XV.

Among the Houyhnhnmns.

JODHPUR differs from the other States of Rajputana in that its Royalty are peculiarly accessible to an inquiring public. There are wanderers, the desire of whose life it is “to see Nabobs,” which is the Globe-trotter’s title for any one in unusually clean clothes, or an Oudh Taluqdar in gala dress. Men asked in Jodhpur whether the Englishman would like to see His Highness. The Englishman had a great desire to do so, if His Highness would be in no way inconvenienced. Then they scoffed:—“Oh, he won’tdurbaryou, you needn’t flatter yourself. If he’s in the humour he’ll receive you like an English country-gentleman.” How in the world could the owner of such a place as Jodhpur Palace be in any way like an English country-gentleman? The Englishman had not long to wait in doubt. His Highness intimated his readiness to see the Englishman between eight and nine in the morning at the Raika-Bagh. The Raika-Bagh is not a Palace, for the lower storey and all the detached buildingsround it are filled with horses. Nor can it in any way be called a stable, because the upper storey contains sumptuous apartments full of all manner of valuables both of the East and the West. Nor is it in any sense a pleasure-garden, for it stands on soft white sand, close to a multitude of litter and sand training tracks, and is devoid of trees for the most part. Therefore the Raika-Bagh is simply the Raika-Bagh and nothing else. It is now the chosen residence of the Maharaja who loves to live among his four hundred or more horses. All Jodhpur is horse-mad by the way, and it behoves anyone who wishes to be anyone, to keep his own race-course. The Englishman went to the Raika-Bagh, which stands half a mile or so from the city, and passing through a long room filled with saddles by the dozen, bridles by the score, and bits by the hundred, was aware of a very small and lively little cherub on the roof of a garden-house. He was carefully muffled, for the morning was chill. “Good morning,” he cried cheerfully in English, waving a mittened hand. “Are you going to see my faver and the horses?” It was the Maharaj Kanwar, the Crown Prince, the apple of the Maharaja’s eye, and one of the quaintest little bodies that ever set an Englishman disrespectfully laughing. He studies English daily with one of the English officials of the State, and stands a very good chance of being thoroughly spoiled, for he is a general pet. Also, as befits his dignity, he has his own carriage or carriages, his own twelve-hand stable, his own house and retinue, and everything handsome about him.

A few steps further on, in a little enclosure in front of a small two-storeyed white bungalow, sat His Highness the Maharaja, deep in discussion with the State Engineer. He wore an English ulster, and within ten paces of him was the first of a long range of stalls. There was an informality of procedure about Jodhpur which, after the strained etiquette of other States, was very refreshing. The State Engineer, who has a growing line to attend to, cantered away, and His Highness after a few introductory words, knowing what the Englishman would be after, said:—“Come along, and look at the horses.” Other formality there was absolutely none. Even the indispensable knot of hangers-on stood at a distance, and behind a paling, in this most rustic country residence. A well-bred fox-terrier took command of the proceedings, after the manner of dogs all the world over, and the Maharaja led to the horse-boxes. But a man turned up, bending underthe weight of much bacon. “Oh! here’s the pig I shot for Udaipur last night. You see that is the best piece. It’s pickled, and that’s what makes it yellow to look at.” He patted the great side that was held up. “There will be a camel sowar to meet it half way to Udaipur; and I hope Udaipur will be pleased with it. It was a very big pig.” “And where did you shoot it, Maharaja Sahib?” “Here,” said His Highness, smiting himself high up under the armpit. “Where else would you have it?” Certainly this descendant of Raja Maun was more like an English country-gentleman than the Englishman in his ignorance had deemed possible. He led on from horse-box to horse-box, the terrier at his heels, pointing out each horse of note; and Jodhpur has many. “There’sRaja, twice winner of the Civil Service Cup.” The Englishman looked reverently, andRajarewarded his curiosity with a vicious snap, for he was being dressed over, and his temper was out of joint. Close to him stoodAutocrat, the grey with the nutmeg marks on the off-shoulder, a picture of a horse, also disturbed in his mind. Next to him was a chestnut Arab, a hopeless cripple, for one of his knees had been smashed and the leg was doubled up under him. It wasTurquoise, who, six or eight years ago, rewarded good feeding bygetting away from hissais, falling down and ruining himself, but who, none the less, has lived an honoured pensioner on the Maharaja’s bounty ever since. No horses are shot in the Jodhpur stables, and when one dies—they have lost not more than twenty-five in six years—his funeral is an event. He is wrapped in a white sheet which is strewn with flowers, and, amid the weeping of thesaises, is borne away to the burial ground.

After doing the honours for nearly half an hour the Maharaja departed, and as the Englishman had not seen more than forty horses, he felt justified in demanding more. And he got them.EclipseandYoung Revengewere out down-country, butSherwood, at the stud,Shere Ali,Conqueror,Tynedale,Sherwood II., a maiden of Abdul Rahman’s, and many others of note, were in, and were brought out. Among the veterans, a wrathful, rampant, red horse still, cameBrian Boru, whose name has been written large in the chronicles of the Indian turf, jerking hissaisacross the road. His near fore is altogether gone, but as a pensioner he condescends to go in harness, and is then said to be a “handful.” He certainly looks it.

At the two hundred and fifty-seventh horse, and perhaps the twentieth block of stables, theEnglishman’s brain began to reel, and he demanded rest and information on a certain point. He had gone into some fifty stalls, and looked into all the rest, and in the looking had searchingly sniffed. But, as truly as he was then standing far belowBrian Boru’sbony withers, never the ghost of a stench had polluted the keen morning air. This City of the Houyhnhnmns was specklessly clean—cleaner than any stable, racing or private, that he had been into. How was it done? The pure white sand accounted for a good deal, and the rest was explained by one of the Masters of Horse:—“Each horse has onesaisat least—oldRingwoodhe had four—and we make ’em work. If we didn’t we’d be mucked up to the horses’ bellies in no time. Everything is cleaned off at once; and whenever the sand’s tainted it’s renewed. There’s quite enough sand you see hereabouts. Of course we can’t keep their coats so good as in other stables, by reason of the rolling; but we can keep ’em pretty clean.”

