marble, scarcely broken by ornament, and carrying a roof hollowed into
three vaults. The rings are still to be seen on the marble walls
outside, to which, when the great Mogul came to prayer, curtains were
attached made of gold net and spangled with diamonds and pearls.

In the evening I was to dine with the officers of the Artillery mess,
and in going I lost my way. Suddenly before me stood the amber palace,
with blue shadows, moon-coloured, the carvings like opal in changing
hues of precious gems. Half hidden by a growth of jasmine that loaded
the air with fragrance, up rose the cupolas of the little mosque, like
pearls reflecting the sparkle of the stars.

Outside the town of Delhi a road bordered by great trees leads across
the white plain, all strewn with temples and tombs, to Khoutab, the
ancient capital of the Moguls--a dead city, where the ruins still
standing in many places speak of a past of unimaginable splendour. There
is a colossal tower of red masonry that springs from the soil with no
basement; it is reeded from top to bottom, gradually growing thinner as
it rises, with fillets of letters in relief, and balconies on brackets
as light as ribbands alternating to the top. It is an enormous mass of
red stone, which the ages have scarcely discoloured, and was built by
Khoutab-Oudeen Eibek to commemorate his victory over the Sultan
Pithri-Raj, the triumph of Islam over Brahminism.

To reach this tower in its garden of flowering shrubs the way is under
the Alandin gate of pink sandstone; the name evokes a tale of wonder,
and the pointed arch, exquisitely noble in its curve, looks like pale
vellum, graven all over with ornaments, and inscriptions to the glory of
Allah.

Close to the monumental trophy of Khoutab is a temple with columns
innumerable, and all different, overloaded with carvings incised and in
relief, with large capitals; beams meet and cross under the roof, also
carved in the ponderous stone, and the whole forms a cloister round a
court; while in the centre, amid Moslem tombs, an iron pillar stands,
eight metres high, a pillar of which there are seven metres sunk in the
ground--a colossal casting placed here in 317, when half the civilized
world was as yet ignorant of the art of working in metal. An inscription
records that "King Dhava, a worshipper of Vishnu, set up this pillar to
commemorate his victory over the Belikas of Sindhu."

And side by side with history a pleasing legend tells that King
Anang-Pal yearned to atone for his faults and redeem the earth from sin.
So by the counsels of a wise Brahmin he caused this vast iron spike to
be forged by giants, to be driven into the earth and pierce the serpent
Sechnaga, who upholds the world. The deed was done, but because certain
disbelieving men denied that the monster was dead, the king caused the
weapon to be pulled up, and at the end of it behold the stain of blood;
so the iron beam was driven in again. But the spell was broken--the
creature had escaped. The column remained unstable, prefiguring the end
of the dynasty of Anang, and the serpent still works his wicked will.

Only one entrance to the temple remains, built of polished red stone
mingled harmoniously with marble, toned by time to a warm golden hue
almost rose-colour. All the profusion of Indian design is lavished on
this gateway framing the marvel erected by Pal. Tangles of interlacing
letters incised and in relief, mingling with trails of flowers as lissom
as climbing plants, and supporting figures of gods; while a fine
powdering of white dust over the dimmed warm yellow of marble and
sandstone softens yet more the carved flowers and sinuous patterns, amid
which the images sit in tranquil attitudes.

A roofless mausoleum is that of the Sultan Altamsh, who desired to
sleep for ever with no vault over his tomb but that of the heavens; a
vast hall, its walls wrought with inscriptions in Persian, Hindostanee,
and Arabic, built of brick-red granite and yellow marble softened to
pale orange in the golden sunshine. Here and there traces may be seen of
wall-paintings, green and blue, but quite faded, and now merely a darker
shadow round the incised ornament. Hibiscus shrubs mingle their branches
over the tomb and drop large blood-red blossoms on the stone
sarcophagus. Further on is another mausoleum, in such good preservation
that it has been utilized as a bungalow for some official.

After passing the temples and tombs that surround the Khoutab, the town
of ruins lies scattered over the plain of pale sand and withered
herbage.

A prodigious palace has left the skeleton of its walls pierced with
large windows, and in the blackened stone, almost at the top of the
building, a balcony with a canopy over it, resting on fragile columns,
is still uninjured; of a pale yellow, like lemon-tree wood, it looks as
if it had come into existence only yesterday, a flower risen from the
death of the ruins.

Huge vultures were prowling about the place. At our approach they
flapped a little away, and then perching on a heap of stones preened
their feathers with clumsy, ungraceful movements.

A tank here is deep below ground, down three flights of galleries. Quite
at the bottom is a little stagnant water, into which children leap from
the top of the structure, a plunge of twenty metres, ending in a great
splash of green mud that smells of water-lilies and grease.

More and yet more palaces; remains of marble porticoes and columns,
walls covered with tiles glittering in the blazing sunshine like topaz
and emerald; and over all the peace of dust and death, the only moving
thing those vultures, in shades of dull grey almost indistinguishable
from the colour of the stones.

And suddenly, emerging from the ruins, we came on a Moslem street with
high walls, windowless, and waving plumes of banyan and palm trees
rising above the houses.

At the top of the street a caravan of moollahs were performing their
devotions at the tomb of a Mohammedan saint, whose sarcophagus was
enclosed within a balustrade of marble and a border of lilies,
alternately yellow and green, with large full-blown flowers in blue,
fragile relics that have survived for centuries amid ruins that are
comparatively recent.

The road goes on. Trees cast their shade on the flagstone pavement, but
between the houses and through open windows the sandy plain may be seen,
the endless whiteness lost in a horizon of dust.

And again ruins. Under an archway still left standing on piers carved
with lilies and foliage, lay a whole family of pariahs covered with
leprosy and sores.

Close to a village that has sprouted under the baobab-trees, in the
midst of the plain that once was Khoutab, in the court of a mosque, is
the marble sarcophagus of a princess. Grass is growing in the hollow of
the stone that covers her, in fulfilment of the wishes of the maiden,
who in her humility desired that when she was dead she should be laid to
rest under the common earth whence the grass grows in the spring. And
not far from the rajah's daughter, under a broad tamarind tree, in the
blue shade, is the tomb of Kushru, the poet who immortalized
Bagh-o-Bahar. On the sarcophagus, in the little kiosk, was a kerchief of
silk and gold, with a wreath of fresh flowers renewed every day by the
faithful.

A humble poet, more venerated than the kings whose superb mausoleums
are crumbling to dust in subjugated India, who, though she forgets her
past, is still true to her dreams.

Another magnificent temple, with marble arcades wrought to filigree,
curved in frilled arches, on spindle-like columns that soar to support
the cupolas, as light as flower-stems. A gem of whiteness and sheen in
the desert of ruins where yet stand three matchless marvels: the tower
of Khoutab, the gate of Alandin, and the column of Dhava.

Toglackabad, again an ancient Delhi, a rock on the bank of the Jumna
after crossing a white desert; walls of granite, massive bastions,
battlemented towers of a Saracen stamp, rough-hewn, devoid of ornament,
and uniform in colour--bluish with light patches of lichen. The
enclosure has crumbled into ruin, in places making breaches in the
walls, which nevertheless preserve the forbidding aspect of an
impregnable citadel.

Entering by one of the fourteen gates in the ramparts of stone blocks
scarcely hewn into shape, the city of palaces and mosques is found in
ruins, matching the fortifications, without any decoration, and all of
the same cold grey hue, like a city of prisons.

At a short distance from Toglackabad, on a solitary rock, stands a
square building of massive architecture, sober in outline, and crowned
by a stone dome. It dwells alone, surrounded by walls; the mausoleum of
Toglack, containing his tomb with that of his wife and his son, Mohammed
the Cruel.

And there are ruins all the way to Delhi, whither we returned by the old
fortress of Purana Kila, with its pink walls overlooked by a few aerial
minarets and more traces of graceful carving, the precursors of the
Divan i Khas and Moti Musjid the Pearl Mosque.

In the town camels were harnessed to a sort of carriage like a hut
perched on misshapen wheels, and rumbling slowly through the streets,
seeming very heavy at the heels of the big beast with its shambling
gait.

To the Chandni Chowk--the bazaar. In a miniature-painter's shop was a
medley of ivories, of boxes inlaid with silver and ebony, and toys
carved in sandal-wood.

The artist sat at work in a corner of the window, copying minutely, for
the thousandth time perhaps, a Taj or a Moti Musjid. Quite unmoved while
his shopman displayed his wares, he worked on with brushes as fine as
needles; but when, on leaving, I asked him where I could procure some
colours I needed, "Then the sahib paints?" said he; and he rose at once,
insisted on my taking a seat, pressed me to accept a little sandal-wood
frame, as a fellow-artist, and then would positively paint my portrait.

In a little alley of booths was a shop with no front show, and behind it
a sort of studio full of carvers and artists working on sandal-wood
boxes, ivory fans as fine as gauze, and wooden lattices with elaborate
flower patterns, used to screen the zenana windows. And in little
recesses workmen dressed in white, with small copper pots about them in
which they had brought rice for their meals, were chasing and embossing
metal with little taps of their primitive tools, never making a mistake,
working as their fancy might suggest, without any pattern, and quite at
home in the maze of interlacing ornament.

In order that I might be far from the noise of the street the merchant
had the objects I wished to see brought to me in a little room over the
shop. Everything was spread before me on a white sheet, in the middle of
which I sat. Refreshments were brought, fruits and sweetmeats, while a
coolie waved a large fan over my head--a huge palm-leaf stitched with
bright-hued silks.

In the distance we heard a sound of pipes, and the merchant hastened out
to call the nautch-girls, who began to dance in the street just below
us, among the vehicles and foot-passengers. There were two of them; one
in a black skirt spangled with silver trinkets, the other in orange and
red with a head-dress and necklace of jasmine. They danced with a
gliding step, and then drew themselves up with a sudden jerk that made
all their frippery tinkle. Then the girl in black, laying her right hand
on her breast, stood still, with only a measured swaying movement of her
whole body, while the dancer in yellow circled round, spinning as she
went. Next the black one performed a sort of goose-step with her feet on
one spot, yelling a so-called tune, and clacking her anklets one against
the other. Then, after a few high leaps that set her saree flying, the
dance was ended; she drew a black veil over her head, and turned with
her face to the wall. The other boldly asked for backsheesh, held up her
hands, and after getting her money, begged for cakes and sugar.

In the evening to the theatre--a Parsee theatre; a large tent, reserved
for women on one side by a hanging of mats. The public were English
soldiers and baboos with their children, and in the cheapest places a
packed crowd of coolies.

The manager also traded in clocks, and a selection was displayed for
sale at one end of the stalls.

