The Kankariya Tank is very pretty, and, with its raised causeway leading to the garden island in its midst, has become a favourite evening resort. Near here are seen to rise the beautiful minars of the mosque of Shah Alam, the spiritual adviser and friend of Sultan Ahméd, the founder of the city. Within the court lies the tomb, with double galleries of fretwork—its chief beauty—and it is remarkable that each panel of the double screens is carved in a different pattern and device. The canopy is of oak, inlaid with mother-of-pearl, precious now, as it has become a lost art to the workmen of Ahmedabad.
They have the uncomfortable custom here of covering the marble sarcophagi with precious stuffs; thus, on entering one of these tombs the effect produced is as of a row of coffins covered with palls, more especially when, as frequently, wreaths are laid on them.
Then we followed the usual round of mosques, tombs, and temples, of which we, as well as my readers, I am sure, are wearying—the mosques being represented by the Jamma Mosque—a Hindu temple with Mohammedan arches and network of pillars (date 1567); the tombs by those of Ahméd Shah, the aforesaid founder of the city, and those of his queens; the temples by a purely Hindu one, now called the mosque and tomb of Rani Sipri. Monkeys swarm in the city, and look upon these temples and tombs as their rightful inheritance.
We notice a great difference amongst the lower orders now that we are in the Bombay Presidency as compared to that of Bengal. The natives look more well-to-do, are more clothed. There are fewer of those "savage-clothed" coolies, with their single strip of muslin around the loins. The neatly-plaited Hindu turban supersedes the hitherto more common loosely-wound Mohammedan one.
We left Ahmedabad by the ten o'clock train, and reached Baroda at 4.30 in the afternoon. Here we stayed five hours to catch up the mail train in the evening to Bombay.
We were reduced to taking a curious native cart at the station for a drive round the city. It was not quite an ekka, nor yet quite a tea-cart, but a cross between the two; and the small plank seats were put crossways and not lengthways, one behind the other. We jolted about in this for two hours till we suffered severely from a feeling of dislocation in many of our joints.
Baroda is a small and pretty city without any pretensions to special interest, save as the capital and residence of the celebrated Gaekwar of Baroda. We drove first to the pretty garden where stands his summer-house, and his cage of wild beasts. The native quarter is very large—more than usually picturesque, and the four main streets meet in the lines of a cross at a gateway, a lofty structure in white and yellow plaster. Here the guard keeps watch, a single sentry on the lofty platform of its tower commanding the whole view of the city. From his post of observation we saw a sight unequalled for the artist-loving eye—for at the moment a wedding procession was slowly threading its way from under the gateway below us, streaming away down the street in gay ribbons, narrowing with the perspective, and finally disappearing through a grey gateway further away. The block in the streets occasioned by the motley procession of ekkas and bullock-carts, and the acclamations of the crowd, further added to the striking scene.
Just beyond this gateway is the grand, grim, grey old palace of the Gaekwar. A covered gallery leads to the blue and yellow quarters of the zenana, seeming to tell of the "airy-fairy," do-nothing life of the zenana ladies by comparison with the sterner duties of the men—as if the Gaekwar liked to pass from the duties of the grey palace to the light pleasures and recreation of the gay-coloured zenana. The green buildings of the barracks are near, and the orange and yellow verandah of the police-station lower down, together forming a vivid collection of colour. The Gaekwar's cavalry paraded the streets in twos and threes, and a guard was in waiting outside the palace gate to accompany his carriage. We drove on further to see the gold and silver cannon. There are four gold cannon mounted on silver carriages! kept in a yard, where many white horses are stabled round, for in the prince's stables none but white horses are found.
In returning to the station we were fortunate enough to see another curious sight, during our few hours' stay only at Baroda. Heralded by a mounted body-guard, and a running, shouting escort, the ladies of the harem passed swiftly by. The barouche was carefully closed and curtained, with a duenna standing up with the eunuch behind. The guard from the guard-house turned out to salute, bugle, and beat a tattoo.
We passed repeatedly leopards being paraded through the streets by their keepers, the pariah or "pi" dogs barking furiously at them. The animal strained at his chains, and walking with stealthy, springing step, glaring cautiously around for his prey, but the people do not fear their escaping, and are very proud of their Gaekwar's wild beasts. There is an arena at Baroda where he occasionally holds a wild-beast fight.