But there is no reverence in the Globe-Trotter: he is brazen. A Young Man from Manchester was travelling to Bombay in order—how the words hurt!—to be home by Christmas. He had come through America, New Zealand, and Australia, and finding that he had ten days to spare at Bombay, conceived the modest idea of “doing India.” “I don’t say that I’ve done it all; but you may say that I’ve seen a good deal.” Then he explained that he had been “much pleased” at Agra, “much pleased” at Delhi and, last profanation, “very much pleased” at the Taj. Indeed he seemed to be going through life just then “much pleased” at everything. With rare and sparkling originality he remarked that India was a “big place,” and that there were many things to buy. Verily, this Young Man must have been a delight to the Delhi boxwallahs. He had purchased shawls and embroidery “to the tune of” a certain number of rupees duly set forth, and he had purchased jewellery to another tune. These were gifts for friends at home, and he considered them “very Eastern.” If silver filigree work modelled on Palais Royal patterns, or aniline blue scarves be “Eastern,” he had succeeded in his heart’s desire. For some inscrutable end it has been decreed that man shall take a delight in making his fellow-man miserable. The Englishman began to point out gravely the probable extent to which the Young Man from Manchester had been swindled, and the Young Man said:—“By Jove! You don’t say so. I hate being done! If there’s anything I hate it’s being done!”
He had been so happy in the “thought of getting home by Christmas,” and so charmingly communicative as to the members of his family for whom such and such gifts were intended, that the Englishman cut short the record of fraud and soothed him by saying that he had not been so very badly “done” after all. This consideration was misplaced, for, his peace of mind restored, the Young Man from Manchester looked out of the window and, waving his hand over the Empire generally, said:—“I say! Look here! All those wells are wrong you know.” The wells were on the wheel and inclined plane system; but he objected to the incline, and said that it would be much better for the bullocks if they walked on level ground. Then light dawned upon him, and he said:—“I suppose it’s to exercise all their muscles. Y’know a canal horse is no use after he has been on the tow path for some time. He can’t walk anywhere but on the flat y’know, and I suppose it’s just the same with bullocks.” The spurs of the Aravalis, under which the train was running, had evidently suggested this brilliant idea which passed uncontradicted, for the Englishman was looking out of the window.
If one were bold enough to generalise after the manner of Globe-Trotters, it would be easy to build up a theory on the well incident to account for the apparent insanity of some of our cold weather visitors. Even the Young Man from Manchester could evolve a complete idea for the training of well-bullocks in the East at thirty-seconds’ notice. How much the more could a cultivated observer from, let us say, an English constituency blunder and pervert and mangle! We in this country have no time to work out the notion, which is worthy of the consideration of some leisurely Teuton intellect.
Envy may have prompted a too bitter judgment of the Young Man from Manchester; for, as the train bore him from Jeypore to Ahmedabad, happy in “his getting home by Christmas,” pleased as a child with his Delhi atrocities, pink-cheeked, whiskered and superbly self-confident, the Englishman, whose home for the time was a dâk bungaloathesome hotel, watched his departure regretfully; for he knew exactly to what sort of genial, cheery British household, rich in untravelled kin, that Young Man was speeding. It is pleasant to play at globe-trotting; but to enter fully into the spirit of the piece, one must also be going home for Christmas.
II.
Shows the Charm of Rajputana and of Jeypore, the City of the Globe-Trotter—Of its Founder and its Embellishment—Explains the use and destiny of the Stud-Bred, and fails to explain many more important matters.
IF any part of a land strewn with dead men’s bones have a special claim to distinction, Rajputana, as the cockpit of India, stands first. East of Suez men do not build towers on the tops of hills for the sake of the view, nor do they stripe the mountain sides with bastioned stone walls to keep in cattle. Since the beginning of time, if we are to credit the legends, there was fighting—heroic fighting—at the foot of the Aravalis, and beyond in the great deserts of sand penned by those kindly mountains from spreading over the heart of India. The “Thirty-six Royal Races” fought as royal races know how to do, Chohan with Rahtor, brother against brother, son against father. Later—but excerpts from the tangled tale of force, fraud, cunning, desperate love and more desperate revenge, crime worthy of demons and virtues fit for gods, may be found, by all who care to look, in the book of the man who loved the Rajputs and gave a life’s labours in their behalf. From Delhi to Abu, and from the Indus to the Chambul, each yard of ground has witnessed slaughter, pillage and rapine. But, to-day, the capital of the State, that Dhola Rae, son of Soora Singh, hacked out more than nine hundred years ago with the sword from some weaker ruler’s realm, is lighted with gas, and possesses many striking and English peculiarities which will be shown in their proper place.
Dhola Rae was killed in due time, and for nine hundred years Jeypore, torn by the intrigues of unruly princes and princelings, fought Asiatically.
When and how Jeypore became a feudatory of British power, and in what manner we put a slur upon Rajput honour—punctilious as the honour of the Pathan—are matters of which the Globe-Trotter knows more than we do. He “reads up"—to quote his own words—a city before he comes to us, and, straightway going to another city, forgets, or, worse still, mixes what he has learnt—so that in the end he writes down the Rajput a Mahratta, says that Lahore is in the North-West Provinces and was once the capital of Sivaji, and piteously demands a “guide-book on all India, a thing that you can carry in your trunk y’know—that gives you plain descriptions of things without mixing you up.” Here is a chance for a writer of discrimination and void of conscience!
But to return to Jeypore—a pink city set on the border of a blue lake, and surrounded by the low red spurs of the Aravalis—a city to see and to puzzle over. There was once a ruler of the State, called Jey Singh, who lived in the days of Aurungzeb, and did him service with foot and horse. He must have been the Solomon of Rajputana, for through the forty-four years of his reign his “wisdom remained with him.” He led armies, and when fighting was over, turned to literature; he intrigued desperately and successfully, but found time to gain a deep insight into astronomy, and, by what remains above ground now, we can tell that “whatsoever his eyes desired, he kept not from him.” Knowing his own worth, he deserted the city of Amber founded by Dhola Rae among the hills, and, six miles further, in the open plain, bade one Vedyadhar, his architect, build a new city, as seldom Indian city was built before—with huge streets straight as an arrow, sixty yards broad, and cross-streets broad and straight. Many years afterwards the good people of America builded their towns after this pattern, but knowing nothing of Jey Singh, they took all the credit to themselves.