovered un- til the evening, when the herd is col lected and counted before being driven home; and on such occasions the thief gets a long start, for the herlsman has to drive his other beasts home before he can give the alarm, and then when tracking partly has been formed it can only proceed slowly; for the tracks have to be followed by lamp or torch light. In the latter case the theft usu- ally takes place in the small hours of the morning, and is discovered a short time afterward, so that the owner is close behind the thief, and has the whole day before him to follow up the tracks. It is really remarkable how a bullock can be refoved from a yard without any one being wakened up, though persons are sleeping all round it and there are plenty of dlgs about. An old hand, however, can make hole in mud wall large enough for bull lock to pass through without making any noise, and he knows exactly how to entice the animal out quietly, after , muf1fng its tail and placing leather shoes on it's feet.
 A thief when operating by himself will sometimes. take an animal he has stolen for about ten miles, and then leave it for several hours tied up to a tree in some solitary spot. If the tracking party arrives during that time it is quite content to recover the ani- mal and never bothers to go on track ing the thief; while if no one comes to the spot the thief concludes that the owner has been unable to follow the tracks, and he accordingly takes 1t away peacefully Ito some distant mar ket. Most men who have to deal with cattle are clever in taking them across rivers and can do so even when thev 1 are in flood, Cattle thieves are always expert at this, and frequently float anl swim down the large rivers for many miles with their stolen property.
 Cattle thieves provide themselves with various paraphernaha to assist ! them in carrying on their trade. and among other articles I may mention the leather shoes which they place round the hoofs of animals and the grass shoes they themseles wear; these i are employed both to deaden the sound and to hide the tracks. They often have in their possession a set of brand ing mons and instruments for shipping animals ears, while particular kinds of dye are kept for coloring the hair of animals which have distinctive mark i ings Thus an old buffalo with white tuft on its forehead, a white tip to its tail, and four white coronets, will have i none of these shortly after it has come i into the hands of its new possessor. The sarnal, or hidebag, which can be ! inflated. is used fo. sitting or res-ing