A. Hugh Fisher

“ In all India no spot has been so rapturously praised for its beauty as Udaipur in Rajputana and its lake-reflected palaces. Travelling towards it from Jaipur I found myself a day later in the State of Mewar, passing fields of the white opium poppies for which the State is famous.
Udaipur is a white town and comes quite suddenly into view after you have been watching from the train a lovely range of hills, warm and glowing. The bright railway station is a grey stone building with a square tower, and the lower part of it is half smothered in pale convolvulus. ”

“ There is not in the recorded history of any people a tragedy at once so terrible and so inimitably sad as that of the Cawnpore massacres: and on emerging from that small enclosed plot with its too ponderous angel, there can hardly be an Englishman who does not carry in his face the expression of a deep emotion. There are many churches in India, but there is no shrine so sacred to her rulers as the Cawnpore Well. ”

“ The river front of Rangoon is a wide, busy and dusty thoroughfare, on to which wide streets open—Phayre Street, Bark Street and the rest, and great piles of office buildings face the water—buildings with Corinthian porticoes and columns with great drums like those of the Temple of Diana at Ephesus without their sculptures. A line of white stucco houses curves round the bend of the Sule Pagoda Street, wide and tree-bordered, like a road at Dorchester or a Paris boulevard, making a handsome vista with its Pagoda surmounting a flight of steps at the far end. ”

“ The sun has now just set and a light that seems to cast no shadows spreads and grows, suffusing all the scene in soft effulgence. Most of the women are dressed in long trousers, close fitting from the ankles to the knees and then bagging out loosely. They all have long veils which they wear like a hood; some are white but others scarlet, crimson, or orange, and some of green silk tissue strewn with silver stars and bordered with a ribbon of bright gold. It is the hour when even humble clothes take on luxurious tints, and richer stuffs show all their utmost beauty in enhanced perfection. ”

“ On hearing that I must positively leave Nabha that afternoon—in spite of his kindly pressure to stay at least a fortnight—the Rajah gave orders for the finest of his State elephants to be sent round to the guest-house that I might see an ingenious device by which fountains of water from a hidden tank played from the front of his head to lay the dust. The elephant, unlike his vigorous old master, is weak and ailing, but I found him still a magnificent beast and arrayed even more gorgeously than lilies in sunlight-carrying scores of crystal lamps as well as the fountains. ”

“ In India, moonlight seems so much brighter than in England. Walking at night about the gardens I could still see the colours of the flowers; only the white roses seemed to whisper wakeful and restless, and the red ones to be silent.
The long path of water from the main entrance gateway to the pavement below the platform of the Taj is divided half-way by a circular tank and by this there is a marble seat. The soaring spirit of the vertical lines of the minarets was echoed everywhere ”

“ Such are the Mullah Do Piaza, the picture of Akhbar's jester and his thin Rosinante, or the beautiful drawing of Humayun, Babar's son, out a-hunting.
India is a land which changes any sympathetic traveller to a set of strings on which its spirit plays through all the working-hours. Every day is crowded with new wonders, and no sooner does he sink to earth, as if fallen from the hands of one player, than he is snatched up again and every fibre wrung by some new loveliness he knew not of.
One afternoon I drove out with the pundit to Shaddra where Jehangir is buried and Nour Jehan. ”

“ Ending just above the marble of the grave itself there comes down from the darkness the thin chain of a lamp, which is lighted only at the annual festival of Akhbar's death, called in Persian, "Barsi." While two Khadims (servants of the mausoleum) in white turbans and white dhotis held hurricane lanterns for me and the young Mohammedan, a little daylight filtered through the long stone entrance passage, and above, from one of four openings in the wall, a clearer shaft crossed the great void, illuminating part of the chain and falling upon the opposite wall in a pale shade of blue. ”

“ People were putting them to float for worship, lamps with butter and not oil in them. In the twilight lines of pilgrims were still distinguishable trooping along in robes of green and rose and white and purple. Temple music sounded, drums and cymbals and wind instruments. Against the walls like great targets hung now many of the huge mushroom-like grass umbrellas of the selling stalls. The same obese fakir I had seen the day before in the Golden Temple sat now gazing at the sacred river with a crowd of gapers watching as before. ”

“ King Thebaw's palace stands, of course, within the "Fort," which was built to protect it. It is neither very old nor very interesting, and the most impressive part is the large audience hall. The columns towards the entrance are gilded, but on each side the two nearest the throne are, like the walls, blood-red in colour, and the daylight filtering through casts blue gleams upon them. ”

“ On the way the flattened dome of the Shah Najaf, another great tomb, appeared against pale rosy clouds, a red flag clinging to its mast above walls of such tremendous thickness that they withstood both naval guns and Captain Middleton's battery. But it is another flag that keeps in my mind whenever I think of Lucknow—that one from the old staff on the Residency tower. A new one flies from it every year, but its pattern does not change. ”

“ Within the monastery a row of clean-looking brass bowls of water stood in front of some bronze figures, and on each side of a central shrine was ranged a series of pigeon-holes containing the monastery library, while, leaning against the latter, stood some metal trumpets 6 feet long, jointed and telescopic. Upstairs I was shown the large grotesque wooden masks and beautiful brocaded silk dresses for the priest-dances.
I have travelled in many parts of the world now, but I have not yet found any place where there is no dancing. Even inanimate nature quickens into rhythmic movement. ”