To the eye of one who knew less than nothing about horse-flesh, this immaculate purity was very striking, and quite as impressive was the condition of the horses, which was English—quite English. Naturally, none of them were in any sort of training beyond daily exercise, butthey were fit and in such thoroughly good fettle. Many of them were out on the various tracks, and many were coming in. Roughly, two hundred go out of a morning, and it is to be feared, learn from the heavy going of the Jodhpur courses, how to hang in their stride. This is a matter for those who know, but it struck the Englishman that a good deal of the unsatisfactory performances of the Jodhpur stables might be accounted for by their having lost the clean stride on the sand, and having to pick it up gradually on the less holding down-country courses—unfortunately when they werenotdoing training gallops, but the real thing. This small theory is given for instant contradiction by those who understand.

It was pleasant to sit down and watch the rush of the horses through the great opening—gates are not affected—going on to the country-side where they take the air. Here a boisterous, unschooled Arab shot out across the road and cried “Ha! Ha!” in the scriptural manner, before trying to rid himself of the grinning black imp on his back. Behind him a Cabuli—surely all Cabulis must have been born with Pelhams in their mouths—bored sulkily across the road, or threw himself across the path of a tall, mild-eyed Kurnal-bred youngster, whosecocked ears and swinging head showed that, though he was so sedate, he was thoroughly taking in his surroundings, and would very much like to know if there were anybody better than himself on the course that morning. Impetuous as a school-boy and irresponsible as a monkey, one of the Prince’s polo ponies, not above racing in his own set, would answer the query by rioting past the pupil of Parrott, the monogram on his body-cloth flapping free in the wind, and his head and hogged tail in the elements as Uncle Remus hath it. The youngster would swing himself round, and polka-mazurka for a few paces, till his attention would be caught by some dainty Child of the Desert, fresh from the Bombay stables, sweating at every sound, backing and filling like a rudderless ship. Then, thanking his stars that he was wiser than some people, number 177 would lob on to the track and settle down to his spin like the gentleman he was. Elsewhere, the eye fell upon a cloud of nameless ones, purchases from Abdul Rahman, whose worth will be proved next hot weather, when they are seriously taken in hand—skirmishing over the face of the land and enjoying themselves immensely. High above everything else, like a collier among barges, screaming shrilly, a black, flamboyant Marwari stallion with a crestlike the crest of a barb, barrel-bellied, goose-rumped and river-maned, pranced through the press, while the slow-pacing waler carriage-horses eyed him with deep disfavour, and the Maharaj Kanwar’s tiny mount capered under his pink, roman nose, kicking up as much dust as theFoxhallcolt who had got on to a lovely patch of sand and was dancing a saraband in it. In and out of the tangle, going down to or coming back from the courses, ran, shuffled, rocketed, plunged, sulked or stampeded countless horses of all kinds, shapes and descriptions—so that the eye at last failed to see what they were, and only retained a general impression of a whirl of bays, greys, iron greys, and chestnuts with white stockings, some as good as could be desired, others average, but not one distinctly bad.

“We have no downright bad ’uns in this stable. What’s the use?” said the Master of Horse calmly. “They are all good beasts and, one with another, must cost more than a thousand each. This year’s new ones bought from Bombay and the pick of our own studs, are a hundred strong about. May be more. Yes, they look all right enough; but you can never know what they are going to turn out. Live-stock is very uncertain.” “And how are the stables managed: how do you make room for the freshstock?” “Something this way. Here are all the new ones and Parrott’s lot, and the English colts that Maharaja Pertab Singh brought out with him from Home.Winterlakeout o’Queen’s Consort, that chestnut with the two white stockings you’re looking at now. Well, next hot weather we shall see what they’re made of and which is who. There’s so many that the trainer hardly knows ’em one from another till they begin to be a good deal forward. Those that haven’t got the pace, or that the Maharaja don’t fancy, they’re taken out and sold for what they’ll bring. The man who takes the horses out has a good job of it. He comes back and says:—‘I sold such and such for so much, and here’s the money!’ That’s all. Well, our rejections are worth having. They have taken prizes at the Poona Horse Show. See for yourself. Is there one of those there that you wouldn’t be glad to take for a hack, and look well after too? Only they’re no use to us, and so out they go by the score. We’ve got sixty riding-boys, perhaps more, and they’ve got their work cut out to keep them all going. What you’ve seen are only the stables. We’ve got one stud at Bellara, eighty miles out, and they come in sometimes in droves of three and four hundred from the stud. They raise Marwaris theretoo, but that’s entirely under native management. We’ve got nothing to do with that. The natives reckon a Marwari the best country-bred you can lay hands on; and some of them are beauties! Crests on ’em like the top of a wave. Well there’s that stud, and another stud and, reckoning one with another, I should say the Maharaja has nearer twelve hundred than a thousand horses of his own. For this place here, two wagon-loads of grass come in every day from Marwar Junction. Lord knows how many saddles and bridles we’ve got. I never counted. I suppose we’ve about forty carriages, not counting the ones that get shabby and are stacked in places in the city, as I suppose you’ve seen. We take ’em out in the morning, a regular string all together, brakes and all; but the prettiest turn-out we ever turned out was Lady Dufferin’s pony four-in-hand. Walers—thirteen-two the wheelers I think, and thirteen-one the leaders. They took prizes at Poona. Thatwasa pretty turn-out. The prettiest in India. Lady Dufferin, she drove it when the Viceroy was down here last year. There are bicycles and tricycles in the carriage department too. I don’t know how many, but when the Viceroy’s camp was held, there was about one a-piece for the gentlemen, with remounts. They’re somewhere about the place now, if you want to see them. How do we manage to keep the horses so quiet? You’ll find some o’ the youngsters play the goat a good deal when they come out o’ stable, but, as you say, there’s no vice generally. It’s this way. We don’t allow any curry-combs. If we did, thesaiseswould be wearing out their brushes on the combs. It’s all elbow grease here. They’ve got to go over the horses with their hands. They must handle ’em, and a native he’s afraid of a horse. Now an English groom, when the horse is doing the fool, clips him over the head with a curry-comb, or punches him in the belly; and that hurts the horse’s feelings. A native, he just stands back till the trouble is over. Hemusthandle the horse or he’d get into trouble for not dressing him, so it comes to all handling and no licking, and that’s why you won’t get hold of a really vicious brute in these stables. OldRingwoodhe had foursaises, and he wanted ’em every one, but the other horses haven’t more than onesaisa-piece. The Maharaja he keeps fourteen or fifteen horses for his own riding. Not that he cares to ride now, but he likes to have his horses; and no one else can touch ’em. Then there’s the horse that he mounts his visitors on, when they come forpig-sticking and such like, and then there’s a lot of horses that go to Maharaja Pertab Singh’s new cavalry regiment. So you see a horse can go through all three degrees sometimes before he gets sold, and be a good horse at the end of it. And I think that’s about all!”

