The San Francisco call., 1906-10-30
CATTLE
IN THE PUNJAB
Natives of India Consider That Theft
of Animals Is an Honor
able Calling


In the sparsely cultivated tracts
along the rivers Raw and Sutlej, in the
plains or Punjab. are to be found per-
haps the most expert cattle thieves in
the world. There are several tribes
whose principal means of livelihood is
cattle stealing The male members re-
gard 1t as an honorable hereditary call
ing. Cattle theft is more or less com
mon throughout India, but it Is brought
to fine art in the Punjab. There are
systems of depots and lines to which
animals are taken when stolen. The
thief delivers an animal at one of the
depots, and 1T is at once handed over to
some one else, who passes it down the
line so that in a single night it can be
taken away to a long distance. In ex-
change for one of these stolen animals
the thief will later receive another
which has been bagged perhaps hun
dred and fifty miles away down the
line.
Animals are generally stolen in the
day time, when grazing, and at night
when in some kind of inclosure In the
former case the loss is generally not
discovered until the evening, when the
nerd is collected and counted before be-
ing driven home; and on such occasions
the thief gets long start
In some cases the theft takes place in
the small hours of the morning, and is
discovered short time afterward so
that the owner is close behind the thief.
and has the whole day before him to
follow up the tracks. 1t is really re-
markable how bullock can be re-
moved from a yard without any one be-
ing wakened up, though persons are
sleeping all around it, and there are
plenty of dogs about. An old hand,
however, can make hole in a mud
wall large enough for bullock to pass
through without making any noise, and
he knows exactly how to entiee the an
imal out quietly, after muffiing it's bell
and placing leather shoes on its feet
Cattle thieves provide themselves
with various paraphernalia to assists in
carrying on their trade leather shoes
which they place round the Iloofs of an
imals and the grass shoes they them
selves wear; these are employed both to
deaden the sound and to hide the
tracks They often have in their pos
session a set of branding irons and in
struments for sniping an animal
ears while particular kinds of dye are
kept for coloring the hair of animals
which have distinctive markings The
sarnai, or hidebag, which can be in
fated, is used for sitting or resting on
when crossing river while every
thief OF any standing possesses large
iron Jimmy for forcing open doors or
sheds and making holes through walls.
man who had lost one of his sheep
was at first rather puzzled on finding
that its tracks disappeared altogether
at spot where the ground was quite
soft and took good Impressions On
carefully examining the ground he per-
ceived the tracks of a camel, and no.
ticed that it had sat down Just where
the sleeps tracks had ceased Putting
two and two together, he, with some
friends, tracked up the camel and re-
covered his sheep, which had been lift
ed OFF its feet on to the camel by one
OF the men, placed across the saddle
and carried off.
On one occasion a party of thieves
actually managed to seize as many as
twenty nine camels, which they took
two districts to place over
two hundred miles away. They were
there exchanged for a number of stolen
buffaloes and bullocks, which were
brought back for disposal in the home
district The difficulty incurred by tbe
police in the investigation of this case
and in bringing the offenders to trial
may be Observation-Disclosures Journal
One way to get out OF tight place
is to sober up.