The orchestra, consisting of a harmonium, a violin, and a darboukha,
played a languishing, drawling air to a halting rhythm, while the
chorus, standing in a line on the stage, sang the introductory verses.

The actors were exclusively men and boys, those who took female parts
wore rusty wigs over their own long, black hair; these were plaited on
each side of the face, and waxed behind to fall over the shoulders. The
costumes of velvet and satin, heavily embroidered with gold and silver,
were hideous.

The scenery was preposterous: red and green flowers growing on violet
boughs, with forests in the background of pink and yellow trees;
perspective views of streets, in which the houses were climbing over
each other, and finally a purple cavern under a brilliant yellow sky.

The actors spoke their parts like lessons, with a gesture only now and
then, and invariably wrong; and they all spoke and sang through the
nose in an irritating voice pitched too high.

The play was _Gul-E-Bakaoli_.

King Zainulmulook has lost his sight, and can recover it only if someone
will bring to him a miraculous flower from the garden of Bakaoli. His
four sons set out in search of it. Zainulmulook has a fifth son, named
Tazulmulook. At the birth of this child the king has had his horoscope
cast by the astrologers of the palace, who declared that the king would
become blind if he should see his son before his twelfth year; but
hunting one day the king has met Tazulmulook, who was walking in the
forest, and has lost his sight.

In a jungle we now see Tazulmulook banished and solitary, and he relates
his woes.

The four sons of the king presently come to a town. They ring at the
door of a house inhabited by a woman who, as the little English
translation tells us, carries on a foul trade, and Dilbar the
dancing-girl appears.

This Dilbar was a boy with a more woolly wig than the others, and to
emphasize her sex wore a monstrous display of trinkets round her neck
and arms, in her ears and nose.

Dilbar dances and sings before the brothers, and then proposes to play
cards. The stake is the liberty of the loser. The four princes play
against the dancing-girl, who wins and has them imprisoned on the spot.

Tazulmulook arrives in the same town, and is on the point of ringing at
Dilbar's door when he is hindered by his father's vizier, who tells him
how many times this dangerous woman has been the ruin of kings' sons.
But Tazulmulook, in a discourse on valour addressed to the audience, who
stamped applause, rejects the counsels of prudence and rings at the
dancer's door. Tazulmulook wins the game with Dilbar, and compels her to
release his brothers, but only after branding each on the back of his
neck.

The young prince then goes on his way in search of the magical flower.
He is about to rest awhile in a cavern, but at the moment when he lies
down on a stone it is transformed into a monster made of bladder, which
rears itself enraged in the air with a trumpet-cry. By good luck the
king's son calls upon the aid of the prophet Suleiman, whom the dragon
also reveres, and the pacified monster conveys Tazulmulook to the garden
of Bakaoli, and, moreover, gives him a ring which will be a talisman in
danger.

Tazulmulook finds Bakaoli asleep in her garden, and after plucking the
miraculous flower he exchanges the ring for that of the princess and
departs. Bakaoli awakes, and discovering the theft of the flower and of
her ring is much disturbed, and gives orders that the thief is to be
caught.

Tazulmulook on his way meets a blind man, whom he restores to sight by
the help of the magical flower; the man relates the story of the cure to
the four brothers, who quickly follow up Tazulmulook and presently
overtake him. After a short conflict they rob him of the talisman and
fly. The young prince is in despair, but as he wrings his hands he rubs
Bakaoli's ring and the dragon instantly appears. Tazulmulook commands
him forthwith to build a palace in front of that of King Zainulmulook.

While all this is going forward in the jungle, Bakaoli, disguised as an
astrologer, comes to the king, to whom she promises the coming of the
miraculous flower, and even while she is speaking the return of the four
princes is announced.

The old king is at once cured; he embraces his sons again and again.
After this emotion the first thing he remarks is the new palace that has
sprung from the ground exactly opposite his own.

He, with his four sons, goes to pay a call on Tazulmulook, whom he does
not recognize in his palace, when suddenly Dilbar arrives to claim her
prisoners. The fifth son then relates to the king the deeds of his elder
brothers, and in proof of his words points to the mark each of them
bears on his neck. The king anathematizes the princes, and sends them to
prison, but loads Tazulmulook with honours and affection.

Bakaoli, having returned to her own country, sends her confidante, named
Hammala, with a letter to Tazulmulook, who at once follows the
messenger. The prince and the queen fall in love with each other.
Bakaoli's mother finds them together, and furious at the disobedience of
her daughter, who is affianced to another rajah, she calls up a djinn to
plunge Tazulmulook in a magic fount. The prince finds himself
transformed into a devil with horns, and wanders about the jungle once
more. There he meets a pariah woman with three children, who begs him to
marry her. Tazulmulook in despair leaps back into the spring to die
there, and to his great surprise recovers his original shape.

Bakaoli bewails her lover's departure, for which no one, not even her
mother, can comfort her.

Tazulmulook, again an outcast in the jungle, rescues a lady related to
Bakaoli from the embrace of a demon, and she in gratitude takes the
prince to Bakaoli's court. So at last the lovers are united and married.

This interminable piece, with twenty changes of scene, dragged its weary
length till two in the morning. One by one the soldiers went away; even
the baboos soon followed them, and only the coolies remained,
enthusiastically applauding every scene, every harangue, in a frenzy of
delight, before the final apotheosis of Tazulmulook and Bakaoli, as man
and wife, lovingly united against a background of trees with golden
boughs.

AMRITSUR

In the midst of the Lake of Immortality stands a marble temple with a
roof and decorations of gold. All round the sacred lake palaces of
delicate hue form a circle about the sanctuary, which glistens in the
sun, its gilding and pale-tinted marbles reflected like the gleam of
precious stones in the calm, sheeny, deeply transparent water.

A causeway of white stone, with a fragile balustrade and columns
bearing lanterns of gold, leads from the shore to the temple.

Inside the building, under a silken Persian rug, stretched like an
awning, there were piles of coin on a cloth spread on the ground, with
flowers, rice, and sweetmeats offered there. In a recess was a band of
musicians--tom-toms and fiddles--scarcely audible in the turmoil of
shouted prayers and the chatter of the faithful.

At the end of a passage that runs round the temple an old woman who had
just been bathing was changing her wet saree for a dry one, and appeared
quite stripped, dropping her garments, and careful only not to let her
face be seen.

There was at the top of the temple a sarcophagus in a shrine, on which
were masses of impalpable silk gauze embroidered with gold, which looked
like a peacock's breast, so subtle were the transparent colours lying
one above another--green, blue, and yellow predominating, gauze so light
that the slightest breath set it floating in glistening and changing
hues; and on the snowy white pavement of the floor was strewn a carpet
of very pale lilac lilies and _mindi_ flowers.

LAHORE

The same ubiquitous terminus on a sandy plain, remote from everything;
then a drive jolting through bogs, and we reached the dirty, scattered
town crowded with people who had collected round a sort of fair with
booths for mountebanks, and roundabouts of wooden horses.

In an alley of the bazaar girls were lounging in hammocks hung to nails
outside the windows, smoking and spitting down on the world below.

A delightful surprise was a museum of Indian art, the first I had seen,
a fine collection and admirably arranged;[A] but the natives who
resorted hither to enjoy the cool shelter of the galleries talked to
each other from a distance, as is their universal custom, at the top of
their voices, which rang doubly loud under the echoing vaults.

The ancient palace of the kings of Lahore. Amid the ruins there is a
mosque of red stone flowered with white marble, the cupola of a
material so milky that it might be jade; and the structure is mirrored
in a pool of clear water, dappled with sun-sparks over the rose-coloured
stones at the bottom.

Another mausoleum is of lace-like carving in marble, the roof painted
with Persian ornament; and the whole thing is uninjured, as fresh as if
it had been wrought yesterday, under the broad shade of theobromas and
cedars that have grown up among the ruins.

Behind a ponderous wall, dinted all over by shot, and showing broad,
light patches once covered by earthenware tiles, is the palace of
Runjeet Singh, inlaid with enamelled pictures in green, blue, and yellow
of tiger-fights and horse-races, mingling with flowers and garlands of
boughs. The durbar, the hall or presence chamber, opens by a verandah on
a forecourt paved with marble; in its walls are mirrors and panels of
coloured glass over a ground of dull gold, agate-like tints iridescent
with a nacreous, silvery, luminous lustre.

In one vast hall were ancient weapons, swords and pistols, enriched with
precious stones; suits of armour damascened with gold, guns with silver
stocks set with pearls, and a whole battery of field-pieces to be
carried on camels' backs and spit out tiny balls--enormously, absurdly
long, still perched on their saddle-shaped carriages. And in a window
bay two toy cannon made of gold and silver, with which Dhuleep Singh
used to play as a child before he lost his realm.

At two or three leagues from Lahore, in a city of ruins, opposite a
tumble-down mosque which is strewing a powdering of rose-coloured stones
on its white marble court, stands the tomb of Jehangir, splendid, and
more splendid amid the squalor that surrounds it.

The sarcophagus rests in the depths of a vaulted crypt lighted only by
narrow latticed loopholes, and it is shrouded in a mysterious glimmer, a
mingling of golden sunbeams and the reflections from the marble walls
inlaid with precious stones.

On the tomb, in elegant black letters, is this inscription:

     "_Here lies Jehangir, Conqueror of the World._"

As we returned to Lahore the palace rose before us among trees, a strip
of wall, uninjured, covered with sapphire and emerald tiles; a fragile
minaret crowning a tower bowered in flowering shrubs--and then the
vision was past. The carriage drove on for a long way by ruins and
vestiges of beauty, and re-entered the town, where lanterns were being
lighted over the throng that pushed and hustled about the fair.

FOOTNOTE:

[A] By Mr. John Lockwood Kipling, for many years the curator and head of
the art schools at Lahore.--_Translator._

RAWAL PINDI

From Lahore hither is an almost uninterrupted series of
encampments--English and native regiments established in huts in the
open fields far from every town, close only to the railway line. At one
station a detachment of Indian guards were drawn up, and Abibulla
declared from the number of men that they must be expecting a general at
least; but nothing was discharged from the train but some cases of
rupees, checked off by two English officers, and then carried to the
barracks under the escort of sepoys.

This Rawal Pindi is an English town of cottages surrounded by lawns and
shrubberies; about two streets of bazaar, and red uniforms everywhere,
Highland soldiers in kilts, white helmets, and the officers' and
sergeants' wives airing their Sunday finery in their buggies. The ladies
drive themselves, under the shelter of a sunshade on an all too short
stick, painfully held by a hapless native servant clinging to the back
of the carriage in a dislocating monkey-like attitude.

