COURT DANCERS AND MUSICIANS, JEYPORE
The elephants are now trumpeting impatiently for inspection. Their compound is a series of roofless walled enclosures, and a visitor notes with grateful appreciation the strength of the
chains anchoring the beasts to mother earth. A leviathan is straining at his tether in a mad effort to reach a vagabond who is tantalizing him with a pike, and your guide—one of the official messengers with sword and shield—says: "He no like Hindu people; last week he kill two." Beasts as docile as kittens take nuts from your hand, and evince disappointment when more are not forthcoming. Five magnificent tuskers, that promptly obey their keeper's command, are used by His Highness for tiger-hunting; and a bevy of complaisant elephants, quartered in a single stable, have grown old in carrying tourists up the Ambir hills, it is explained.
From the elephant stables the chaprassis scurry the visitors through fragrant gardens and under bizarre arches to the crocodile department, where a score of saurians are pastured in an enclosure that is half swamp and half lake and is acres in extent. Visitors are placed at the top of a staircase of masonry descending to the water, while two wild-eyed Hindus seek to rouse the crocodiles from their siesta on a grassy islet a hundred yards away by a series of shrieks that would disgust self-respecting animals and reptiles. In a leisurely manner the crocodiles seem to recognize the signal to mean that a new lot of tourists desire to see them fed. It requires a good quarter of an hour for the Indians to lure them to the foot of the staircase, and from the first it is plain that the crocodiles view with indifference your visit to Jeypore. The lower step is finally fringed with opened mouths which in a moment engulf a mass of slaughter-house refuse almost thrust down their throats by the wild-eyed showmen, whom you reward with a shower of rupees which they believe marks your appreciation of their efforts.
As you are whisked through the palace yard, on the way to the carriage, you espy through an open door a splendid room fitted with paraphernalia not associated with medieval pastimes. It is the Maharajah's billiard-room, sumptuously furnished, and filled with tables of the latest English make.
Probably because they are proud of the fact that a former ruler of Jeypore was a generous patron of science, the chaprassis pilot you to the park given over to the apparatus of the celebrated Hindu astronomer and mathematician, Jai Singh. It contains dials, azimuth masonry, altitude pillars, astrolabe, and a double mural quadrant of enormous size and height, on which the gradations have been marked. In a way this exhibit of obsolete paraphernalia refutes the idea that Jeypore's maharajahs have lived solely for the gratification of the senses by amusements. A few minutes later you are at the public tiger-cages, where a dozen bona fide "man-eaters" are lazily stretched in shaded corners of their prison cages. Thirty odd years ago the present King of England killed his first tiger near Jeypore, and the animal ever since has played an important part in the city's pleasures. One inmate of the cages has an authenticated record of ten Indians killed, before His Highness's retainers lured him into ambush and made him a prisoner. "Two days from now," explains one of the men carrying sword and shield, "that tiger there,"—indicating a sullen beast,—"is to fight a wild elephant for the Maharajah's entertainment. Would the sahibs care to witness the combat?" The visitors promptly regret that they have unbreakable engagements in another part of India. Cheetahs are then led forth for admiration. Zoos and menageries know them as leopards—in India they are cheetahs, and are trained to course deer and antelope. A huntsman releases a cheetah, whose gaze has been directed to a fleeing deer on the plain, and in a few minutes the deer is a captive.
So much for the diversions of Jeypore's autocrat.
A distinct touch of beauty is imparted to his capital by the peacocks of imperial strut and plumage. They are everywhere—on the crenelated city wall, in the hurly-burly of the streets and bazaars, even on the steps leading to temples and mosques. The peacock is sacred to Jeypore; it crowns in miniature the street lamps, and is sculptured in hundreds of places. Chattering parrots by the roadside may arrest attention, but are forgotten in a moment—a strutting peacock is beautiful enough to place the parrot family in eclipse. When blue-rock pigeons descend by thousands in the market-place to profit by an over-turned sack of grain, visitors marvel at their irridescent necks and breasts—but a beauteous peacock appearing on the scene attracts an admiration amounting to monopoly.
But the appointment with the state elephant—what of that?