A cloud of youngsters, sweating freely and ready for any mischief, shot past on their way to breakfast, and the conversation ended in a cloud of sand and the drumming of hurrying hooves.

In the Raika-Bagh are more racing cups than this memory holds the names of. Chiefest of all was the Delhi Assemblage Cup—the Imperial Vase, of solid gold, won byCrown Prince. The other pieces of plate were not so imposing. But of all the Crown Jewels, the most valuable appeared at the end of the inspection. It was the small Maharaj Kanwar lolling in state in a huge barouche—his toes were at least two feet off the floor—that was taking him from his morning drive. “Have you seenmyhorses?” said the Maharaj Kanwar. The four twelve-hand ponies had been duly looked over, and the future ruler of Jodhpur departed satisfied.

Treats of the Startling Effect of a reduction in Wages and the Pleasures of Loaferdom. Paints the State of the Boondi Road and the Treachery of Ganesh of Situr.

“ATWENTY-FIVE per cent. reduction all roun’ an’ no certain leave when you wants it.Ofcourse the best men goes somewhere else. That’s only natural, and ’eres this sanguinary down mail a stickin’ in the eye of the Khundwa down! I tell you, Sir, India’s a bad place—a very bad place. ’Tisn’t what it was when I came out one and thirty years ago, an’ the drivers was getting their seven and eight ’undred rupees a month an’ was treated asmen.”

The Englishman was on his way to Nasirabad, and a gentleman in the Railway was explaining to him the real reason of the decadence of the Empire. It was because the Rajputana-Malwa Railway had cut all its employes twenty-five per cent. And, in truth, there is a good deal of fine free language where gentlemen in the carriage department, foremen-fitters, station and assistant stationmasters do foregather. Itis ungenerous to judge a caste by a few samples; but the Englishman had on the road and elsewhere seen a good deal of gentlemen on the Railway, and is prepared to write down here that they spend their pay in a manner that would do credit to an income of a thousand a month. Now they are saying that the twenty-five per cent. reduction is depriving them of the pleasures of life. So much the better if it makes them moderately economical in their expenditure. Revolving these things in his mind, together with one or two stories of extravagance not quite fit for publication, the Englishman came to Nasirabad, before sunrise, and there to a tonga. Imagine an icy pause of several minutes followed by language. Quoth Ram Baksh, proprietor, driver,sais, and everything else, calmly:—“At this time of the year and having regard to the heat of the sun who wants a top to a tonga? I have no top. I have a top, but it would take till twelve o’clock to put it on. And behold, Sahib, Padre Martum Sahib went in this tonga to Deoli. All the officer Sahibs of Deoli and Nasirabad go in this tonga, forshikar. This is a ‘shutin-tonga!’”When Church and Army are brought against one, argument is in vain. But to take a soft, office-bred unfortunate into the wilderness, upon a skeleton, a diagram of a conveyance, is brutality. Ram Baksh did not see it, and headed his two thirteen-hand rats straight towards the morning sun, along a beautiful military road. “We shall get to Deoli in six hours,” said Ram Baksh the boastful, and, even as he spoke, the spring of the tonga bar snapt “mit a harp-like melodious twang.” “What does it matter?” said Ram Baksh. “Has the Sahib never seen a tonga-iron break before? Padre Martum Sahib and all the officer Sahibs in Deoli"—“Ram Baksh,” said the Englishman sternly, “I am not a Padre Sahib nor an officer Sahib, and if you say anything more about Padre Martum Sahib or the officers in Deoli I shall grow very angry, and beat you with a stick, Ram Baksh.”

“Humph,” said Ram Baksh, “I knew you were not a Padre Sahib.” The little mishap was patched up with string, and the tonga went on merrily. It is Stevenson who says that the “invitation to the road,” nature’s great morning song, has not yet been properly understood or put to music. The first note of it is the sound of the dawn-wind through long grass, and the last, in this country, the creaking of the bullock wains getting under way in some unseenserai. It is good, good beyond expression, to see the sun rise upon a strange land and to know thatyou have only to go forward and possess that land—that it will dower you before the day is ended with a hundred new impressions and, perhaps, one idea. It is good to snuff the wind when it comes in over grassy uplands or down from the tops of the blue Aravalis—dry and keen as a new-ground sword. Best of all is to light the First Pipe—is there any tobacco so good as that we burn in honour of the breaking day?—and, while the ponies wake the long white road with their hooves and the birds go abroad in companies together, to thank your stars that you are neither the Subaltern who has Orderly Room, the ’Stunt who haskacherri, or the Judge who has Court to attend; but are only a loafer in a flannel shirt, bound, if God please, to “Little Boondi,” somewhere beyond the faint hills across the plain.

