Imagine a file of elephants marching through such
a crevice of a street and scraping the paint off both
sides of it with their hides. How big they must
look, and how little they must make the houses look;
and when the elephants are in their glittering court
costume, what a contrast they must make with the humble
and sordid surroundings. And when a mad elephant
goes raging through, belting right and left with his
trunk, how do these swarms of people get out of the
way? I suppose it is a thing which happens now
and then in the mad season (for elephants have a mad
season).
I wonder how old the town is. There are patches
of building—massive structures, monuments,
apparently—that are so battered and worn,
and seemingly so tired and so burdened with the weight
of age, and so dulled and stupefied with trying to
remember things they forgot before history began,
that they give one the feeling that they must have
been a part of original Creation. This is indeed
one of the oldest of the princedoms of India, and
has always been celebrated for its barbaric pomps and
splendors, and for the wealth of its princes.
CHAPTER XLV.
It takes your enemy and your friend, working together,
to hurt you to the heart; the one to slander you and
the other to get the news to you.
—Pudd’nhead
Wilson’s New Calendar.
Out of the town again; a long drive through open country,
by winding roads among secluded villages nestling
in the inviting shade of tropic vegetation, a Sabbath
stillness everywhere, sometimes a pervading sense
of solitude, but always barefoot natives gliding by
like spirits, without sound of footfall, and others
in the distance dissolving away and vanishing like
the creatures of dreams. Now and then a string
of stately camels passed by—always interesting
things to look at—and they were velvet-shod
by nature, and made no noise. Indeed, there were
no noises of any sort in this paradise. Yes,
once there was one, for a moment: a file of native
convicts passed along in charge of an officer, and
we caught the soft clink of their chains. In
a retired spot, resting himself under a tree, was
a holy person—a naked black fakeer, thin
and skinny, and whitey-gray all over with ashes.
By and by to the elephant stables, and I took a ride;
but it was by request—I did not ask for
it, and didn’t want it; but I took it, because
otherwise they would have thought I was afraid, which
I was. The elephant kneels down, by command—one
end of him at a time—and you climb the
ladder and get into the howdah, and then he gets up,
one end at a time, just as a ship gets up over a wave;
and after that, as he strides monstrously about, his
motion is much like a ship’s motion. The
mahout bores into the back of his head with a great
iron prod and you wonder at his temerity and at the
elephant’s patience, and you think that perhaps
Copyrights
Following the Equator from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.
