In one part of the ancient city we came upon some natives preparing cotton yarn for hand-weaving. The yarn was stretched in long lengths across horizontal canes supported by vertical ones. They seemed to be cleaning the threads with combs and brushes. The little black-bristled hand-brushes placed on the top of the turbaned heads when not in use had a very quaint effect.
Having explored the ruins of Chitorgarh, we remounted our good elephant, which waited for us, and descended, moving rather joltingly down the long hill, and frightening a pony and a camel tethered in the main street of Chitor. The sun was now blazing, it being noontide, though tempered by the still cool wind from the north, which we had found really cold in the morning.
Returning the way we had come to our quarters at the station, after taking tiffin at the bungalow we arranged to go on to Udaipur in the morning, and were advised to sleep in the train, which waited in the station all night, and left at 6.20 A.M. for Udaipur. So we packed up and went on board and took our berths, which were on the whole more comfortable than the station beds.
In the morning our compartment was invaded by a young Indian who wanted a seat, but we had kept it to ourselves during the night, which was cold enough, and we were glad of all our wraps. The young Indian was a pleasant, bright, and intelligent young fellow who spoke English well, well clad in the style of a native gentleman, with plenty of wraps and overcoats. He was obviously curious about us, and wanted to know all we would tell him. He seemed to have a great wish to see London, and asked us about the cost of living there, and whether a Hindu could live there according to his religion without meat. He described India as “a poor country,” and wondered that we should journey so far to see it. He was bound for some town where his father lived, sixty miles by tonga from Udaipur, being under orders not to stop at the latter place, as his father had told him there was plague there, and wished him to come on.
The train passed through a very flat and rather cheerless country, exceedingly dry, and for the most part covered with long jungle grass, but varied here and there by green crops under irrigation.
Camels were occasionally seen, generally ridden by two men; also there were many herds of oxen and buffaloes. As usual, there were many interesting types and groups to be observed at the stations.
Approaching Udaipur, the country broke into hills and became more interesting. We reached Udaipur Station about 11.30, and bidding good-bye and exchanging cards with the young Hindu, we parted with our baggage into a little open cart called a “tum-tum,” and were driven some distance, along a dusty road, to the Udaipur Hotel, which looked like an expanded bungalow with a second storey added on. Here we found pleasant quarters and decent beds.
At the table-d’hôte there was a rather frigid Anglo-Indian family, a colonel on a tour of official inspection and his secretary and their ladies; also a voluble American lady, whom we had seen at Ajmir, and a rather lofty and superior English military man and his wife, who, we were afterwards informed, were the guests of the Maharajah.
In meeting one’s compatriots aboard or indeed anywhere without an introduction one is reminded by their manner strongly of the Oxford Don who could not do anything to save an unfortunate undergraduate from drowning because “he had not been introduced.”
Here, in a remote part of India, chance had thrown half-a-dozen English people together at the same table, and yet they would hardly speak to each other, that is to say to any new-comer outside their own party. Nothing, however, daunts the American traveller, especially the American lady. She ignores the social ice, or if she perceives it she boldly breaks it with a hatchet, as it were, rushing in under the guns of the most frigid and unapproachable personalities with a cheerful and persistent fire of conversation, popping in leading questions with the most artless and childlike confidence. This mode of attack generally succeeds, too, apparently. I have seen severe English official and military-looking men, after some show of resistance, unconditionally surrender, and presently empty their intellectual pockets on the demand of these light-hearted, table-d’hôte, globe-trotting inquisitors.