Here we are in far greater luxury than in any Indian hotel, and save for the supporting-pole in the centre, and the pebbles crunching under the carpet, we might think ourselves in a comfortable room. All around there are the cheerful sounds of camp-life, the chattering of servants, the stamping of the picketed horses, or the whistling proceeding from your opposite neighbour's tent. Some officers of the regiment are playing polo in the adjoining ground, and their horses' feet resound as they scamper about on the hard earth.
All commissioners and collectors have to camp out for one or two months in the year on their tours of inspection, and so it comes to be quite a feature of Indian life. The rule then is for one set of tents to be sent on in advance over night. The réveillé is sounded at 5 a.m., or some such early hour, and the ten miles' march is accomplished before the heat of the day, and they sit down to breakfast on the new camping-ground, with the tents ready pitched. Not the least wonderful part of the camp is the kitchen. Everything is cooked out in the open, and there is but one tent for the culinary department. There are one or two mud ovens and holes in the ground filled with charcoal, and with this and a very few pots and pans a native cook manages to turn out a most elegant dinner for eighteen. Rarely, if ever, are the dishes or sauces smoked, even when a contrary wind is blowing.
We went to a small tennis party in the evening, and returning home along the "Mall," Sir Lepel stopped and took us into the club, where there is one room set aside for the use of the ladies. It is a most popular institution, and prevails at many of the stations. The ladies walk down here in the evening before dinner, and have a gossip, or read the papers, whilst their husbands are playing billiards in an adjoining room.
This reminds me also of another, but a very different kind of club,—the "Mutton Club," which exists at most stations. There are few butchers in India, as none are called for among the Hindu population. So the ladies on a station frequently join together and keep their own flock of sheep and a shepherd, which supplies them with meat twice a week, and they take it in turns for the prime joints. Some energetic member of the community keeps the accounts and collects the subscriptions.
There was a dinner party in the evening, and during dinner the band of the native infantry regiment, the Duke of Connaught's Own, played outside the tent, and afterwards conjurors performed some well-known Indian tricks. It strikes you as curious at first, when you step out of your tent into the moonlight in full evening dress, and walk across to the pavilion to dinner, to see the guests arriving up the "street," which looks so pretty with its row of lamps.
Saturday, January 31st. In camp at Gwalior.—Awoke at 7 a.m. to the merry noises of an awakening camp—bugles braying, horses neighing, a band playing in the distance, soldiers parading on the plain near by under their officers' shouts of command, and gongs sounding at intervals from all sides.
It was very chilly work turning out, for in the early morning and late at night the cold in the tents is intense.
At eight o'clock we started, muffled up in winter wraps, yet shivering much, and drove to the bottom of the Gwalior hill. Here we found one of the Maharajah's elephants waiting to take us up the very steep climb to the fort, which it is impossible to ascend in a carriage. Those who have been on an elephant know well the first sensation of fright that comes with the acute angle, as the beast raises himself on his hind-legs, when his fore-legs bring us to a level; and then we seem to be on a height which is dwarfing to all below us. The motion is a painfully uneven one, to which you never seem able to find a corresponding one for your body, and the howdah becomes anything but a comfortable seat, however pleased you may be at first with the novelty of the situation. I think the mahout, with his two-pronged fork, sitting astride the elephant's neck, and guiding him by the pressure of his knees under the flopping ears, has the more comfortable position of the two.
"The Little Fairy," as the elephant was poetically and inappropriately termed, was very slow, and our progress proportionally tedious. Our party must have presented a very picturesque appearance, as perched aloft on the red and yellow trappings of the howdah, our bell sounding out melodiously with the deliberate swaying walk of the elephant, we wound up under the walls of the old fort.