The gardens and hedges, often of roses trained on trellises of bamboo, are kept very trim up and down the Mall.
Smart English ladies and officers ride or drive about in their dog-carts with native tigers behind. We met a very imposing and original turn out—a fine pair of brown camels, well matched, were harnessed to a sort of barouche, each ridden, postilion-wise, by native servants in scarlet, one in the same colour behind the carriage, which contained two English ladies. This was probably the Lieutenant-Governor’s carriage. Bicycles were much in use both by Europeans’ (men and women) and natives—the turban and loose pyjama-like clothes of the latter looking strange on the machine. The natives, however, everywhere in the towns where the Europeans’ influence comes in seem to take to machines. The sewing machine is constantly seen in the bazaars, always, however, worked by a man. A certain firm’s poster of the eternal woman enclosed in a hideous S (like a modern Eve and the industrial serpent) looks particularly incongruous and out of place in India, where there seems to be no women working at crafts. The men do the washing too, the Dhobee in white with his bundle of linen being a frequent and characteristic figure.
No greater contrast could be imagined than that between the English quarter and the native city lying within its old walls and great gates, with its narrow picturesque streets and—stinks! Open drains as at Amritzar run along each side of the streets, close in front of the bazaar, where the people sit. The fronts of the houses above the open shops are mostly of wood of a dark rich tone, corbelled arcaded balconies and windows jutting out over the street at all sorts of angles, rich with delicate and varied carvings, as if the builders had vied with each other which should make the most interesting front. There are charming little covered verandahs and balconies with slender columns and ogee arches, and pierced screen-work painted here and there, but mostly the deep dusky brown tone of the natural wood, dark with age, which forms an effective background to the vivid colours and glitter of costumes and draperies of the bazaars. The newly dyed long strips of cotton or muslin in orange or pink, green or lemon yellow which are hung out to dry, wave like long banners over the busy life of the narrow streets, where the turbaned and many coloured, swarthy faced crowd, jostle along, or stand in chattering groups about the shops, buying and selling. The types, too, are very varied—the Hindu, the Mohammedan, the Afghan, the country folk; the Mohammedan woman in trousers, the Hindu woman in her graceful Sari, with her glittering silver anklets, and bracelets, toe-rings and nose-rings; dark eyes and shining whites momentarily seen, and gleaming teeth, the mysterious-looking figures covered from head to foot in flowing white drapery, pleated into a close fitting cap, with little perforations for the eyes, in front, the effect of the whole being ghostly, or even ghoulish. The white mystery being only betrayed by a brown foot beneath and the gleam of a silver anklet which tells one it is only the disguise of a Mohammedan woman.
“THE WOMAN IN WHITE” AT LAHORE (SUGGESTION FOR A DISGUISE PARTY)
Here again it was rather disappointing to see the native bazaars full of European goods, and a trivial cheap kind at that. European commerce has evidently got its foot in. Blue enamelled basins and cups, tin ware, tapes and buttons, braces, socks and ugly woollen scarfs in aniline colours are seen everywhere. It is true that one occasionally may see a native handicraftsman at work, such as the man who prints the ornamental borders on the edges of the muslin veils of the women, and picks them out in silver leaf, silver or orange being a favourite arrangement. The metal-worker is also frequent, though he often only makes zinc stoves. The food shops are the most numerous, set out with piles of curious yellow cakes and sweets of all sorts and sizes, the cooking stove being often in front of the shop, made of clay or mud with a tiny hole in which they produce hot little fires.
Through the bazaars our carriage worked its way as through a labyrinth. The mixed throng of buyers and sellers, beggars and brown babies, and cheeky little street Arabs, who are inclined to be rude to the stranger generally, tongas, buffaloes, herds of goats, stray zebu bulls, and fat-tailed sheep.
These latter we first saw at Delhi. They are originally from Tibet. The enormous development of the tail, or fleece of the tail, has a very extraordinary effect, as if the animal carried a bag of wool behind it, both broad and long and nearly touching the ground. Occasionally we saw one of these animals (rams) dyed with orange colour, and marked with curious patterns all over its fleece.
Passing through the bazaars we arrived at a large open space, and soon reached the (Roshanai) gate of the Fort on the other side of it. There the English sentry, after saying an order was necessary, called an orderly to take us round. Just inside the gate we got a view of the old wall of the palace decorated by tiles, the colours being similar to those used at Gwalior, at the Man Mandir palace, principally turquoise, green, and lemon yellow, the tile-work being arranged in bands or friezes of elephants and birds in profile, let into the red sandstone.
The very stolid British “Tommy” in khaki conducted us, in slow marching order and in solemn silence, up the long sloping road to the square of the Fort where he pointed out, without emotion, a colonnaded Hall of audience, and then took us through a gateway into the rather spacious court of the old palace of Akbar, who also built the Fort. On one side of the court was an interesting armoury of Sikh weapons, beginning with suits of fine chain mail and Persian-looking steel topis, damasceened and bossed circular targes up to flint-locks, and match-locks, and blunderbusses.