The Tower of Fame is being repaired by the present Rana, under the superintendence of our host and a party of native workmen.  Masons and most skilful carvers in stone were busily engaged in the restoration of parts that had fallen into dangerous decay—­an extremely flimsy-looking scaffolding, made apparently of light bamboos, tied together in wisps, and forming a fragile-looking ramp, wound spirally up the outside of the tower.  My host seemed to consider it a perfectly safe means of ascent, and as the workmen did not appear to slip off in any appreciable numbers I felt constrained to go up.  I should like to have done it on all fours!  The climb was well worth undertaking, as it enabled one to inspect the astonishing and finely-carved figures which encrust the whole exterior of the column.

From the Tower of Fame we made our way to the other great landmark of Chitor—­the Tower of Victory.

Passing and examining en route many elaborately-carved temples, whose domes rose amid the strangling masses of desert tree and shrub, we came to the base of the red tower, whose shaft, four-square and in perfect preservation, has, with its more venerable brother of Fame, watched for so many centuries over the fallen fortress of Chitor.

Not far away, the rocky wall on which the city stands is shattered into a gloomy chasm, half-hidden in rank vegetation, which, clinging with knotted root to ledge and crevice, hangs darkly over a stagnant pool.  Here was the awful portal, “the Gau Mukh,” or “cow’s mouth,” by which, when all was lost to Chitor save honour, her women entered the subterranean cavern while the fuel was heaped high, and an honourable death by suffocation awaited them.

The burning Indian day was over, and the sun blazed red in the west, as we mounted our elephant and paced along the road towards the Hathi Pol.  Darker grew the ghostly domes and shattered battlements against a golden sky, and the swift southern night fell, dark yet luminous, as we turned down the hill and left the dead city, splendid in its loneliness and isolation, asleep within its crumbling walls.

Our dinner-table was set out on the platform of the station at Chitorgarh, and our bedrooms were close by, our host and hostess sleeping in the “special” by which they were to return to Udaipur in the morning, while we slept in a siding, ready to be coupled up to the early train from Bombay.

Late into the warm and balmy night we paced the platform; for there seemed to be always something still to say, and we found it hard to part from our charming friends; realising, too, that this was the end of our holiday, and that before us lay merely the toil and bustle of a return to commonplace, everyday life.  At last, though, the final fag-end of a cheroot was thrown away, the last hand-grips given, and the parting came.

There is little more to say.

All Thursday we rushed through the wide landscape; saw the parched plains stretch far into the dusty horizon; saw the lean men and leaner cattle, to whom the grim spectre of famine is already foreshadowed; flew past populous villages and creaking water-wheels, noting every phase of a scene now familiar, yet always delightful.