A regiment of artillery was marching into quarters. The Highlanders'
band came out to meet them: four bagpipes, two side drums, and one big
drum. They repeat the same short strain, simple enough, again and again;
in Europe I should, perhaps, think it trivial, almost irritating, but
here, filling me as it does with reminiscences of Brittany, especially
after the persistent horror of tom-toms and shrill pipes, it strikes me
as delightful--I even follow the soldiers to their quarters.

Among the officers was a young lady on horseback, her black habit
covered with dust. Instead of the pith helmet that the English ladies
disfigure themselves by wearing, she had a straw hat with a long cambric
scarf as a pugaree. She was pretty and sat well, and at the last turning
she pulled up and watched the men, the ammunition and the baggage all
march past, saluted them with her switch, and cantered off to the town
of "cottages." I saw her again in the afternoon, taking tea in her
garden as she sat on a packing-case among eviscerated bales, and giving
orders to a mob of slow, clumsy coolies, who were arranging the house.

All round the post-office there is invariably a crowd of natives
scribbling in pencil on post-cards held in their left hands. Their
correspondence is lengthy, minute, and interminable; in spite of their
concentration and look of reflection I could never bring myself to take
them seriously, or feel that they were fully responsible for their
thoughts and acts--machines only, wound up by school teaching, some
going out of order and relapsing into savages and brutes.

Stones flying, sticks thrown--at a little pariah girl, whose shadow as
she passed had defiled the food of a Brahmin. He merely threw away the
rice, which the dogs soon finished; but the bystanders who had witnessed
the girl's insolence in going so near the holy man--she so base and
unworthy--flew at the unhappy creature, who ran away screaming,
abandoning a load of wood she was carrying on her head.

PESHAWUR

As we approached the Afghan frontier, camp followed camp, clustering
round the railway stations that lie closer together on the line. In the
morning and towards evening there was a constant hum round the train, of
bagpipes, bugles, and drums, and the red or grey ranks were to be seen
of soldiers at drill.

Near the sepoys' tents long lines of mules picketed by their feet stood
by the guns; and further on baggage-camels, lying down, were hardly
distinguishable from the russet grass and the scorched ochre sand.

There are two towns of Peshawur: one a distracted, silly place, with no
beginning nor end, straggling along something in the manner of Madras,
with an embryonic bazaar and all the amusements demanded by soldiers;
the other enclosed in walls of dried mud, which are preserved only "to
protect the town from robbers."

In this Peshawur the houses are crowded along narrow, crooked alleys,
and there is but one rather wider street of shops, which here already
have a quite Persian character, having for sale only the products of
Cabul or Bokhara. The balconies, the shutters, the verandahs and
galleries are of wood inlaid in patterns like spider-net. The timbers
are so slight that they would seem quite useless and too fragile to
last; and yet they are amazingly strong, and alone remain in place, amid
heaps of stones, in houses that have fallen into ruin. In the streets,
the contrast is strange, of tiny houses with the Afghans, all over six
feet high, superb men wearing heavy dhotis of light colours faded to
white, still showing in the shadow of the folds a greenish-blue tinge of
dead turquoise. Solemn and slow, or motionless in statuesque attitudes
while they converse in few words, and never gesticulate, they are very
fine, with a fierce beauty; their large, open eyes are too black, and
their smile quite distressingly white in faces where the muscles look
stiff-set. Even the children, in pale-hued silk shirts, are melancholy,
languid, spiritless, but very droll, too, in their little pointed caps
covered with gold braid, and the finery of endless metal necklaces, and
bangles on their ankles and arms.

In one of the alleys by the outer wall was a little house with a door in
carved panels framing inlaid work as delicate as woven damask. A crowd
surrounding it could not be persuaded by Abibulla's eloquence to make
way for me, a suspicious-looking stranger.

In this house abode the postmaster of the Persian mails, and I wanted to
register a letter for Cabul.

Abibulla delivered a long harangue through the closed door; at last a
wicket was opened, framing an eye. I was invited to approach, and then,
after examination, the wicket in the polished door was abruptly closed!

There was a sort of murmur behind the door, like reciting a prayer, then
louder tones, indeed a very loud shout, repeated three times by several
voices at once; and then the one alone continued in a dull chant. The
door was half opened and I was beckoned, but to enter alone.

On the threshold I was desired to take off my shoes, because I was going
into the presence of a holy man. As I crossed the forecourt fresh and
ferocious shouts rang out; a curtain was lifted, and in a room scarcely
lighted by a tiny window, the air thick with smoke, I could just make
out a number of men, all standing, very excited, gesticulating wildly,
and once more they shouted their savage cry.

At the back of the room the master of the house squatted on the floor,
dressed in green richly embroidered with gold, and on his head was a
vase-shaped cap or tiara of astrakhan. Near him, in an armchair, sat a
perfectly naked fakir, his breast covered with jade necklaces. His face
was of superhuman beauty, emaciated, with a look of suffering, his eyes
glowing with rapt ecstasy. He seemed to be entranced, seeing nothing but
a vision, and intoxicated by its splendour.

Then starting to his feet, and stretching out his arm to point at me, he
poured forth invective in sharp, rapid speech. The words flowed without
pause:--

"Dog! traitor! cruel wretch! eater of meat!----"

And then seeing that I did not go, that on wakening again from his dream
I was still there, he fixed his eyes on me and caught sight of a medal
that I wear.

"Kali?" he asked.

"No; the Virgin Mary."

"What is the Virgin Mary?"

"The mother of Christ."

"Ah, your Kali, then?"

"No; Kali is a cruel, bloodthirsty goddess, while the Virgin----"

He interrupted me:

"She is the mother of Christ, you say? You are a stranger, and you
cannot know all the mischief they do us in the name of her Son."

While I was talking to the postmaster the fakir smoked a hookah, burning
amber powder and rose-leaves. The air was full of the narcotic
fragrance; a piercing perfume that mounted to the brain.

Another fakir, a young man, had come to sit at the elder's feet, and
when I had finished my business the "holy man" began to knead his
disciple's muscles, wringing and disjointing his arms and dislocating
his left shoulder; and, as if in mockery of my distressed expression, he
bent the lad's back inwards till his face was between his heels, and
left him for a long minute in that torturing position.

When at last the boy was allowed to return to his place in a corner he
sat quite still, his eyes staring stupidly and shedding large tears,
though not a muscle of his face moved.

In the close-shut room the air, loaded with scent and smoke, was quite
unbreathable; musicians playing behind a partition added to the
irritating effect of all this perfume and noise.

As I was leaving, the fakir rose amid the cries of all the people, who
clamoured for his blessing. He silenced them by a sign, then laying one
hand on my shoulder, after looking at my medal--

"Farewell," said he, "and may the Almighty protect you, for you look
kind."

The throng outside had increased; Abibulla could scarcely make way for
me to the end of the street, and for a long time I could still hear the
cries that reached us at a distance.

Off next morning to the Khyber Pass. The road lay across the vast
monotonous plain, richly productive all the way from Peshawur to the
foot of the hills. At one end of a field some men had spread a net and
were beating the field towards the corners with a heavy rope that broke
down the tall oats; before long the birds were seen struggling under the
meshes, but they were soon caught and carried away in cages.

Outside the fort which guards the opening of the pass there was
confusion; a mad scurry of men, running, shouting, hustling. Quite a
complicated _mêlée_ of animals bolting, elephants and camels let loose
and impossible to overtake, but caught at last.

After the delay, which in India is a matter of course, the caravan set
out--the last to go; for during the past three months no European had
crossed the pass, and in consequence of misunderstandings with some of
the rebel tribes to the north, even the natives were prohibited
henceforth from going to Cabul.

First went six armed regulars, then a party on horseback, for the most
part Persians, one of whom was carrying in his arms an enormous sheaf of
roses, which hid him completely and drooped over the saddle.

Suddenly there was a panic among the horses; they shied, reared, and
bolted across the fields, and the road being cleared, the elephants
belonging to the Ameer of Cabul went by, to march at the head of the
caravan. Next came a thousand camels, also the Ameer's; like the
elephants, they carried no baggage, but on the back of one female was a
young one, tied into a basket, born only the day before, all white and
woolly.

Asses followed, oxen and more camels, loaded beyond their strength with
old iron, tin pannikins, a whole cargo of goods in cases from Manchester
and Sheffield--so badly packed that things came clattering down as the
beasts pushed each other amid oaths and blows.

Women porters came on foot, hidden under bales, nets full of crocks,
faggots, and trusses of hay. Children, and women in sarees--fine
ladies--had nothing to carry; some were wrapped in _yashmacks_,
shrouding them from head to foot with a little veil of transparent
muslin over their eyes.

And to close the procession came more soldiers.

After inspecting my little permit to visit the Khyber, the officials at
the fort had placed in my carriage a soldier of the native Khyber
rifle-corps, six feet six in height, placid and gentle. When I got out
of the carriage to walk up a hill he would follow a yard or so behind,
and watching all my movements, looked rather as if he were taking me to
prison than like an escort to protect me.

We left the caravan far behind. In the gorge with its rosy-pink soil the
silence was exquisite, the air had the freshness of a mountain height,
and quite inexplicably amid these barren rocks, where there was not a
sign of vegetation, there was a scent of honey and almonds.

Children were selling whortleberries in plaited baskets; they came up
very shyly, and as soon as they had sold their spoil hurried back to
hide in their nook. Further on a little Afghan boy, standing alone and
motionless by the roadside, held out three eggs for sale.

At a turn in the road the view opened out to a distant horizon; the
plain of Peshawur, intensely green in contrast with the rosy tone of the
foreground; and far away the Himalayas, faintly blue with glaciers of
fiery gold in the sun, against a gloomy sky where the clouds were
gathering.

Between the cliff-walls of the defile, in a sort of bay, stands Ali
Musjid, a little white mosque where travellers tarry to pray.

Deeply graven in the stone of one of the walls is the giant hand of Ali
the Conqueror, the terrible, who came from the land of the Arabs,
killing all on his way who refused to be converted to Islam. And he died
in the desolate Khyber, where all who pass do him honour, and entreat
his protection on their way.

Above the mausoleum a fort with battlements towers over the pass, "an
impregnable position," the guides tell us.

A company of the Khyber Rifles are quartered there in the old buildings
and the officers' deserted bungalows; over all hangs an atmosphere of
icy desolation and overpowering melancholy. Above our heads a flight of
eagles wheeled against the sky.

