A domesticated goat in Chitkul, Himachal Pradesh, India. Himachal Pradesh lies in northern India, at the feet of the Himalayas. Shimla, the summer retreat of the Indian government in the days of the British Raj, is here, as well as the colonial hill station of Dalhousie (pronounced dal-how-zee), named after James Ramsay (1812-1860), 1st Marquess of Dalhousie, a Governor-general of India from 1847 to 1856 who led a successful pro-life campaign to protect baby girls. Since 1959, the town of McLeod Ganj (pronounced Mc-loud-gunj), named after Sir Donald Friell McLeod (18101-1872), a Lieutenant Governor of Punjab, has been home to the Dalai Lamas, exiled from Tibet as a consequence of China’s ongoing occupation.
Part 1 of 2
A LION was eating up one after another the animals of a certain country. One day an old goat said, “We must put a stop to this. I have a plan by which he may be sent away from this part of the country.”
“Pray act up to it at once,” said the other animals.
The old goat laid himself down in a cave on the roadside, with his flowing beard and long curved horns. The lion on his way to the village saw him, and stopped at the mouth of the cave.
“So you have come, after all,” said the goat.
“What do you mean?” said the lion.
“Why, I have long been lying in this cave, I have eaten up one hundred elephants, a hundred tigers, a thousand wolves, and ninety-nine lions. One more lion has been wanting.
Précis
Once there was a lion that preyed on all the animals of that region. A wily goat confronted the lion and pretended that he had been hoping to meet him, as he was accustomed to eat all manner of ferocious beasts and the lion would bring his tally of dead lions to an even hundred. (55 / 60 words)
Part Two
Few Asiatic lions (Panthera leo leo) now remain in India, and those that do are to be found here in the Gir Forest National Park in Gujarat, over on the Kathiawar peninsula in northwest India. Indeed, the park is the only place in the world which can boast a population of Asiatic lions living wild. The town of Surat in Gujarat was the British East India Company’s first base in India, established in 1614 under a commercial treaty agreed with Mughal Emperor Nuruddin Salim Jahangir. The factory (trading post) moved to Bombay seventy-three years later, in 1687: see Shivaji and the Battle of Surat.
“I have waited long and patiently. Heaven has, after all, been kind to me,” said the goat, and shook his horns and his beard, and made a start as if he were about to spring upon the lion.
The latter said to himself, “This animal looks like a goat, but it does not talk like one. So it is very likely some wicked spirit in this shape. Prudence often serves us better than valour, so for the present I shall return to the wood,” and he turned back.
The goat rose up, and, advancing to the mouth of the cave, said, “Will you come back tomorrow?”
“Never again,” said the lion.
“Do you think I shall be able to see you, at least, in the wood tomorrow?”
“Neither in the wood, nor in this neighbourhood any more,” said the lion, and running to the forest, soon left it with his kindred.
Précis
The lion was taken aback by the sinister calm of the goat, and leapt to the conclusion that he was some perilous spirit, not to be tangled with. So even as the goat sweetly expressed a hope they would meet again, the lion turned tail, and promising that he would never come back, fled with all his kind. (58 / 60 words)
