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109

BOUNDED

OUNDED on the north by the provinces of Moultan and Lahore, on the south by Gujerat and Malwah, on the east by Delhi, and on the west by Scinde, lies the wide territory of Rajpootana, embracing from north to south about 350 miles, with an average breadth of 200 miles.

The children of the soil are the Rajpoots or Rajputras (sons of rajahs or princes), a stout, warlike, handsome race, with Jewish nose and type of feature. Tradition, if it differs in details, yet agrees in conferring on them a divine origin. One trustworthy account runs thus: When, in days of yore, the Vedantic religion was at its lowest ebb, Brahma himself appeared to his disconsolate priests and bade them sprinkle the sacred fire with water from the Ganges. From this hymeneal union he promised to raise a caste of warriors, under whose prowess the sacred religion would revive with pristine splendour. To hear was to obey: the fire yet hissed and spluttered, when, lo! from out the smouldering ashes sprang forth an armed Rajpoot!

Another, perhaps more reliable, version affirms them to be children of the sun and moon, in memory of which origin many still wear a necklace of gold stamped with the image of the sun and moon on horseback. Are the Puranas to be credited, this illustrious race dates back some 2,256 years before the Christian era.

Obscure, even doubtful, as these historic claims may seem to an English reader, the Rajputs, nevertheless, remain, up to the present, persuaded of their truth. Accordingly they ever seek to distinguish themselves from all other tribes by rank and pride of birth. Reduced in power, circumscribed in territory, and despoiled of much of their splendour and dignity, they have not lost an iota of the haughty bearing that arises from the knowledge of their celestial lineage. By a military officer, well versed in Indian character, they are described as a combination of martial virtues, romantic fidelity, scrupulous honour and an overbearing pride, the parent at once of the noblest deeds and the deepest crimes with which their history is stained.

Much of this barbaric chivalry is doubtless due to stormy political events; much, however, to the nature of the land, for the most part better adapted to chase and war than to peaceful agriculture. For in the east and north lie extensive regions of arid and dismal wilderness. The rest of the province is generally a barren and sandy soil, in many VOL. XII., No. 129. March, 1884.

10

parts covered by thorny bushes and thickets of the cactus, while, here and there, are found mountainous tracts, rising, as between Marwar and Mewar, to 2,000 feet, and at Aboo to 6,000 feet above the sea-level.

Over these vast but unfruitful plains, the exiled Briton may yet stalk his deer by hundreds, or, if he prefer the wild free gallop with spear in hand, may ride down the tusked boar; while, should the excessive heat disincline him for these rougher exercises, he may saunter, gun on shoulder, through jungle, field, or parching stream, certain to fill bag from the wild birds and small game that abound in these romantic spots. In the midst of this, for the most part independent, territory is situate the chaoni, or camp of Nusirabad, corrupted by traditional military discontent into "Nothing-so-bad." About twelve miles distant from Ajmere, it is built on either side of the main road, running from the latter town to the military station of Deesa.

Should the reader accept our services as cicerone, he will quickly master the topography of the camp. See! At its entrance you have on both hands the quarters of the Bombay Light Cavalry. Now, advance a little. Glance down the central road running straight through the camp. Observe, to the left, that series of white-washed, strawthatched, verandahed bungalows, with compound, garden, and outhouses. They are the residences of the British officials: the Executive Engineer, the Chief of the Commissariat, the Cantonnment Magistrate, and lastly, the Brigadier Commanding. Behind these, but hidden from your view, stands the native town. What is it like? Well, picture to yourself a maze of mud-walls, flat-roofed dwellings, whitewashed or daubed with gaudy colours, then dirty shops and dirtier streets! Let all teem with Rajputs, Brahmins, Fakirs, Parsees, and Mussulmans; with half-clothed forms, black faces, ochre-dyed beards, tika'd foreheads, gay turbans, with spears, swords, and antique guns; with the vermilion-smeared idol, and the golden-tipped sacred cow; with the closed palanquin and the coy Indian damsel, carrying on her head the pitcher to the well; with the rough, shaggy tat, or the ambling palfrey, richly caparisoned. Shed over this fantastic throng the brilliant sunlight; tone down with dust and clouds of flies; mingle with it squalid, naked urchins, the hideous hairless buffalo, gaunt cows and gaunter dogs, that fight with the vulture for the carrion in the streets, adding by their barks and howls to the babel of voices and native music that rend the air from morn till late at night, and you see before you a native town!

Now, step to this gap in the wall. Behold, in rear of all, a silent, boundless, sandy waste, with a rare, but occasional, cluster of huts, scarcely visible in the distance. On nearer inspection you would find these surmounted by conical roofs, and encircled by a hedge of prickly

pear or of thorny branches, planted firmly in the ground. They are Indian villages.