But there was alloy in this delight. Men had told the Englishman darkly that Boondi State had no love for Englishmen, that there was nowhere to stop, and that no one would do anything for money. Love was out of the question. Further, it was an acknowledged fact that there were no Englishmen of any kind in Boondi. But the Englishman trusted that Ganesh would be good to him, and that he would, somehow or other, fall upon his feet as he had fallen before.The road from Nasirabad to Deoli, being military in its nature, is nearly as straight as a ruler and about as smooth. It runs for the most part through “Arthurian” country, just such a land as the Knights of the Round Table went a-looting in—is gently sloping pasture ground, where a man could see his enemy a long way off and “ride a wallop” at him, as the Morte D’Arthur puts it, of a clear half mile. Here and there little rocky hills, the last off-shoots of the Aravalis to the west, break the ground; but the bulk of it is fair and without pimples. The Deoli Force are apparently so utterly Irregular that they can do without a telegraph, have their mails carried by runners, and dispense with bridges over all the fifty-six miles that separate them from Nasirabad. However, a man who goes shikarring for any length of time in one of Ram Baksh’s tongas would soon learn to dispense with anything and everything. “All the Sahibs use my tongas; I’ve got eight of them and twenty pairs of horses,” said Ram Baksh. “They go as far as Gangra, where the tigers are, for they are ‘shutin-tongas.’”Now the Englishman knew Gangra slightly, having seen it on the way to Udaipur; and it was as perverse and rocky a place as any man would desire to see. He politely expresseddoubt. “I tell you my tongas go anywhere,” said Ram Baksh testily. A hay-waggon—they cut and stack their hay in these parts—blocked the road. Ram Baksh ran the tonga to one side, into a rut, fetched up on a tree-stump, rebounded on to a rock, and struck the kunkur. “Observe,” said Ram Baksh; “but that is nothing. You wait till we get on the Boondi road and I’ll make you shake, shake like abotal.” “Is itverybad?” “I’ve never been to Boondi myself, but I hear it is all rocks—great rocks as big as the tonga.” But though he boasted of himself and his horses nearly all the way, he could not reach Deoli in anything like the time he had set forth. “If I am not at Boondi by four,” he had said, at six in the morning, “let me go without my fare.” But by mid-day he was still far from Deoli, and Boondi lay twenty-eight miles beyond that station. “What can I do?” said he. “I’ve laid out lots of horses—any amount. But the fact is I’ve never been to Boondi. I shan’t go there in the night.” Ram Baksh’s “lots of horses” were three pair between Nasirabad and Deoli—three pair of undersized ponies who did wonders. One place, after he had quitted a cotton waggon, a drove ofBunjarasand a man on horseback, with his carbine across his saddle-bow, the Englishman came to a stretch ofroad, so utterly desolate that he said:—“Now I am clear of everybody who ever knew me. This is the beginning of the waste into which the scape-goat was sent.”

From a bush by the road side sprang up a fat man who cried aloud in English:—“How does Your Honour do? I met Your Honour in Simla this year! Are you quite well? Ya-as, I am here. Your Honour remembers me? I am travelling. Ya-as. Ha! Ha!” and he went on, leaving His Honour bemazed. It was a Babu—a Simla Babu, of that there could be no doubt; but who he was or what he was doing, thirty miles from anywhere, His Honour could not make out. The native moves about more than most folk, except railway people, imagine. The big banking firms of Upper India naturally keep in close touch with their great change-houses in Ajmir, despatching and receiving messengers regularly. So it comes to pass that the necessitous circumstances of Lieutenant McRannamack, of the Tyneside Tail-twisters, quartered on the Frontier, are thoroughly known and discussed, a thousand miles south of the cantonment where the light-hearted Lieutenant goes to the “beastlyshroff.”

This is by the way. Let us return to the banks of the Banas river, where “poor Carey,” as Tod calls him, came when he was sickening for his last illness. The Banas is one of those streams which runs “over golden sands with feet of silver,” but, from the scarp of its banks, Deoli in the rains must be isolated. Ram Baksh, questioned hereon, vowed that all the Officer Sahibs never dreamed of halting, but went over in boats or on elephants. According to Ram Baksh the men of Deoli must be wonderful creatures. They do nothing but use his tongas. A break in some low hills give on to the dead flat plain in which Deoli stands. “You must stop here for the night,” said Ram Baksh. “I will not take my horses forward in the dark; God knows where the dak-bungalow is. I’ve forgotten, but any one of the Officer Sahibs in Deoli will tell you.” Those in search of a new emotion would do well to run about an apparently empty cantonment, in a disgraceful shooting-tonga, in search of a place to sleep in. Chaprassis come out of the back verandahs, and are rude, and regimental Babus hop out of godowns and are flippant, while in the distance a Sahib looks out of his room, where he has evidently been sleeping, and eyes the dusty forlorn-hope with silent contempt. It should be mentioned that the dust on the Deoli road not onlypowders but masks the face and raiment of the passenger.

Next morning Ram Baksh was awake with the dawn, and clamorous to go on to Boondi. “I’ve sent a pair of horses, big horses, out there and thesaisis a fool. Perhaps they will be lost, I want to find them.” He dragged his unhappy passenger on to the road once more and demanded of all who passed the dak-bungalow which was the way to Boondi. “Observe!” said he, “there can be only one road, and if I hit it we are all right, and I’ll show you what the tonga can do.” “Amen,” said the Englishman devoutly, as the tonga jumped into and out of a larger hole. “Without doubt this is the Boondi road,” said Ram Baksh; “it is so bad.”

Beyond Deoli the cultivated land gave place to more hills peppered with stones, stretches ofak-scrub and clumps of thorn varied with a little jhil here and there for the benefit of the officers of the Deoli Irregular Force.