As we stood up there the caravan for Cabul came in sight on the road
below, and slowly disappeared wrapped in dust, with mechanical
steadiness and without a sound. After that came the other train of
travellers from Peshawur, singing to the accompaniment of mule-bells,
every sound swelled by the echo. Children's laughter came up to our
ears, the scream of an elephant angry at being stopped--even at a
distance we could still hear them a little--and then silence fell again
under the flight of the eagles soaring in circles further and further
away as they followed the caravan.

Close to us on each level spot of the scarped rock was a little
fortified look-out where three or four soldiers kept watch, with here
and there a larger tower, reached only by a ladder, and in these six or
eight men.

Beyond this point among the mountains the road seemed to vanish, to lead
nowhere, lost in pale red among the red cliffs, as if it stopped at the
foot of the rocky wall.

As we went back we found the roses carried in the morning by the Persian
strewn on the ground in front of the Ali Musjid, and over them a flock
of birds with red beaks were fluttering.

Then at Peshawur again in the evening, girls, with groups of soldiers in
red jackets or Scotch kilts; the common women were horrible, whitened,
with loose shirts and tight-fitting trousers. One alone sat at her
window wreathed about with _mindi_ flowers in the crude light of a lamp.
The others accosted the passer-by, laughing and shouting in shrill
tones.

In one room we heard music--guzlas, drums, and a vina. There were three
dancing-girls. At first they only performed the Indian "goose-step," the
slow revolutions growing gradually quicker. But urged by the soldiers
who filled the room and beat time with their sticks on the floor, the
nautch-girls marked their steps, wriggled with heavy awkward movements,
and tried to dance a Highland jig, taught by two Scotch soldiers.

A dark street corner where there were no shops. Under a canopy
constructed of four bamboos thatched with straw, a young man in a
light-coloured dhoti was sitting on a low stool; about him were women
singing. Presently one of them came forward, and dipping her fingers
into three little copper pots that stood on the ground in front of the
youth, she took first oil, then a green paste, and finally some perfume
with which she touched seven spots--the lad's feet, knees, shoulders,
and turban. Then she wiped her fingers on the saree of the bridegroom's
mother--for he was to be married on the morrow--who was standing behind
her son.

After her another woman repeated the ceremony, and then they went away,
still singing. This went on for part of the evening. When it was all
over they went to eat rice at the bridegroom's house, and meanwhile the
same ceremony had been performed with the bride, whom her neighbours had
taken it by turns to anoint and perfume, in a house closed against
prying eyes.

When the dead are to be honoured in this land each true believer lays a
pebble as homage on the tomb, and the dead man's repute is estimated by
the size of the pile of stones that covers him.

Not far from Peshawur a legend had arisen concerning a certain Guru,
that the holy man now underground grew taller every year by a foot, and
the heap of stones grew longer day by day, till the English authorities
had to interfere and place a guard of soldiers to check the encroachment
of the tumulus on the high road.

MURREE

We left Rawal Pindi in a tonga. The night was black, the carriage had no
lamps; but now and again, at the sound of the driver's horn, dark
masses--baggage camels, scarcely distinguishable in the gloom--made way
for us to go past at a gallop.

We changed horses every five miles; ill-kempt little beasts, and only
half fed, who got through their stage only by the constant application
of the whip, and shouts from the sais standing on the step; when
released from harness they stood forlorn and hobbled off, lame of every
leg, to their stables with no litter. Day broke, a dingy grey, dark with
woolly cloud and heavy rain; a wall of fog rose up around us, while the
road was uphill towards the mountains.

The fog seemed to turn to solid smoke, impenetrably black, wrapping us
in darkness which was suddenly rent by a red flash, blood-red, ending in
a green gleam. The mist retained a tint of sulphurous copper for some
time; then a second flash, and far away among the lurid clouds we had a
glimpse of the Himalayas, pallid purple with green shadows against an
inky sky. The thunder, deadened by the masses of snow and very distant,
rolled to and fro with a hollow sound, frightening the horses which
struggled uphill at a frantic pace. And the dense fog closed round us
once more, a dark green milkiness streaked with snow, which was falling
in large flakes formed of four or five clinging together like the petals
of flowers. Then it hailed, which completely maddened the horses, and
then again snow, and it was literally night at ten in the morning when
at last we reached this spot and the shelter of a bungalow.

The storm raged on all day, bringing down clouds that swept the earth
and yawned in cataracts, to the awful roar of the thunder that shook the
foundation of rock.

GARHI

A day in the tonga. Early in the morning through snow, and past forests
where huge pines were felled by yesterday's storm; then, after
descending a hill in a thaw that melted the clay soil into red mud, we
came to a felted carpet of flowers as close as they could lie, without
leaves; violets, and red and white tulips swaying on slender stems. And
here again were the song of birds, and fragrance in the soft, clear air.

Halting at noon at Kohala, we found a barber in the open street shaving
and snipping his customers. In a cage hanging to the bough of a tree
above his head a partridge was hopping about--black speckled with white,
and gold-coloured wings. It had a strident cry like the setting of a
saw.

As soon as the last customer's beard was trimmed, the barber took down
the cage and carried the bird to another spot whence we could hear its
scream.

Above the road lie dark cliffs; a rose-coloured waterfall of melted snow
tumbled mixing with the clay--pink with lilac depths, and the foam
iridescent in the sunbeams. The ruins of a large temple of green stone
carved with myriads of fine lines stood in solitude at the edge of a
wood, and the background was the mountain-range, the Himalayas, lost in
the sky and bathed in blue light. Only a portico remains standing--a
massive, enduring frame for the infinite distance of snow-capped giants.
The stones have lost their hue; they are darkly streaked by the rains
and a growth of grey and purple mosses, and russet or white lichens have
eaten into the surface.

All the architectural details are effaced; parasites and creepers have
overgrown the old-world carvings.

SRINAGAR

Still the tonga; uphill and down, over the hilly country, with a horizon
of dull, low mountains, and the horses worse and worse, impossible to
start but by a storm of blows. Towards evening a particularly vicious
pair ended by overturning us into a ditch full of liquid mud. The sais
alone was completely immersed, and appealed loudly to Rama with shrieks
of terror. Abibulla on his part, after making sure that the sahibs and
baggage were all safe and sound, took off his shoes, spread his dhoti on
the ground, and made the introductory salaams of thanksgiving to the
Prophet, while the coolie driver returned thanks to Rama.

The hills are left behind us; the plateau of Cashmere spreads as far as
the eye can see, traversed by the glistening Jellum, that slowly rolling
stream, spreading here and there into lakes.

Trees shut in the flat, interminable road, and it was midnight before we
reached Srinagar, where I found, as a surprise, a comfortable house-boat
with inlaid panels, and a fragrant fire of mango-wood smelling of
orris-root.

The large town lies along the bank of the Jellum; the houses are of
wood, grey and satiny with old age, and almost all tottering to their
end on the strand unprotected by an embankment. The windows are latticed
with bent wood in fanciful designs. Large houses built of brick have
thrown out covered balconies and verandahs, supported on tall piles in
the water, and on brackets carved to represent monsters or flowering
creepers.

The ugliest of these palaces is that of the Maharajah, with galleries of
varnished wood, of which the windows overlooking the river are filled
with gaudy stained glass. In the garden is a pagoda painted in crude
colours crowned with a gilt cupola; the zenana has bright red walls
striped with green, and in the grounds there is a cottage exactly copied
from a villa in the suburbs of London.

The muddy waters reflected the grey houses and the roofs of unbaked
clay, on which the winter snows were melting in black trickling drops.

In the streets the people, all wrapped in long shawls of a neutral
brown, were only distinguishable amid the all-pervading greyness by
their white head-dress. Men and women alike wear the same costume--a
full robe of dirty woollen stuff with long hanging sleeves, and under
this they are perfectly naked. The rich put on several such garments one
over another; the poor shiver under a cotton wrapper. And all, even the
children, look as if they had the most extraordinary deformed angular
stomachs, quite low down--charcoal warmers that they carry next their
skin under their robe.

At the bazaar we were positively hunted as customers; the clamour was
harassing, and everything was displayed for sale in the open street,
while the owner and his family crowded round us and hindered us from
going a single step further.

Inside the shops everything was piled together. The same man is at once
a banker, a maker of papier-mâché boxes--_papi-machi_ they call it
here--and of carpets, a goldsmith, tailor, upholsterer--and never lets
you go till you have bought something.

The bargaining was interminable, something in this manner:--

"How much for this stuff?"

"You know it is _pashmina_?"

"Yes, I know. How much?"

"It is made at thirty-five, twenty, fifteen rupees."

"Yes. But how much is this?"

Then follows a long discussion in Hindi with the bystanders, who always
escort a foreigner in a mob, ending in the question--

"Would you be willing to pay thirty-five rupees?"

"No."

"Then twenty-eight?"

And the figures go down after long discussions, till at last the
question as to whether I know the worth of pashmina begins all over
again--endless.

This morning, at Peshawur, down come the police on my houseboat--three
of them--and their leader explains matters. Abibulla interprets.

I have no right to stay in Cashmere without the authorization of the
Anglo-Indian Government, and ought to have handed such a permit to the
police on arriving. I have none--no papers whatever.

The matter was evidently very serious. The three constables consulted
together in an undertone, and then went off after desiring that I would
forthwith telegraph to Sealkote and bring the reply to the police
office.

Abibulla saw them off with great deference and a contrite air, and
watched their retreat; then, as I was about to send him to despatch the
message, he was indignant. The police! What could they do to a sahib
like me? It was all very well to frighten poor folks--it was a sin to
waste money in asking for a reply which I should never be called upon to
show--and so he went on, till I made up my mind to think no more of the
matter. And whenever I met the chief at the bazaar or by the Jellum, he
only asked after my health and my amusements.

So, after waiting for the reply of the gentleman whose business it was
to give me this free pass, seeing that he could not make up his mind, I
left the town without it.

At Srinagar you live under the impression that the scene before you is a
panorama, painted to cheat the eye. In the foreground is the river;
beyond it spreads the plain, shut in by the giant mountains, just so far
away as to harmonize as a whole, while over their summits, in the
perpetually pure air, hues fleet like kisses of colour, the faintest
shades reflected on the snow in tints going from lilac through every
shade of blue and pale rose down to dead white.

At the back of the shops, which lie lower than the street, we could see
men trampling in vats all day long; they were stamping and treading on
old woollen shawls, fulling them to take off the shiny traces of wear,
to sell them again as new goods.

"Export business!" says Abibulla.

On the sloping bank to the river stood a large wooden mosque falling
into ruins. In front of this building was a plot full of tombstones,
some overthrown, some still standing on the declivity.

