The modern brass-work of Jaipur is somewhat attractive, and we bought various articles—­a tall lamp-stand, an elephant bell, and a few ordinary bowls of excellent shape.

I have remarked before on the extreme tameness of, and the confidence shown by, wild creatures out here.  A titmouse came and perched on the arm of my chair while sitting reading on the verandah at Gulmarg.

The rats and mice, who own the forest houses in the Machipura, have to be kicked off the beds at night.  But the little grey squirrels in Sir Swinton Jacob’s garden are—­facile princeps—­the boldest wild-fowl we have yet encountered.

Every afternoon about three, when tea was toward, the squirrels gathered on the gravel path, and prepared to receive bread and butter.

After a few nervous darts and tail whiskings, a bold squirrel would skip up close, and, after eating a little ground bait, would boldly come up and nibble out of a motionless hand.  In two minutes half-a-dozen pretty little creatures would be fidgeting round, eating bread and butter daintily, neatly holding the morsel in their little forepaws and nuzzling into one’s fingers for more.

A handsome magpie, and, of course, a contingent of crows, made up the fascinating party; while in the background, among the neem trees and the flaming “gold mohurs,” the minahs and green parrots sustained an incessant and riotous conversation.

Wednesday, October 25.—­Gladly would we have accepted the Jacobs’ invitation to stay longer at Jaipur.  We would have liked nothing better, but time was flying, and the 5th November—­our day of departure from Bombay—­was drawing rapidly near.  So yesterday evening we took the 6.30 train for Ajmere, and, reaching there at 10.30, changed into the narrow-gauge railway for Chitor.  We are becoming well accustomed to sleeping in an Indian train, and Sabz Ali had our beds unrolled and our innumerable hand luggage stowed away in no time, including four bottles of soda-water, which he has carefully garnered in the washstand, and which no hints, however broad, will induce him to relinquish.

[1] “Au dessus du ciel qui est faite en voute a quatre pans on voit un
    Paon, qui a la queue relevee fait de Saphirs bleus et autres pierres
    de couleur.”—­TAVERNIER, livre ii. chap. viii.

[2] The Web of Indian Life

[3] I fear this is somewhat misleading.  Jey Singh was, par excellence,
    an astronomer, not an astrologer,—­T.  R. S.

CHAPTER XVI

UDAIPUR

We arrived, very sleepy and gritty, at Chitor at 5.30 A.M., to find an unprecedented mob of first-class passengers en route for Udaipur, and only one very minute compartment in which to stow them.

The station-master—­a solemn Baboo, full of his own importance, becomingly clad in a waving white petticoat, with bare legs and elastic-sided boots, surmounted by a long cutaway frock-coat, topped by a black skull-cap, and finally decorated by a pen behind his ear—­seemed totally unable to cope with the terrible problem he was set to solve.