“A gun is loaded with powder and shot, the trigger is pulled, the cap flashes and the gun explodes. The men of this country are the guns; they are loading themselves with a poison rising from the earth by breathing it constantly, the malarial poison. A slight shock, the chill of the wind, brings about the explosion, and fever seizes them.”
His Highness seemed struck by the plausibility of this explanation, and presently he said,
“Darûst, darûst, it is right!”
He asked me several other questions, but I am sorry I have forgotten what they were.
The Dining-room.
The room we sat in looked not unlike an English drawing-room. The windows, however, were different. They were wider than English windows generally are: the larger ones were filled with plain glass, the smaller with coloured glass; over the lower part of one large window was a sort of fretwork of wood, which, as the light was reflected from the snow outside, was rather a relief to the eye than otherwise. The door panels and the window jambs were somewhat elaborately carved: they were neither painted nor polished. Draped over the doors and by the side of the windows were silk curtains of different colours. The floor was covered with Persian and Turkestan rugs. The walls were white, and the ceiling decorated rather crudely with colours. The ceiling sloped up on each side to a beam, supported at each end by a slender wooden column carved in distinct imitation of a Corinthian column, but not fluted. Ranged against the wall were two or three arm-chairs covered with velvet, and some small tables with writing materials, vases, and lamps upon them. The table-covers were mostly of velvet embroidered with gold: one or two were Indian. In the middle of one wall was what looked like a white “overmantel,” though there was no fireplace. This was more Oriental in appearance than the rest of the room, the keynote of the decoration being the Saracenic arch.
On the shelves and in the recesses of this were small ornaments and vases of various kinds. Below this decorative arrangement, and in the position usually occupied by the fireplace, was a table covered with heavily embroidered velvet, and on it were two lamps and several brass candlesticks with many branches, each holding a wax candle, so that the whole looked rather like an altar in a High church. In the window that had fretwork over it was arranged a bank of flowers in flower-pots. The centre of the room was clear, except that exactly in the middle was a large brass brazier filled with glowing charcoal.
At the far end of the room, away from the Amîr, were seated, cross-legged on the ground, the chief officers of the army, with the exception of the Commander-in-Chief, who was ill.
At about two o’clock in the afternoon the Durbar was over, the petitioners and disputants disposed of, and His Highness arose. We all stood up.