In the evening, lamps shining out through latticed windows lighted the
faithful in their pious gymnastics. A moollah's chant in the distance
rose high overhead, and very shrill, and in the darkness the stars shed
pale light on the tombstones mirrored in the black water; a plaintive
flute softly carried on the sound of the priests' prayers. Down the dark
streets the folk, walking barefoot without a sound, and wrapped in
white, looked like ghosts.

Our boat stole slowly past the palaces, where there were no lights,
through the haze rising from the river, and all things assumed a
dissolving appearance as though they were about to vanish; all was
shrouded and dim with mystery.

To-day a religious festival; from the earliest hour everybody had donned
new clothes, and in the afternoon in the bazaar there was a masquerade
of the lowest class--embroidered dhotis, white robes, light-coloured
turbans displaying large discs of green, red or blue. The men, even old
men, ran after each other with bottles of coloured water, which they
sprinkled far and near. One indeed had neither more nor less than a
phial of violet ink, which, on the face and hands of a little black boy,
shone with metallic lustre. One boy, in a clean garment, fled from a man
who was a constant beggar from me, and who was pursuing him with some
yellow fluid; and the fugitive was quite seriously blamed for
disregarding the will of the gods and goddesses, whose festival it was.

Two days after, the people would burn in great state, on an enormous
wood pile, an image of Time, to ensure the return next year of the
festival of colours.

All day long in front of the houses the women were busy clumsily
pounding grain with wooden pestles in a hollow made in a log; stamping
much too hard with violent energy, they scattered much of the grain,
which the half-tamed birds seized as they flew, almost under the women's
hands. And then the wind carried away quite half the meal. But they
pounded on all day for the birds and the wind, and were quite happy so
long as they could make a noise.

Two old women had a quarrel, and all the neighbourhood came out to look
on.

Words and more words for an hour, till one of them stooping down took up
a handful of sand and flung it to the earth again at her feet. The
other, at this crowning insult, which, being interpreted, conveys,
"There, that is how I treat you! like sand thrown down to be trodden
on," covered her face with her sleeves and fled howling.

Two days later the roofs were covered with tulips of sheeny white and
red, as light as feathers swaying on their slender stems; and the crowd,
all in bright colours, went about in muslins in the clean, dry streets.
Only a few very pious persons still wore the garments stained at the
festival.

In the depths of a deserted temple in the bazaar, amid heaps of rags,
bones, and colourless _debris_, dwelt an old man, a very highly
venerated fakir, motionless in his den, while around him were gathered
all the masterless dogs of Srinagar, who allowed no one to come near him
and flew at anybody who tried to enter the temple.

At a goldsmith's I stood to watch a native making a silver box. He had
no pattern, no design drawn on the surface, but he chased it with
incredible confidence, and all his tools were shapeless iron pegs that
looked like nails: first a circle round the box, and then letters and
flowers outlined with a firm touch that bit into the metal. He had no
bench, no shop--nothing. He sat at work on the threshold of his stall,
would pause to chat or to look at something, and then, still talking,
went on with his business, finishing it quite simply at once without any
retouching.

In the coppersmiths' street was a booth that seemed to be a school of
art, where little fellows of seven or eight were engraving platters and
pots with the decision of practised craftsmen.

Some more small boys, a little way off, were doing embroidery, mingling
gold thread and coloured silks in patterns on shawls. They were
extremely fair, with long-shaped black eyes under their bright-hued
pointed caps, and their dresses were gay and pretty, mingling with the
glistening shades of silks and gold. And they were all chattering,
laughing, and twittering as they worked, hardly needing the master's
supervision.

A man by the roadside was mixing mud with chopped straw; then when his
mortar was of the right consistency he began to build the walls of his
house between the four corner posts, with no tools but his hands. A
woman and child helped him, patting the concrete with their hands until
it began to look almost smooth.

We set out from Srinagar in an ekka, drawn at a trot by our only horse.
The driver, perched on the shaft almost by his steed's side, dressed in
green with an enormous pink pugaree, flogged and shouted incessantly.
The monotonous landscape went on and on between the poplars that border
the road, extending as far as the blue circle of distant Himalayas. The
valley was green with the first growth of spring; as yet there were no
flowers. And till evening fell, the same horizon shut us in with
mountains that seemed to recede from us.

We stopped at a bungalow by a creek of the Jellum that was paved with
broad lotus-leaves, among which the buds were already opening their pink
hearts.

RAMPOOR

By three in the morning we had started on our way. At the very first
streak of day, in front of us, on the road, was a snow-leopard, a
graceful supple beast, with a sort of overcoat above its grey fur
spotted with black, of very long, white hairs. It stood motionless,
watching some prey, and it was not till we were close that it sprang
from the road with two bounds, and then disappeared behind a rock with
an elastic, indolent swing.

For our noonday rest I took shelter under a wood-carver's shed. On the
ground was a large plank in which, with a clumsy chisel, he carved out
circles, alternating with plane-leaves and palms. The shavings, fine as
hairs, gleamed in the sun, and gave out a scent of violets. The man,
dressed in white and a pink turban, with necklaces and bangles on his
arms of bright brass, sang as he tapped with little blows, and seemed
happy to be alive in the world. He gave us permission to sit in the
shade of his stall, but scorned to converse with Abibulla.

A man went past in heavy, nailed shoes, wrapped in a flowing dhoti; he
carried a long cane over his left shoulder, and as he went he cried,
"Soli, soli, aïa soli." All the dogs in the village crowded after him
howling; and in the distance I saw that he was walking round and round
two carriages without horses, still repeating "Soli, soli."

Last year he and his brother had gone into the mausoleum of a Moslem
saint with their shoes on; both had gone mad. The other brother died in
a madhouse, where he was cared for; this one, incurable but harmless,
went about the highways, followed by the dogs.

When we left he was in a coppersmith's shop, singing with wide open,
staring eyes; his face had a strangely sad expression while he sang a
gay, jigging tune to foolish words that made the people laugh.

We met a native on horseback; a pink turban and a beard also pink, with
a round patch of intensely black skin about his mouth--white hair dyed
with henna to make it rose-colour; and a lock of hair that showed below
his turban was a sort of light, dirty green in hue, like a wisp of hay.
The rider, well mounted on his horse, was deeply contemptuous of us,
sitting in an ekka--the vehicle of the vulgar; and he passed close to
us muttering an insult in his pink beard trimmed and combed into a fan.

On the river-bank were some eagles devouring a dead beast. One of them
fluttered up, but came back to the carrion, recovering its balance with
some difficulty, its body was so small for its large, heavy wings. Then
they all rose together straight into the air with slow, broad
wing-strokes, smaller and smaller, till they were motionless specks
against the sky, and flew off to vanish amid the snowy peaks.

A forest in flower: Indian almond trees white, other trees yellow, a
kind of magnolia with delicate pink blossoms; and among these hues like
perfume, flew a cloud of birds, black, shot with glistening metallic
green, and butterflies of polished bronze and dark gold flashed with
blue, and others again sprinkled with white on the nacreous,
orange-tinted wings.

Whenever our green driver meets another ekka-driver they both get off
their perch and take a few puffs at the hookah that hangs in a bag at
the back of the vehicle.

A smart affair altogether is this carriage! two very high wheels, no
springs, a tiny cotton awning supported on four sticks lacquered red,
and sheltering the seat which has three ropes by way of a back to it.
Portmanteaus and nosebags are hung all round, and even a kettle swings
from the near shaft, adding the clatter of its cymbal to the Indian
symphony of creaking wheels, the cracking whips, the driver's cries of
"_Cello, cello_," and Abibulla's repeated "_Djaldi_," all intended to
hurry the horse's pace.

DOMEL

A great crowd round the bungalow and along the road, and a mass of
sepoys and police, made Abibulla remark:

"It must be the tax-collector to bring such a mob together."

But for once he was mistaken.

A tonga arrived just as we drove up, bringing an English official,
travelling in his own carriage; gaiters, shooting jacket, a switch in
his hand. He seated himself outside the bungalow in a cane chair, close
by mine. Out of a case that was brought before him a hatchet and a
pistol were unpacked, documentary evidence of the crime into which he
was to inquire.

And then, under the verandah, the accused were brought up: an old man
and a youth, father and son, both superbly handsome, very tall, erect,
haughty, in spite of the hustling of the armed men and the heavy chains
that weighed on them; and after bowing low to the judge they stood
towering above the crowd of witnesses, soldiers, and native
functionaries, in magnificent dignity and calm indifference.

Then, as it began to grow a little cool, the inquiry was continued
indoors, whither the table was removed with the papers and the weapons,
and, with great care, the magistrate's "soda." The two culprits were
brought in and out, and in and out again, sometimes alone, sometimes to
be confronted with the witnesses, who, almost all of them, had the fresh
stains of the festival on their garments.

One of the police in charge had a whip, and when he was leading away the
old man, holding his chain he "played horses" with him, to the great
amusement of the bystanders, and even of the old fellow himself.

All round Domel there were fields of lilac lilies among the silky young
grass, and the cliffs were hung with a yellow eglantine exhaling a
penetrating scent of almonds.

There was a large encampment round the bungalow that night: tents for
the soldiers, and under the vehicles men sleeping on straw; others
gathered round the fires, over which hung the cooking-pots, listening to
a story-teller; and in a small hut of mud walls, with the door hanging
loose, were the two prisoners with no light, watched by three dozing
soldiers.

DERWAL

The road lay among flowers, all-pervading; in the fields, on the rocks,
on the road itself, pink flowers or lavender or white; bright moss,
shrubs and trees in full bloom, and hovering over them birds of changing
hue and golden butterflies.

Towards evening came a storm of hail and snow, from which we took refuge
in a government bungalow, where none but officials have a right to
rest--but we stayed there all the same. The wind was quite a tornado,
sweeping the flowers before it, and the pink and yellow blossoms were
mingled with the snowflakes and the tender green leaves, scarcely
unfolded. Birds were carried past, helpless and screaming with terror.
We could hear the beasts in a stable close by bellowing and struggling;
and then, while the thunder never ceased, repeated by innumerable
echoes, darkness fell, opaque and terrific, slashed by the constant
flare of lightning, and the earth shook under the blast.

And then night, the real night, transparently blue and luminous with
stars, appeared above the last cloud that vanished with the last clap of
thunder. Unspeakable freshness and peace reigned over nature, and in the
limpid air the mountain-chains, the giant Himalayas, extended to
infinity in tones of amethyst and sapphire. Nearer to us, lights
sparkled out in the innumerable huts built even to the verge of the
eternal snows, on every spot of arable ground or half-starved grass
land.

In the evening calm, the silence, broken only by the yelling of the
jackals, weighed heavy on the spirit; and in spite of the twinkling
lights and the village at our feet, an oppressive sense of loneliness,
of aloofness and death, clutched me like a nightmare.