But let us return to the road, and strolling slowly onwards, inspect the opposite or right side of the camp.

These first buildings are the barracks of the European Infantry! This open spot is the site of the Roman Catholic chapel. Near it are the assembly-rooms, used as theatre, ball-room, lecture-hall, or even betting-ring, according to the season of the year. Further on you mark a spot of cultivated ground. It is called, from the benefactor's name, "F's Pride," and is for the benefit of married soldiers. Does it not give grateful relief to the eye, wearied with the glare reflected from the ubiquitous sand and stone? It is a miniature oasis. Now a few steps forward, and before you are the barracks, stables, workshops, park, and magazine of the Royal Artillery. Mark where the battery is drawn up! It is the fatal spot where many an officer was shot down during the outbreak of 1857.

Notice, too, how the main road here divides. In the one direction it holds the original course, and after passing the Native Infantry lines, which are there, at the lower end of the camp, it will separate the racecourse from some rising ground, called Artillery-hill, and then, over a small bridge, away it will stretch, far as eye can reach, towards the south. On the other hand, you see it branches off, pierces the camp almost at right angles, and leaving, to the right, the Dormitorium Christianorum, where sleep the victims of war and pestilence, it later on skirts Rajghur and then speeds away to the distant Deesa.

This right side of the cantonnment is, as you have already divined, the military front of the camp. Before it extends the maidan, the usual exercising-ground. In scanning this champ-de-mars the eye rests but once on luxuriant vegetation. It is the Government Garden, winning an essentially Oriental charm from that clump of palms which rises, tall and majestic, from its midst.

Leaving this, your glance traverses in unbroken sweep, a broad scarce-cultured plain of sand and barren ground, and meets a mountain range, distant some six or seven miles. Lofty and bold is this rocky background. Wild gorges, where the hot air stagnates; gullies and deep ravines, where the cheetas find a lair; masses of jagged rock, rough, rugged forms, bizarre shapes, vast and uncouth, piled up in grim and desolate grandeur. A gigantic historic monument, engraved with many a fierce scar and deep-rent seam, mementoes of the savage usage Dame Nature has here suffered.

Round these sky-cinctured heights floats the azure ocean of the eastern heavens, at eve and morn casting such a harmony of light and shadow, such a rich play of changing colour, over these lifeless features of stone that they seem to gather something of the speaking beauty of the living countenance.

Romanticaly nestled in a broken mountain pass, on the banks of a small mountain lake, amid cliff and crag and brakes of wild cactus, lies the picturesque hamlet of Rajghur-the scene of the incident about to be related. From a few native cots the thin wood smoke may be seen trembling up in wreaths of faintest blue, distinctly visible against the dark adamantine walls around. Perched on a lofty point and looking down over the village and its silent lake, hangs a miniature fort, the seat of the late Rajah of Rajghur.* At the mouth of the glen a ruinous stone portal marks the entrance of a rough, sinuous path, leading to the village and its stronghold. To the right of this road, and built on the very borders of the lake already referred to, is a small bungalow, the property of the officers at Nusirabad. A carefully tended garden, a shady belt of trees, and the water glittering through a screen of foliage give the whole the appearance of a tiny sylvan retreat. It is, in fact, a favourite country rendezvous, when the summer heat renders the camp almost intolerable. Here, doubtless, many an hour has been passed in soldier-dreams of fame and glory, or in an ephemeral forgetfulness of the dull routine of reality in the sparkling fiction of romance; here, too, many a forenoon has been wiled away in building Spanische Dörfer † from the smoke of the Trinchinopoly, or in watching the lucid shadows brooding on the still waters, until a faint breeze, coming one knows not whence, steals softly down the mountain side, breaks the mirrored pageantry, and singing in whispers through the trees dies away again as if by magic. An enchanter's power have these mountain zephers in changing the pictures of fancy painted thus in sounds and shadows! A magic fertility in leading over the scene a constant march of the fair forms and familiar voices that crowd the halls of an exile's memory.

From this sequestered haunt to the busy camp is a distance of some seven or eight miles by the road, but should the traveller strike across country, relinquishing the common track for a pathless waste of sand and stone, he may, perchance, win a mile.

But now, most patient reader, resume thy seat, for thou hast already a local information that, if more than necessary for our tale, will yet render thee familiar with the folk and scenery amid which the first act is played.

Listen, then, for we now commence according to the most approved maxim-ab ovo. The year, then, is 187-; the time, early morning; the weather, breathless and sultry. The morning parade was over

* An active rebel during the Mutiny, he was, on the success of the English, reduced to beggary. His son, the present young rajah, has even, it is said, been seen gathering sticks to exchange in the Bazaar for the bare necessaries of life.

Later on,

the English Government, generous even to a fallen enemy, pensioned the Ranee, and received her royal son into the government College of Ajmere.

"Castles in the air."