It has been before said that the Boondi State has no great love for Sahibs. The state of the road proves it. “This,” said Ram Baksh, tapping the wheel to see whether the last plunge had smashed a spoke, “is a very good road. You wait till you see what is ahead.” And the funeral staggered on—over irrigation cuts,through buffalo wallows, and dried pools stamped with the hundred feet of kine (this by the way is the most cruel road of all), up rough banks where the rock ledges peered out of the dust, down step-cut dips ornamented with large stones, and along two-feet deep ruts of the rains, where the tonga went slantwise even to the verge of upsetting. It was a royal road—a native road—a Raj road of the roughest, and, through all its jolts and bangs and bumps and dips and heaves, the eye of Ram Baksh rolled in its blood-shot socket, seeking for the “big horses” he had so rashly sent into the wilderness. The ponies that had done the last twenty miles into Deoli were nearly used up, and did their best to lie down in the dry beds of nullahs. [Nota bene.—There was an unbridged nullah every five minutes, for the set of the country was towards the Mej river. In the rains it must be utterly impassable.]

A man came by on horseback, his servant walking before with platter and meal bag. “Have you seen any horses hereabouts?” cried Ram Baksh. “Horses! horses! What the Devil have I to do with your horses? D’you think I’ve stolen them?” Now this was decidedly a strange answer, and showed the rudeness of the land. An old woman under a treecried out in a strange tongue and ran away. It was a dream-like experience, this hunting for horses on a “blasted heath” with neither house nor hut nor shed in sight. “If we keep to the road long enough we must find them. Look at the road! This Raj ought to be smitten with bullets.” Ram Baksh had been pitched forward nearly on to the off-pony’s rump, and was in a very bad temper indeed. The funeral found a house—a house walled with thorns—and near by were the two big horses, thirteen-two if an inch, and harnessed quite regardless of expense.

Everything was re-packed and re-bound with triple ropes, and the Sahib was provided with an extra cushion; but he had reached a sort of dreamsome Nirvana; having several times bitten his tongue through, cut his boot against the wheel-edge, and twisted his legs into a true-lover’s-knot. There was no further sense of suffering in him. He was even beginning to enjoy himself faintly and by gasps. The road struck boldly into hills with all their teeth on edge, that is to say, their strata breaking across the road in a series of little ripples. The effect of this was amazing. The tonga skipped merrily as a young fawn, from ridge to ridge, and never seemed to have both wheels on the ground at the same time. It shivered, it palpitated, itshook, it slid, it hopped, it waltzed, it ricochetted, it bounded like a kangaroo, it blundered like a sledge, it swayed like a top-heavy coach on a down-grade, it “kicked” like a badly coupled railway carriage, it squelched like a country-cart, it squeaked in its torment, and, lastly, it essayed to plough up the ground with its nose. After three hours of this performance, it struck a tiny little ford, set between steeply-sloping banks of white dust, where the water was clear brown and full of fish. And here a blissful halt was called under the shadow of the high bank of a tobacco field.

Would you taste one of the real pleasures of Life? Go through severe acrobatic exercises in and about a tonga for four hours; then, having eaten and drank till you can no more, sprawl, in the cool of a nullah bed with your head among the green tobacco, and your mind adrift with the one little cloud in a royally blue sky. Earth has nothing more to offer her children than this deep delight of animal well-being. There were butterflies in the tobacco—six different kinds, and a little rat came out and drank at the ford. To him succeeded the flight into Egypt. The white bank of the ford framed the picture perfectly—the Mother in blue, on a great white donkey, holding the Child in herarms, and Joseph walking beside, his hand upon the donkey’s withers. By all the laws of the East, Joseph should have been riding and the Mother walking. This was an exception decreed for the Englishman’s special benefit. It was very warm and very pleasant, and, somehow, the passers by the ford grew indistinct, and the nullah became a big English garden, with a cuckoo singing far down in the orchard, among the apple-blossoms. The cuckoo started the dream. He was the only real thing in it, for the garden slipped back into the water, but the cuckoo remained and called and called for all the world as though he had been a veritable English cuckoo. “Cuckoo—cuckoo—cuck;” then a pause and renewal of the cry from another quarter of the horizon. After that the ford became distasteful, so the procession was driven forward and in time plunged into what must have been a big city once, but the only inhabitants were oil-men. There were abundance of tombs here, and one carried a life-like carving in high relief of a man on horseback spearing a foot-soldier. Hard by this place the road or rut turned by great gardens, very cool and pleasant, full of tombs and black-faced monkeys who quarrelled among the tombs, and shut in from the sun by gigantic banians and mangotrees. Under the trees and behind the walls, priests sat singing; and the Englishman would have enquired into what strange place he had fallen, but the men did not understand him.

Ganesh is a mean little god of circumscribed powers. He was dreaming, with a red and flushed face, under a banian tree; and the Englishman gave him four annas to arrange matters comfortably at Boondi. His priest took the four annas, but Ganesh did nothing whatever, as shall be shown later. His only excuse is that his trunk was a good deal worn, and he would have been better for some more silver leaf, but that was no fault of the Englishman.

Beyond the dead city was a jhil, full of snipe and duck, winding in and out of the hills; and beyond the jhil, hidden altogether among the hills, was Boondi. The nearer to the city the viler grew the road and the more overwhelming the curiosity of the inhabitants. But what befel at Boondi must be reserved for another chapter.

The Comedy of Errors and the Exploitation of Boondi. The Castaway of the Dispensary and the Children of the Schools. A Consideration of the Shields of Rajasthan and other trifles.