KOHAT

From Kusshalgar we were travelling in a tonga once more. The landscape
was all of steep hills without vegetation; stretches of sand, hills of
clay--lilac or rosy brick-earth scorched in the sun, green or brown
earth where there had been recent landslips, baked by the summer heat to
every shade of red. There was one hill higher than the rest, of a
velvety rose-colour with very gentle undulations, and then a river-bed
full of snowy-white sand, which was salt.

And from every stone, and in the rifts in the rocks, hung stalactites,
like glittering icicles, and these too were of salt.

There was always the same torture of the horses, too small and too lean
for their work, galloping the five miles of the stage and then stopping
dead on the spot, incapable of moving, hustled by the fresh team that
rushed off on its wild career.

At the end of the day one of the beasts could do no more. A shiver ran
through the limbs of the poor thing, which, as soon as it was released
from the shafts, lay down, a stream of blood staining the pale sand;
and in an instant, with a deep sigh, it was stiff in death.

The sun cast broad satin lights on its bay coat, already dry; the light
hoofs, the pretty head with dilated nostrils gave the creature
dignity--it looked like a thoroughbred, really noble in its last rest;
while the vultures and kites hovered round, waiting for us to be gone.

BUNNOO

A plain of dried mud, dull grey, with scarcely a tinge of yellow in
places; all round the horizon softly undulating hills which looked
transparent, here a tender blue, there delicately pink, in flower-like
hues. One of them, rising above all the eastern chain, might be a
fortress, its towers alone left standing amid the general wreck. To the
west the highest summits were lost in the blue of the sky, identically
the same, but that the peaks were faintly outlined with a delicate line
of snow.

As we reached Bunnoo green cornfields extended as far as the eye could
see, under mulberry trees just unfolding their leaves. Numberless
channels of water irrigated the land; the bed of the Kurrum alone,
quite white, was flecked here and there with blue pools, and was
presently lost in the rosy distance of the hills on the Afghan frontier.

The natives here were an even finer race than those at Peshawur, and
more uncultured, never bowing when we met them, but eyeing us as we
passed as if they were meditating some foul blow.

And in the evening at mess--a dinner given in honour of a regiment
marching through--news was brought in that close to Bunnoo, in the
Kurrum valley, two travellers had been murdered in the night.

The dinner-table was covered with flowers--Maréchal Niel and Gloire de
Dijon roses--but enormous, as big as saucers, and of such a texture,
such a colour! a tissue of frost and light; and round the table, which
was loaded with silver plate, were grey and red uniforms. Strains of
music were wafted in through the open windows from the regimental band
playing slow waltz-tunes a little way off.

As soon as dessert was removed two lieutenants got up, and seizing a
couple of drums played away with all their might, while some other
officers, under the pretext of dancing a Highland fling, cut the most
amazing capers. When the band had left the fun went on to the sound of
the banjo, lasting late into the cool night, all in the highest spirits.

When I went away home to the fort, where I was living with my friend
Lieutenant F----, the sentinel's challenge, the tall grey walls casting
sharp shadows on the courtyard silvered with moonlight, and another
sentry's cry; and still, in contrast with the cheerful evening, I could
remember nothing but the tonga post-horse--a thing so frequent in this
land of fanatics, so common that no one gives it more than a passing
thought.

Before daybreak, before the _réveillée_, the moollah's prayer roused the
Sikhs, of which two regiments were quartered in the fort; and till it
was broad daylight, till the sun had chased away shadows and sadness, I
still felt the melancholy, the twilight sense of uneasiness left by that
slow and plaintive chant.

In the afternoon the soldiers tilted on horseback, four on a side. They
tried to unhorse each other; two or three would attack one, succeeding
at last in rolling him off under his charger, while they in their turn
were attacked by others, ending in a _mêlée_, where the victors and the
vanquished left fragments of their thin shirts.

Then there were races of baggage-mules, and competitions of speed in
harnessing horses and in striking the tents. Finally the English
officers rode a race, and then the prizes were distributed--money to the
men and blue pugarees with gold thread to the native officers.

In the middle of the course was a stand, and there, with the officers
and civil functionaries, were four English ladies who had accompanied
their husbands to this remote station. They thought of their dress and
took care of their babies, living among these Sikhs whom the native
priests are perpetually inciting to rebellion, and seeming to have not
the least fear of danger.

When the road was made through Bunnoo a pile of stones was heaped up in
the middle of the village. The Moslems finally persuaded themselves that
this was a saint's grave; and they come hither to perform their
devotions, planting round it bamboo flagstaffs with pennons, and adding
to the mound the stones they piously bring to it day by day.

The heat to-day has suddenly become stifling; the low clouds veil the
colourless sun, and the flowers, which yesterday were still lovely, are
now withered and pallid, and only give out their scent in the evening,
when it is cool again.

Two more murders; one a squalid business with no motive--a man killed as
he was on his way to gather his rice-harvest. Sixteen hill-men attacked
him at once, riddling the body with bullets.

The other victim, the night watchman of a neighbouring village, was
suspected of treachery towards the hill-tribes in a recent skirmish. One
ball through the head had killed him, and his arms had been cut off.

At the polo-match in the evening the band played, and three ladies were
present; in sign of the spring having come, a basket was hung to the
branch of a tree, full of straw kept constantly wet by the coolies, and
containing sundry bottles of soda-water.

Next day was kept as the spring festival. Every man had a rose stuck
into his turban, and a shirt embroidered in gold on the shoulders and
breast. The women appeared in stiff and gaudy veil cloths, bedizened
with trumpery jewellery. Everybody was gay; a little excited towards
evening by arrack, and dancing, and singing to the eternal tom-toms.
Even the fiercest men from the hills, with black turbans and enormously
full calico trousers that once were white, and shirts embroidered in
bright silks, had set aside their ferocious looks and stuck roses in
their pugarees, smiling at those they met.

At mess there were two newly-arrived officers, come from Tochi; they had
been attacked on the road in the night by sixteen men. The driver and
the horse were killed; they themselves had not a scratch, and they told
the story very much at their ease, relating the comic features of the
incident--how a bullet had lodged itself in a pot hanging to a mule's
pack, and the frightened creature had kicked "like mad."

After sunset, in every garden, on every hedge, wherever there had been a
scrap of shade during the afternoon, there was a perfect burst of
flowers, opening in the cooler air and scenting the night. Round one
bungalow the rose trees, overloaded with flowers, hardly had a leaf, and
in the grass, violet and lavender larkspurs grew as tall as maize
plants. Yellow stars gleamed in the tangle of creepers over the
verandahs, and on a tree that looked as if it were dead blossoms
glistened in the moonlight like polished steel.

In the plain the sowars were performing an Indian fantasia. Charging at
a gallop, their wide sleeves flying behind them, they swept past like a
whirlwind, aiming with their lances at a peg of wood stuck into the
ground. Whenever it was speared there were frantic shouts and applause
from a crowd of spectators, packed in the best places. In a cloud of
dust, growing steadily thicker and hanging motionless over the riders,
the performance went on, its centre always this same peg of wood,
replaced again and again, exciting the enthusiasm of connoisseurs till
the last ray of light died away.

The natives, to keep their money safe--it is always in coin, never in
paper, which is not much trusted in these parts--either bury it or have
it wrought into trinkets, worn by the women and children. Quite little
ones of five or six, and perfectly naked, have round their neck
sometimes three or four strings of gold pieces, or pierced silver rods
as thick as a finger--and then one evening the child does not come home,
and in some dark corner the poor little body is found bleeding, the
jewels gone.

A Sikh, an old soldier, not long since bought a few acres of land; to
pay for it he produced 800 rupees in silver, and on his wives, whom he
brought with him, were 3000 rupees' worth of jewels.

A little study of manners, as related to me by my neighbour at dinner:--

A native judge is sitting cross-legged on a little mat in his house. A
petitioner appears of the lowest caste, a _Sudra_. The judge, quite
motionless, watches the man unfasten his sandals, rush up to him, and
with a profound bow touch his feet in sign of submission. For a man of
higher caste, a _Vaysiya_, the ceremonial is the same, only instead of
running forward the visitor walks up to the judge and merely pretends to
touch his slippers. Then comes a kshatriya advancing very slowly; the
judge rises to meet him half-way, and they both bow.

In the case of a Brahmin it is the judge who hurries to the threshold,
and affects to touch the priest's feet.

Colonel C---- went out shooting wild duck on a pool close to Bunnoo with
a native, whose horse, led by a servant, came after them. But when they
came to the native gentleman's village he mounted, and returned the
civility of the salaaming people, who till then had avoided recognizing
him, regarding the fact that a kshatriya had come on foot as sufficient
evidence that he wished to pass incognito. Then, when they were out of
the village, the native gentleman dismounted and walked on with the
colonel.

When a Sikh is beaten and surrenders he takes off his turban and lays it
at the conqueror's feet, to convey that with the turban he also offers
his head.

When a native comes to ask a favour he brings a few rupees in his hand,
and the patron must take them and hold them a few minutes. A retired
Sikh trooper had come to see his son, now a soldier in the regiment, and
met the colonel, who asked him whether he could do anything for him, to
which the other replied:

"Can you suppose I should have insulted you by coming here without
asking you some favour?"

The want of foresight in the people here is amazing. A servant earning
five rupees a month got his son married, a child of fifteen, and for
this event he bought fireworks on credit, and at enormous interest,
which would cost him three years' wages.

"How do you expect to pay?" asked his master, an officer.

"I shall pay as much as I can myself, and by-and-by my son will earn
money, and we shall pay between us."

The highest peak of the chain that overlooks Bunnoo looks like the ruins
of a fortress. A legend, which must have had its origin at some time
when a man-eating tiger lurked in the neighbourhood, relates that it is
the lair of a ferocious ogre always on the look-out for prey. Nothing on
earth would induce any of the natives to go up the mountain; nay, for a
long distance even the plain is not too safe.

All the men carry fighting quails in little cages made of a net
stretched over a wooden tray and cone-shaped at top. Towards evening, in
the shade of the houses, at the street corners, in the
courtyards--everywhere, there is a group betting on the chances of a
fight. The birds taken out of the cages at first turn slowly round each
other, their beaks close together. Then a spring, a flutter of wings and
flying feathers; the quails strike and peck, aiming at the head, and
then suddenly they seem quite indifferent and turn round and round
again, picking up grain from the ground. When a bird is killed at the
end of a battle, its eyes blinded and its breast torn open, it is
considered a fine, a noble spectacle, and amateurs will talk of it for a
long time. As a rule, after a few rounds one of the birds tries to get
away. Then its owner pricks its neck with a knife, and the gasping
creature dies slowly in the dust, the blood oozing drop by drop.