“ We passed a cemetery and several fields of green {300} barley, and the zigzag road up the hill looked more imposing the nearer we drew, with its eye-holed curtain wall, its bastions and towers. Still in the plain below, we now entered through the pointed arch of a gateway the bazaar of modern Chitor. It was full of dogs, pigeons, cattle and people,—a narrow crowded street at right angles to the hill. We turned by the large white Kotwali and a beautiful temple porch and passed houses with elaborately carved fronts having stone balconies with grey reliefs of elephant processions. ”

“ Descending once more to earth I walked all over the fort, with its Pearl Mosque of white Jeypore marble (much, so much less fine than the Moti Masjids of either Delhi or Agra) its white Nau Lakha, its Diwan-y-khas, looking ready to tumble to pieces, though now in the restorer's hands, and its Shish Mahal.
Near these last, to the right of the same quadrangle, is the armoury. In Europe the traveller is often shown instruments of torture—rack or boot or "maiden," and in England what village of tourist attractiveness is without either stocks or pillory? ”

“ SOUTHERN INDIA, THE LAND OF HINDOO TEMPLES
A long line of rocks and a white lighthouse in the midst of them—this is the first sight of India as the traveller approaches Tuticorin, after the sea journey from Colombo. He sees the sun glinting from windows of modern buildings, the tall chimney of a factory and trailing pennons of "industrial" smoke. Far to the left, hills faintly visible beyond the shore appear a little darker than the long, low cloud above them. Then what had seemed to be dark rocks become irregular masses of green trees. ”

“ And the warm glow fell upon the ample robes of many people walking up and down after the heat and turmoil of the day and upon many white oxen, and against the sky, rows of seated figures watched from the tops of walls and from the edges of roofs; while all the time, interwoven with humanity like the warp and woof of Indian city life, here, there and everywhere skipped and walked and flapped and scrimmaged the squawking black innumerable crows. ”

“ Architecturally these glories of Delhi are shared by the Fort and the series of palace buildings within its precincts. The great walls of red sandstone, the magnificent entrance of the Lahore Gate and the long vaulted arcade through which one approaches the interior of the great enclosure are, however, to my thinking, nobler and more impressive than the marble halls of the palace within. ”

“ I was still crossing the lowlands, yellow reaches of paddy stubble dotted with small white storks, wide watercourses and tall clumps of graceful bamboos looking nearly as yellow as the dry paddy stalks.
Then the train entered a belt of dense jungle, a forest track of teak and other large trees. At Sookua Station, bougainvillias and a creeper loaded with orange-coloured blossoms made gay colour. The train jolted and wriggled up the slopes in zigzag curves; creepers hung from tall trees like great falling cascades of little golden leaves. ”

“ I went up to the roof of the Shish Mahal for the view of Ranjeet Singh's tomb and the Badshahi mosque, and between its minarets towards the west could see the silver band that is the Ravi River, and then before going back to the elephant I looked at Ranjeet Singh's tomb on which certain bosses are carved in the marble with curious significance. ”

“ In the villages there is some weaving and dyeing of cloth, and quite a large industry in the making of lacquer bowls and boxes.
It was not far to walk from the Circuit House to one of the villages,—across the dry baked, brick-strewn earth, past great groves of cactus and through the tall bamboo fence that surrounds the village itself. I passed a couple of carts with primitive solid wheels, and under some trees in the middle of the collection of thatched huts with their floors raised some feet above the ground, a huge cauldron was sending up clouds of steam. ”

“ There were various holy people about the road leading to the ghat—"Sadhus" and "Nagas" with naked bodies whitened with ashes.
A friendly Brahmin took me into the inner sanctum of the temple at At Khamba Mundi near the ghat and there, under a mauve silk coverlet, decorated with gold thread-work, rested the Granth, the sacred book of the Sikhs. It was rather like a body upon a wooden bed. Above, hung a canopy with a deep border of gold and silver fringe. The place was covered inside and out with paintings of the stories of the gods. ”

“ I said the pavement was stone—it is all of marble. About it sat many flower-sellers, men in white, red and black robes with baskets heaped with orange-coloured marigolds, blue cornflowers, pink roses and scarlet poppies. The silver doors stand open, and through the white marble gateway a constant stream of people come and go along the causeway with its rows of golden lamps on short marble standards leading to the Golden Shrine itself in the middle of the water. ”

“ The train then curled along the sides of the mighty hill-slopes, and at an elevation of 6000 feet there were plenty of big trees again with masses of parasite mistletoe on their branches and tree-ferns in their shadows; the leaves of the all-glorious forest glittered in the sunlight like jewels—how Constable would have revelled in them!
All the men at these latter stopping-places were short and thick-set, and the women's ornaments {133} were either gold or gilded and no longer silver like those of so many of the people in the plains. ”

“ To enter the Golden Temple is not permitted to Europeans—only to peep through a hole in the wall and also to look at the roofs from the upper balcony of an adjacent house. There are two tall conical roofs shaped—as in so many Hindoo temples—like a common type of mould for ice puddings and a lower dome between them ridged like a melon, and beyond rises the white Mohammedan mosque. ”

“ Terrors were upon them, and in abject wretchedness and hopeless struggle men, women and children spread every strip of their belongings over their bodies and even used for shelter the very mats upon which they had been lying.
What trouble a Hindoo will take to keep his body from the rain! Extremely cleanly and fond of unlimited ablutions he yet detests nothing so much as a wetting from the sky, and now, wholly at the mercy of the elements, do what they would, no human ingenuity availed to keep these wretched people dry. ”