IT is high time that a new treaty were made with Maha Rao Raja Ram Singh, Bahadur, Raja of Boondi. He keeps the third article of the old one too faithfully, which says that he “shall not enter into negotiations with anyone without the consent of the British Government.” He does not negotiate at all. Arrived at Boondi Gate, the Englishman asked where he might lay his head for the night, and the Quarter Guard with one accord said:—“The Sukh Mahal, which is beyond the city,” and the tonga went thither through the length of the town, of which more presently, till it arrived at a pavilion on a lake—a place of two turrets connected by an open colonnade. The “house” was open to the winds of heaven and the pigeons of the Raj; but the latter had polluted more than the first could purify. A snowy-bearded chowkidarcrawled out of a place of tombs which he seemed to share with some monkeys, and threw himself into Anglo-Saxon attitudes. He was a great deal worse than Ram Baksh, for he said that all the Officer Sahibs of Deoli came to the Sukh Mahal forshikarand—never went away again, so pleased were they. The Sahib had brought the honour of his Presence, and he was a very old man, and without apurwanacould do nothing. Then he fell deeply asleep without warning; and there was a pause, of one hour only, which the Englishman spent in seeing the lake. It, like the jhils on the road, wound in and out among the hills, and, on the bund side, was bounded by a hill of black rock crowned with achhatriof grey stone. Below the bund was a garden as fair as eye could wish, and the shores of the lake were dotted with little temples. Given a habitable house—a mere dak-bungalow—it would be a delightful spot to rest in. Warned by some bitter experiences in the past, the Englishman knew that he was in for the demi-semi-royal or embarrassing reception, when a man, being the unwelcome guest of a paternal State, is neither allowed to pay his way and make himself comfortable, nor is he willingly entertained. When he saw a one-eyed munshi, he felt certain that Ganesh hadturned upon him at last. The munshi demanded and received thepurwana. Then he sat down and questioned the traveller exhaustively as to his character and profession. Having thoroughly satisfied himself that the visitor was in no way connected with the Government or the “Agenty Sahib Bahadur,” he took no further thought of the matter; and the day began to draw in upon a grassy bund, an open work pavilion, and a disconsolate tonga.

At last the faithful servitor, who had helped to fight the Battle of the Mail Bags at Udaipur, broke his silence, and vowing that all these devil-people—not more than twelve—had only come to see the tamasha, suggested the breaking of the munshi’s head. And, indeed, that seemed the only way of breaking the ice; for the munshi had in the politest possible language, put forward the suggestion that there was nothing particular to show that the Sahib who held thepurwanahad really any right to hold it. The chowkidar woke up and chaunted a weird chaunt, accompanied by the Anglo-Saxon attitudes, a new set. He was an old man, and all the Sahib-log said so, and within the pavilion were tables and chairs and lamps and bath-tubs, and everything that the heart of man coulddesire. Even now an enormous staff ofkhalassiswere arranging all these things for the comfort of the Sahib Bahadur and Protector of the Poor, who had brought the honour and glory of his Presence all the way from Deoli. What did tables and chairs and eggs and fowls and very bright lamps matter to the Raj? He was an old man and.... “Who put the present Raja on the guddee?” “Lake Sahib,” promptly answered the chowkidar. “I was there. That is the news of many old years.” Now Tod says it was he himself who installed “Lalji the beloved” in the year 1821. The Englishman began to lose faith in the chowkidar. The munshi said nothing but followed the Englishman with his one workable eye. A merry little breeze crisped the waters of the lake, and the fish began to frolic before going to bed.

“Is nobody going to do or bring anything?” said the Englishman faintly, wondering whether the local jail would give him a bed if he killed the munshi. “I am an old man,” said the chowkidar, “and because of their great respect and reverence for the Sahib in whose Presence I am only a bearer of orders and a servant awaiting them, men, many men, are bringing nowkanatswhich I with my own hands will wrap, here and there, there and here, inand about the pillars of this place; and thus you, O Sahib, who have brought the honour of your Presence to the Boondi Raj over the road to Deoli, which is akutcharoad, will be provided with a very fine and large apartment over which I will watch while you go to kill the tigers in these hills.”

By this time two youths had twistedkanatsround some of the pillars of the colonnade, making a sort of loose-box with a two-foot air-way all round the top. There was no door, but there were unlimited windows. Into this enclosure the chowkidar heaped furniture on which many generations of pigeons had evidently been carried off by cholera, until he was entreated to desist. “What,” said he scornfully, “are tables and chairs to this Raj? If six be not enough, let the Presence give an order, and twelve shall be forthcoming. Everything shall be forthcoming.” Here he filled achiragwith kerosene oil and set it in a box upon a stick. Luckily, the oil which he poured so lavishly from a quart bottle was bad, or he would have been altogether consumed.

Night had fallen long before this magnificence was ended. The superfluous furniture—chairs for the most part—was shovelled out into the darkness and by the light of a flamboyantchirag—a merry wind forbade candles—the Englishman went to bed, and was lulled to sleep by the rush of the water escaping from the overflow trap and the splash of the water-turtle as he missed the evasive fish. It was a curious sight. Cats and dogs rioted about the enclosure, and a wind from the lake bellied thekanats. The brushwood of the hills around snapped and cracked as beasts went through it, and creatures—not jackals—made dolorous noises. On the lake it seemed that hundreds of water-birds were keeping a hotel, and that there were arrivals and departures throughout the night. The Raj insisted upon providing a guard of two sepoys, very pleasant men on four rupees a month. These said that tigers sometimes wandered about on the hills above the lake, but were most generally to be found five miles away. And the Englishman promptly dreamed that a one eyed tiger came into his tent without apurwana. But it was only a wild cat after all; and it fled before the shoes of civilisation.