A very good quail that is often the victor, is worth eight or ten
rupees. At a funeral a day or two since one of the bearers had his quail
in a cage hanging from his girdle--a champion bird he would not part
from.

A man in the fort always struck out the hours on a gong, very slowly, in
the heat of the day. Twelve at noon was interminable--one, two, three
were so feeble as to be scarcely audible. And then when it was cooler
and the tom-toms could be heard in the distance, the strokes had a queer
dislocated rhythm, and sometimes even a stroke too many, smothered in a
hurried roll.

The sweepers, the saises, the bearers, the whole tribe of noisy, idle
servants--men, women, and children--all sleep out of doors in the hotter
weather. And all day long the camp-bed, the two mats, and half a dozen
pots, which constitute the whole furniture of a family, move round the
house with the shade, only settling down after dark.

The moon at night shed an intense light, warm and golden. There was
scarcely any shadow, and in the quivering atmosphere the flowers poured
out their perfume on the cooler air. Frogs croaked a _basso continuo_ to
cries of night birds, and a sort of roar, very loud but very distant,
almost drowned the concert in the fort close by.

White clouds grew opalescent against the deep, infinite, blue-velvet
sky, and their edges next the moon were fringed with silver. The stars,
of a luminous pale green like aqua marine, seemed dead and had no
twinkle.

Then, another day, the air was leaden, too heavy to breathe. The
mountains of the gem-like hues had lost their glory; they were of one
flat tone of dusky grey, and further away were lost to view, invisible
in the dead monotony of the colourless sky. The silence was oppressive;
there was not a bird in the air, and a strange uneasiness scared the
beasts, all seeking a shady refuge.

Music in the evening, in the gardens which surround the library, the
chapel, and the tennis courts. The ladies' dresses and the uniforms
were lustrous in the moonlight. First we had the regimental band, and
then songs to a banjo accompaniment; and all about us in the tall trees,
the minahs and parrots shrieking as if it were broad daylight, finished
the concert by themselves. A huge creeper, swaying between two branches,
hung like a curtain of yellow flowers embroidered, as it seemed, on the
airy tangle of leaves.

Gauze and muslin dresses moved gracefully about against the background
of bamboos and roses. Light footsteps scarcely bent the grass; the
ripple of talk, with its sprinkling of Indian words, was sweet and
musical. Fireflies whirled above the plants making little tendrils of
light; there was dreaminess in the air--an anticipation of fairyland to
which the music seemed the prelude.

And to and fro on the ramparts, the sentry, in an uniform of the same
hue as the sun-baked bricks, paced his beat, invisible but for a needle
of light on his fixed bayonet; till when crossing a patch of light he
was seen like an apparition, lost again in the shadow of the wall.

KOHAT

A station on the road--the delightful days at Bunnoo left far behind.

The night was spent in travelling: an oppressive night of crushing heat,
with leaden clouds on the very top of us; and next day, in the blazing
sunlight, nothing seemed to have any colour--everything was white and
hot against a blue-black sky that seemed low enough to rest on the
earth. Wayfarers slept under every tree, and in the villages every place
was shut, everything seemed dead. It was only where we changed horses
that we saw anyone--people who disappeared again immediately under
shelter from the sun.

Very early in the morning we met a many-coloured caravan of men, women,
and children riding astride on asses, amid baskets and bundles. They
were on their way to a wedding: they had stopped to rest for the last
time; and alone, far from the merry, noisy group, a "bad woman" sat down
on a stone. She was on the way to the same festival, and was allowed to
travel with the caravan for succour in case of need; but she was not
permitted to join the party.

Towards evening the sky turned to a dull, dark green, and in the sudden
gloom down came the rain in floods, tremendous, solid, for about five
minutes; then as suddenly it was as hot as ever again, dry and
overpowering.

Seen through the blue glass under the low, broad carapace that covered
the carriage, the landscape circled past, the colour hardly subdued to
that of Europe; even in the dusk, with the windows open, everything was
still intolerably, crudely white, with reflections of fiery gold.
Everything vibrated in the heat, and at the stations the walls after
baking all day scorched you when you went near.

About Lahore, all among the ruined temples, the crumbling heaps of light
red bricks sparkling with mica, there were fields of roses in blossom
and of ripe corn. Naked coolies were labouring in the fields, gathering
the ears one by one into quite small bunches; they looked like children
playing at harvesting.

DEHRA DOON

Amid the cool rush of a myriad streams is a garden, the loveliest in the
world; the broad paths are shaded by cedars, banyans, palms, and crotons
with purple and orange leaves. Under the garlands of gorgeous flowered
climbers are hedges of roses of every shade, and shrubs starred with
lavender and blue. In the ditches, above the water-plants strewn with
petals like hoar-frost, grows a carpet of pale lilac cineraria.

The horizon is the Himalaya range; the slopes are covered with the
ribbed velvet of the tea plantations, and on one hill stand the
scattered bungalows of Mussoree, looking no bigger than pebbles.

My friend Captain McT----, with whom I stayed, had a house with a
peaked, reed-thatched roof. Round the verandah where we slept at night
hung festoons of jasmine and bougainvillea. Bamboos, phoenix, and
curtains of creepers at the end of the lawn made a wall of verdure,
fresh and cool; and through this were wafted the perfumes shed on the
air--the scent of roses and verbena, of violet or of rosemary,
according to the side whence the wind blew, mingling with that of the
amaryllis and honeysuckle in bloom close at hand. And in this quiet
garden, far from the bazaar where the darboukhas were twanging, birds
sang all night, and the fireflies danced in mazes from flower to flower.

Captain McT----'s orderly appeared as soon as we stirred in the morning,
shouldering arms--the "arm" an umbrella which the authorities allow as a
privilege off duty to the Ghoorkhas, men from the high plateaux, who are
very sensitive to sunstroke, and who wear only a cap without a pugaree.
The umbrella solemnly resting against his right shoulder, this worthy
stood at attention, serious and motionless, and very upright--a quaint
figure, his age impossible to guess, with his Mongolian face, his little
slits of eyes, and his figure, in spite of his military squareness,
rather too pliant in the yellow khaki uniform.

We visited a temple where the natives treasure the couch of the Guru
Ram-Roy, a very holy and much venerated fakir.

Every year pilgrims set up the tallest tree from the neighbouring jungle
in front of the sanctuary, and twist round it an enormous red flag. The
mast now standing was at least a hundred feet high, and held in place by
guys attached to banyan trees and houses standing near. Close to the
ground ties of coloured worsted, the offerings of the faithful, held the
crimson hanging to the pole.

The front of the temple is covered with paintings. Decorations in the
Persian style divide the panels, on which are depicted the principal
scenes from the sacred books of the Brahmins. There are two perfect
things to be seen here: two nude female figures standing, one white, the
other brown, exquisitely refined in colouring, admirably drawn in a
style reminding me of early Italian art; and then, just beyond these,
tasteless imitations of chromos--goddesses with eyes too large and a
simper like the advertisements of tooth-paste, and some horrible
caricatures of English ladies in the fashion of ten years ago holding
parasols like a nimbus.

And certainly the most comical of all is the representation of a baboo
donor, to whom two servants, prostrate before him, are offering a glass
of water.

To the right of the forecourt is the high priest's room; lustres, glass
shades, gilt chairs, coloured photographs, incongruously surrounding an
antique silk carpet, soiled and stained.

At the end of the court, over which enormous bread-fruit trees cast a
cool shade, above some steps and a marble terrace where some musicians
were performing, stands the holy spot which we dared not go near. In the
dim light we could see a square object, red embroidered in gold--the
couch of Ram-Roy--and hanging to the wall a silver curtain. All this,
though perhaps it is but tinsel, looked at a distance and in the shadow
like brocade and magnificent jewels. Round the main building there are
four kiosks dedicated to the Guru's four wives.

The guardian fakirs who watch the sacred flag sat under a tree in front
of the temple. One of these, quite young, was beautiful beyond words. He
had taken a vow always to stand. Leaning on a long pole he rocked
himself without ceasing; for an instant he allowed his rapt eyes to rest
on the bystanders, and then looked up again at the plume of white
horse-hair that crowns the flagstaff. His legs were rather wide apart
and evidently stiff; he walked without bending his knees, and then as
soon as he stood still he rested his chin on his long cane, and swayed
his body as before.

A tea plantation--a garden of large shrubs pruned in such a way as to
secure the greatest possible growth of young shoots, and above the
delicate tea plants a shady hedge of fan palms and taller trees. The
leaves are gathered by day, spread in the evening on hurdles and left
for the night in open sheds. On the morrow they are first thrown into a
sort of bottomless square funnel which revolves on a board; rolled and
broken in this machine they are ready for drying. The tea passes through
twenty grades of increasing temperature, and in drying it gives out the
most delightful aroma--a mixture of sweetbriar, seaweed, and violets,
with a scent of tea too. The leaves are finally sifted, which sorts them
in four sizes into boxes containing the different qualities.

Coolies in white turbans were busy round the machines. They are very
skilful, but work with determined slowness as a mute rebellion against
the humiliating coercion of obeying a thing of wood and iron, and above
all of obeying it without stopping, for the ideal of every Hindoo is to
do nothing. And this rose to positive martyrdom when, in the absence of
our own servants, who were nowhere to be found, one of these craftsmen,
a Brahmin, strictly forbidden by his religion ever to touch the food of
the disbelievers, or even the vessels they use, was obliged to make tea
for us. Looking utterly miserable, the poor fellow weighed out the
leaves, put them into little antique earthenware pots, and poured on the
boiling water. A sand-glass marked how long the infusion was to stand.
He even brought us some pretty little crackle basins that looked as if
they had come out of some old-world convent pharmacy; but the poor man
could not bring himself to pour the tea out--he fled.

Close to a field that had just been reaped four oxen yoked abreast were
threshing out the grain, tramping round and round on a large sheet
spread on the ground. The driver chanted a shrill, slow tune; further
away women in red were gleaning, and a patriarch contemplated his
estate, enthroned on a cart in a halo of sunset gold.

The Ghoorkhas, small men and very active, young too, with Chinese
features, were practising gymnastics. And recruits were being drilled,
two of them barefoot, though wearing their gaiters.

Firmly erect in military attitudes, they moved like one man. All without
exception turn out capital soldiers.

The drill sergeant shouts the word of command in wonderful
English--_lept_, meaning left.