The Sukh Mahal was completely separated from the city, and might have been a country-house. It should be mentioned that Boondi is jammed into a V-shaped gorge—the valley at the main entrance being something less than five hundred yards across. As it splays out, thethickly-packed houses follow its line, and, seen from above, seem like cattle being herded together preparatory to a stampede through the gate. Owing to the set of the hills, very little of the city is visible except from the Palace. It was in search of this latter that the Englishman went abroad and became so interested in the streets that he forgot all about it for a time. Jeypore is a show-city and is decently drained; Udaipur is blessed with a State Engineer and a printed form of Government; for Jodhpur the dry sand, the burning sun, and an energetic doctor have done a good deal, but Boondi has none of these things. The crampedness of the locality aggravates the evil, and it can only be in the rains which channel and furrow the rocky hill-sides that Boondi is at all swept out. The Nal Sagar, a lovely little stretch of water, takes up the head of the valley called the Banda Gorge, and must, in the nature of things, receive a good deal of unholy drainage. But setting aside this weakness, it is a fascinating place—this jumbled city of straight streets and cool gardens, where gigantic mangoes and peepuls intertwine over gurgling water-courses, and the cuckoo comes at mid-day. It boasts no foolish Municipality to decree when a house is dangerous and unhabitable. The newer shops are builtinto, on to, over and under, time-blackened ruins of an older day, and the little children skip about tottering arcades and grass-grown walls, while their parents chatter below in the crowded bazaar. In the back slums, the same stones seem to be used over and over again for house-building, perhaps, because there is no space to bring up laden buffaloes. Wheeled conveyances are scarce in Boondi City—there is scant room for carts, and the streets are paved with knobsome stones, unpleasant to walk over. From time to time an inroad ofBunjaras’ pack-bullocks sweeps the main street clear of life, or one of the Raja’s elephants—he has twelve of them—blocks the way. But, for the most part, the foot passengers have all the city for their own.

They do not hurry themselves. They sit in the sun and think, or put on all the arms in the family, and, hung with ironmongery, parade before their admiring friends. Other men, lean, dark men, with bound jaws and only a tulwar for weapon, dive in and out of the dark alleys, on errands of State. It is a blissfully lazy city, doing everything in the real, true, original native way, and it is kept in very good order by the Durbar. There either is or is not an order for everything. There is no order to sell

Page 202—“One of the Raja’s elephants—he has twelve of them—blocks the way.”

fishing-hooks, or to supply an Englishman with milk, or to change for him Currency Notes. He must only deal with the Durbar for whatever he requires; and wherever he goes he must be accompanied by at least two men. They will tell him nothing, for they know or affect to know nothing of the city. They will do nothing except shout at the little innocents who joyfully run after the stranger and demandpice, but there they are, and there they will stay till he leaves the city, accompanying him to the gate, and waiting there a little to see that he is fairly off and away. Englishmen are not encouraged in Boondi. The intending traveller would do well to take a full suit of Political uniform with the sun-flowers, and the little black sword to sit down upon. The local god is the “Agenty Sahib,” and he is an incarnation without a name—at least among the lower classes. The educated, when speaking of him, always use the courtly “Bahadur” affix: and yet it is a mean thing to gird at a State which, after all, is not bound to do anything for intrusive Englishmen without any visible means of livelihood. The King of this fair city should declare the blockade absolute, and refuse to be troubled with anyone except “Colon-nel Baltah Agenty Sahib Bahadur” and the Politicals. If ever a railway is run through Kotah, as men on the Bombay side declare it must be, the cloistered glory of Boondi will depart, for Kotah is only twenty miles easterly of the city and the road is moderately good. In that day the Globe-Trotter will pry about the place, and the Charitable Dispensary—a gem among dispensaries—will be public property.

The Englishman was hunting for the statue of a horse, a great horse hight Hunja, who was a steed of Irak, and a King’s gift to Rao Omeda, one time monarch of Boondi. He found it in the city square as Tod had said; and it was an unlovely statue, carven after the dropsical fashion of later Hindu art. No one seemed to know anything about it. A little further on, one cried from a bye-way in rusty English:—“Come and see my Dispensary.” There are only two men in Boondi who speak English. One is the head, and the other the assistant, teacher of the English side of Boondi Free School. This third was, some twenty years ago, a pupil of the Lahore Medical College when that institution was young; and he only remembered a word here and there. He was head of the Charitable Dispensary; and insisted upon, then and there, organising a small durbar, and pulling out all his books for inspection. Escape was hopeless: nothing less than a formal inspection and introduction to all the native Baids would serve. There were sixteen beds in and about the courtyard, and between twenty and thirty out-patients stood in attendance. Making allowances for untouched Orientalism, the Dispensary is a good one, and must relieve a certain amount of human misery. There is no other in all Boondi. The operation-book, kept in English, showed the principal complaints of the country. They were:—“Asthama,” “Numonia,” “Skin-diseas,” “Dabalaty,” and “Loin-bite.” This last item occurred again and again—three and four cases per week—and it was not until the Doctor said—“Sher se mara” that the Englishman read it aright. It was “lion-bite,” or tiger, if you insist upon zoological accuracy. There was one incorrigible idiot, a handsome young man, naked as the day, who sat in the sunshine, shivering and pressing his hands to his head. “I have given him blisters and setons—have tried native and English treatment for two years, but it is no use. He is always as you see him, and now he stays here by the favour of the Durbar, which is a very good and pitiful Durbar,” said the Doctor. There were many such pensioners of the Durbar—men afflicted with chronic “asthama” who stayed “byfavour,” and were kindly treated. They were resting in the sunshine, their hands on their knees, sure that their daily dole of grain and tobacco and opium would be forthcoming. “All folk, even little children, eat opium here,” said the Doctor, and the diet-book proved it. After laborious investigation of everything, down to the last indent to Bombay for Europe medicines, the Englishman was suffered to depart. “Sir, I thank....” began the Native Doctor, but the rest of the sentence stuck. Sixteen years in Boondi does not increase knowledge of English; and he went back to his patients, gravely conning over the name of the Principal of the Lahore Medical School—a College now—who had taught him all he knew, and to whom he intended to write. There was something pathetic in the man’s catching at news from the outside world of men he had known as Assistant and House Surgeons who are now Rai Bahadurs, and his parade of the few shreds of English that still clung to him. May he treat “loin-bites” and “catrack” successfully for many years. In the happy, indolent, fashion that must have merits which we cannot understand, he is doing a good work, and the Durbar allows his Dispensary as much as it wants.