This native regiment, after many victories, was presented by the Empress
Queen with a sort of mace. A little shrine contains two crossed knives,
and is surmounted by three Ghoorkhas bearing a royal crown in silver.
This object is preserved in a case in the ammunition store. An officer
is appointed to guard it, and the soldier who took it out to show me
touched it really as if it had been the Host. And it is a fact that on
high festivals the soldiers come to sacrifice goats before the house
where this fetish is treasured.

After dinner, with the dessert, the head orderly of the mess marched in
with the decanters. He set them on the table, and then stood immovable
at his post behind the colonel's chair, shouldering his gun till
everybody had done, when he carried off the bottles with the same air of
being on parade.

Outside, under a thatched screen, sits the punkah coolie, his legs
crossed, the string in his hand; and as soon as everyone goes into the
room he wakes up, rocks his body to and fro, his arm out in a fixed
position, swaying all of a piece with a mechanical see-saw, utterly
stupid. He will go to sleep lulled by his own rocking, and never wake
unless the cord breaks, or somebody stops him.

HARDWAR

At the bottom of a wide flight of steps flows the Ganges, translucent,
deeply green, spangled with gold. The bathers, holding the little brass
pots that they use for their ablutions, are performing the rites,
surrounded by large yellow fishes spotted with green. Pink and white
stuffs are spread to dry on the steps, flowers are scattered on the
stream, long wreaths are floating down the river, curling and uncurling
at the caprice of the current.

After bathing, during their long prayers to the gods of the river,
almost as sacred here as it is at Benares, the pilgrims threw grain to
the half-tame fish. Steering vigorously with their tails, the creatures
turned and rolled, making eddies of light in the water, and hurrying up
to the falling grain occasionally upset the equilibrium of some old
woman still taking her bath. At the top of the bank, in the blazing
sunshine, two fakirs, squatting in the dusty road, remained unmoved by
all this turmoil, seeing nothing, hearing nothing, absorbed in a fixed
thought which concentrated their gaze on an invisible point. The fall
of an old woman into the Ganges, with all the shouting that such an
incident entails in India, left them quite indifferent; they did not
stir, did not even glance at the river as the woman was taken out
unconscious.

There are temples all along the shore, poor little structures for the
most part. On the walls gaudy borders of crude colour serve to frame
chromo-lithographs representing the principal events of the Vedas. There
are but one or two sanctuaries built of marble, and very rarely have the
idols any precious jewels.

Beyond the temples is the merchants' quarter: a few very modest shops,
the goods covered with dust; and in the middle of this bazaar, a cord
stretched across cut off a part of the town where cholera was raging.

In the plain, beyond shady avenues of tamarind and _terminalia_ trees,
Hardwar begins again, a second town of large buildings, buried in the
greenery of banyans and bamboos. Here again was the ghost of a bazaar,
where all seemed dead under the bleaching sun--a bazaar bereft of
sellers, no one in the booths, and no buyers in the deserted streets.

At every street-corner there were blocks of salt, which the cows and
goats licked as they went past.

On our way back through the temple-quarter a sudden wild excitement
possessed the worshippers and priests; out of a side street rushed a
large troop of monkeys, grey, with black faces. They galloped past in a
close pack and fled to the trees, shrieking shrilly. One, however,
lagged behind, bent on stealing some rice that had been brought as an
offering to a plaster image of Vishnu. A Brahmin stood watching the
monkey, and tried to scare it away with a display of threatening arms,
but he dared not hit the beast sacred to Hanuman, the god of the green
face. The creature, never stirring from the spot, yelled aloud, bringing
the rest of the pack back on to the roof of the neighbouring pagodas.
Then the ringleader, with a subdued, sleepy, innocent gait, stole gently
up to the tray of offerings. He was on the point of reaching it when the
priest raised his arm. This was a signal for the whole tribe to scream
and dance with terror, but without retreating. The performance seemed
likely to last; the bazaar and the temples were in a hubbub of
excitement; the doors of the shops and the sanctuaries were hastily
shut, till, at the mere sight of a man who came out with a long bamboo
in his hand, the whole pack made off and appeared no more, and Hardwar
relapsed into its somnolent sanctity.

DELHI

In the train to Delhi the windows were screened with cuscus mats
constantly sprinkled with water, and so long as the train was in motion
the air came in cool, fragrant, and breathable. But whenever we stopped
in the desert which this country becomes just before the monsoon, melted
lead seemed to scorch up the atmosphere and shut the train in between
walls of fire.

Delhi appeared in the blinding light like an unsubstantial vision, white
against a bleached sky; and as we got nearer the city half vanished like
a mirage, blotted out and dim through a shifting cloud of dust.

Every house in the town was shuttered, not a soul was to be seen in the
baked streets; only here and there in a shady corner a beggar might be
seen asleep. A _chigram_ only was slowly moving along at the slow pace
of two draught oxen, carrying the women of a zenana, and their constant
chatter within the curtains of the clumsy vehicle sounded formidably
loud and discordant in the silence, the death-like exhaustion of noon. A
foxy smell came up from everything that the sun was baking, and towards
the end of the day it had become intolerable, corpse-like. It died away,
however, after sunset.

Then, in the magic of the evening, the air was saturated with fragrance;
invisible gardenias, amaryllis, and lemon-flowers perfumed the cool
night. On every side we could hear the quavering guzla, the sound of
tom-toms and tambourines. The streets were brightly lighted up and
crowded.

A dancing-girl went by, wrapped in white muslin as thin as air, hardly
veiling the exquisite grace of her shape. Close to us, in front of two
musicians playing on the vina and the tom-tom, she began to dance,
jingling the rattles and bells on her anklets: a mysterious dance with
slow movements and long bows alternating with sudden leaps, her hands
crossed on her heart, in a lightning flash of silver necklets and
bangles. Every now and then a shadow passed between the nautch-girl and
the lights that fell on her while she was dancing, and then she could
scarcely be seen to touch the ground, she seemed to float in her
fluttering drapery; and presently, before the musicians had ceased
playing, she vanished in the gloom of a side alley. She had asked for
nothing, had danced simply for the pleasure of displaying her grace.

On our way back to the hotel, in a park through which we had to pass, we
suddenly heard overhead a shrill outcry proceeding from a banyan tree to
which a number of vampires had hung themselves up. Clinging together
side by side, like black rags, and hardly visible in the thick foliage,
the creatures formed a sort of living bunch, creeping, swaying, and all
uttering the same harsh, monotonous, incessant cry.

As we passed the sacred tanks, where a smell of decay filled the air
that still rang with the cries of the bats, our horses suddenly shied
and refused to go forward, terror-stricken by some invisible danger
suggested to them by that reiterated shriek or the corpse-like smell. A
very long minute passed as we sat in the carriage, a minute of dread
that left us quite excited by this mysterious peril of which we had
somehow felt the awe. Nor was it till we had left the great trees by the
tanks behind us that the impression wore off under the comforting light
of the stars.

With day came the grip of fire, the overwhelming mastery of the heat.
The sunshine pierced through every crack in the shutters and blinds,
intolerably vivid. In feverish exhaustion, helpless to withstand the
glow and light, we could but lie under the waving punkah and await the
blessed return of night.

BOMBAY

A tea-party in the afternoon at the yacht club. The ladies in smart
dresses, the talk all of fashionable gossip--how far away from all I had
been seeing. An European atmosphere, where a touch of local colour was
only suggested by the native servants. The plague, the ruling terror
when I was last in Bombay, was forgotten; the only subject now was the
Jubilee, and the latest news from England arrived by that day's mail.

In the evening, on my way to dine with a friend by Malabar Hill, I could
hardly recognize some parts of the town: houses, a camp of little huts
and tents, a whole district had been swept away.

A wide open space covered with rubbish heaps was to be seen where the
sepoys' barracks had been, and where from the first the men had died of
the plague by hundreds. In one garden, a bungalow where a man had just
died was being burnt down--still burning. A party of police were
encouraging the fire, and a cordon of native soldiers kept everybody
else off.

A heavy, rusty-red cloud hung over the field of Hindoo funeral fires.
Tambourines and bells could be heard in the distance, and as we went
nearer the noise grew louder in the foul air, stifling and stagnant;
till when we got close to the place the noise and singing were frantic
and the smell of burning was acrid, sickening.

But at Byculla, in Grant Road, the street of gambling-houses, there was
a glare of lights; gaudy lanterns were displayed at the windows where
spangles and tinsel trinkets glittered. And then, between two brightly
illuminated houses where every window was wide open, there was the dark
gap of a closed house, in front of it a pan of sulphur burning. The
green and purple flame flickered grimly on the faces of the passers-by,
making their dhotis look like shrouds wrapping spectres.

In the side streets the natives lay sleeping on the bare earth in the
coolness of night. On every house were the spots of red paint that told
how many of the inhabitants had died of the plague; and the smaller the
house the closer were the dabs of paint, almost framing the door with a
chain of red spots.

A funeral came pushing past me in the silence of this sleeping district:
the body, wrapped in red, hung from a bamboo that rested on the bearers'
shoulders. No one followed him, and the group disappeared at once in the
deep gloom of the narrow alley.

I turned back into Grant Road, where bands of tom-toms and harmoniums
were hard at it, where the gamblers were stifling each other round the
roulette-boards in a frenzy of amusement and high spirits, eager for
enjoyment before hovering death should swoop down on them.

In a quiet, darkened corner a girl was lying on a bier, a girl of the
Brahmin caste, all in white, veiled by a transparent saree. By her side
an old man, a bearded patriarch, seemed to wait for someone. Then
another Brahmin came out from a little house, carrying the fire
wherewith to light the funeral pile in a little pot hanging from his
girdle. The two old men took up their burthen--so light that even to
them, tottering already towards their end, it seemed to be no weight.
They made their way cautiously, so as not to tread on the sleeping
figures strewn about the street, going very slowly in devious zigzags. A
dog woke and howled at them; and then, as silence fell, I could hear
again the dying sounds of harmoniums and tom-toms, and the clatter of
the games.

AT SEA

Bombay, towering above the sea in a golden glory--the tall towers and
minarets standing out in sharp outline against the sky, splendid in
colour and glow. Far away Malabar Hill and a white speck--the Towers of
Silence; Elephanta, like a transparent gem, reflected in the
aqua-marine-coloured water.

A rosy light flooded the whole scene with fiery radiance, and then
suddenly, with no twilight, darkness blotted out the shape of things,
drowning all in purple haze; and there, where India had vanished, a
white mist rose from the ocean that mirrored the stars.

THE END.

PLYMOUTH:

WILLIAM BRENDON AND SON,

PRINTERS.

End of Project Gutenberg's Enchanted India, by Prince Bojidar Karageorgevitch