Close to the Dispensary stood the Free School,and thither an importunate munshi steered the Englishman who, by this time, was beginning to persuade himself that he really was an accredited agent of Government sent to report on the progress of Boondi. From a peepul-shaded courtyard came a clamour of young voices. Thirty or forty little ones, from five to eight years old, were sitting in an open verandah learninghissaband Hindustani, said the teacher. No need to ask from what castes they came, for it was written on their faces that they were Mahajans, Oswals, Aggerwals, and in one or two cases it seemed, Sharawaks of Guzerat. They were learning the business of their lives and, in time, would take their fathers’ places, and show in how many ways money may be manipulated. Here the profession-type came out with startling distinctness. Through the chubbiness of almost babyhood, or the delicate suppleness of mature years, in mouth and eyes and hands, it betrayed itself. The Rahtor, who comes of a fighting-stock, is a fine animal and well-bred; the Hara, who seems to be more compactly-built, is also a fine animal; but for a race that show blood in every line of their frame, from the arch of the instep to the modelling of the head, the financial—trading is too coarse a word—the financial class of Rajputana appearsto be the most remarkable. Later in life many become clouded with fat on jowl and paunch; but in his youth, his quick-eyed, nimble youth, the young Marwar, to give him his business-title, is really a thing of beauty. Also his manners are courtly. The bare ground and a few slates sufficed for the children who were merely learning the ropes that drag States; but the English class, of boys from ten to twelve, was supplied with benches and forms and a table with a cloth top. The assistant teacher, for the head was on leave, was a self-taught man of Boondi, young and delicate looking, who preferred reading to speaking English. His youngsters were supplied with “The Third English Reading Book,” and were painfully thumbing their way through a doggerel poem about an “old man with hoary hair.” One boy, bolder than the rest, slung an English sentence at the visitor and collapsed. It was his little stock-in-trade, and the rest regarded him enviously. The Durbar supports the school, which is entirely free and open; a just distinction being maintained between the various castes. The old race prejudice against payment for knowledge came out in a reply to question.—“You must not sell teaching,” said the teacher, and the class murmured applausively:—“You must not sell teaching.”

The population of Boondi seems more obviously mixed than that of the other States. There are four or five thousand Mahomedans within its walls and a sprinkling of aborigines of various varieties, besides the human raffle that the Bunjaras bring in their train, with Pathans and sleek Delhi men. The new heraldry of the State is curious—something after this sort.Or, a demi-man,sable, issuant of flames, holding in right hand a sword and in the left a bow—all proper. In chief, a dagger of thesecond, sheathedvest, fessewise over seven arrows in sheaf of thesecond. This latter blazon Boondi holds in commemoration of the defeat of an Imperial Prince who rebelled against the Delhi Throne in the days of Jehangir, when Boondi, for value received, took service under the Mahomedan. It might be, but here there is no certainty, the memorial of Rao Rutton’s victory over Prince Khoorm, when the latter strove to raise all Rajputana against Jehangir his father; or of a second victory over a riotous lordling who harried Mewar a little later. For this exploit, the annals say, Jehangir gave Rao Rutton honorary flags and kettle-drums which may have been melted down by the science of the Herald’s College into the blazon aforesaid. All the heraldry of Rajputana is curious and,for such as hold that there is any worth in the “Royal Science,” interesting. Udaipur’s shield is, naturallygules, a sun in splendor, as befits the “children of the sun and fire,” and one of the most ancient houses in India. Her crest is the straight Rajput sword, thekhanda; for an account of the worship of which very powerful divinity read Tod. The supporters are a Bhil and a Rajput, attired for the forlorn-hope; commemorating not only the defences of Chitor, but also the connection of the great Bappa Rawul with the Bhils who even now play the principal part in the Crown-Marking of a Rana of Udaipur. Here, again, Tod explains the matter at length. Banswara claims alliance with Udaipur and carries a sun, with a label of difference of some kind. Jeypore has the five-coloured flag of Amber with a sun, because the House claim descent from Rama, and her crest is a kuchnar tree, which is the bearing of Dasaratha, father of Rama. The white horse, which faces the tiger as supporter, may or may not be the memorial of the greataswamedha yugaor horse sacrifice that Jey Singh, who built Jeypore, didnotcarry out.

Jodhpur has the five-coloured flag, with a falcon, in which shape Durga, the patron Goddess of the State, has been sometimes good enough toappear. She has perched in the form of a wagtail on the howdah of the Chief of Jeysulmir, whose shield is blazoned with “forts in a desert land,” and a naked left arm holding a broken spear, because, the legend goes, Jeysulmir was once galled by a horse with a magic spear. They tell the story to-day, but it is a long one. The supporters of the shield—this is canting heraldry with a vengeance!—are antelopes of the desert spangled with gold coin, because the State was long the refuge of the wealthy bankers of India.

Bikanir, a younger House of Jodhpur, carries three white hawks on the five-coloured flag. The patron Goddess of Bikanir once turned the thorny jungle round the city to fruit-trees, and the crest therefore is a green tree—strange emblem for a desert principality. The motto, however, is a good one. When the greater part of the Rajput States were vassals of Akbar, and he sent them abroad to do his will, certain Princes objected to crossing the Indus, and asked Bikanir to head the mutiny because his State was the least accessible. He consented, on condition that they would all for one day greet him thus:—“Jey Jangal dar Badshah!” History shows what became of the objector and Bikanir’s motto:—“Hail to the King of the Waste!” proves that the talemustbe true. But from Boondi to Bikanir is a long digression, bred by blissful idleness on the bund of the Burra. It would have been sinful not to let down a line into those crowded waters, and the Guards, who were Mahomedans, said that if the Sahib did not eat fish, they did. And the Sahib fished luxuriously, catching two and three pounders, of a perch-like build, whenever he chose to cast. He was wearied of schools and dispensaries, and the futility of heraldry accorded well with laziness—that is to say Boondi.

It should be noted, none the less, that in this part of the world the soberest mind will believe anything—believe in the ghosts by the Gow Mukh, and the dead Thakurs, who get out of their tombs and ride round the Burra Talao at Boondi—will credit every legend and lie that rises as naturally as the red flush of sunset, to gild the dead glories of Rajasthan.

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