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HE stars were shining out of a dark and glowing sky when my servant came into the room and said that In this country the time had come for the train.

you must not expect trains at your convenience.

Although at home

The main object is to travel in the night. it would be almost a barbarism to keep the hours enforced upon you in India, here you take all the advantage you can of the night. The cars are built for the night, and are the nearest approach I have seen to our American models for comfort. We drove to the Jeypore station under a full starlight, as it was important we should be on our way to Agra before the sun But on reaching the station we learned that some was up. mishap had fallen the train, and we had to kill time at the sta38 tion as best we could, and study the beauty of an Indian sun

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rise. That itself was something to see, especially with such a background to the picture as the Oriental city of Jeypore and the brown empurpled hills beyond. But the railway is a new thing in Rajpootana, and has not learned the value of promptitude. In time we were off and on our way to Futtehpoor Sikra.

It had been arranged that we should go to Agra by breaking the journey at Bhurtpoor, driving over to the ruins of Futtehpoor Sikra, and remaining there all night. The Maharajah of Bhurtpoor is a young prince about thirty years of age. His name is Maharajah Seswaut Singh. His state is small, its area 1,974 square miles, with a population of 743,710, and a revenue of between fourteen and fifteen millions of dollars a year. The Maharajah is descended from a freebooter named Brij, who owned a village, and in time made his village into a state. The fortunes of the state have not always been prosperous. It had the fortune that so often attends small states bordering on larger ones the fortune of so disturbing the rest and dignity of the larger neighbors that robbery and annexation became necessary. Bhurtpoor was taken by the old Delhi rulers. Then Sindia came and seized it. In 1805, when Lord Lake was loose in India at the head of a small conquering army, he came upon Bhurtpoor. The town had given refuge to Holkar, a prince at war with the English, and Lord Lake attempted to carry it by storm. In this he failed, losing 3,000 men. The English compromised, and took $1,000,000 as the price of not continuing the war. The memory of that defeat long lingered in India, and was the theme of many a song and story in native bazaars. In 1826 there was a quarrel in the house of Bhurtpoor. The father of the present Maharajah was seized and imprisoned by his cousin. The English interfered, and the result was the invasion of the state by an army of 20,000 men and 100 guns. It is difficult to see what honest motive could have induced the Indian government to throw so large an army into another state, but the one point not wise to dwell upon in reading Indian history is motives. The town was invested, the gates blown up, and 6,000 men killed in the assault, the English losing 1,000. The usurping prince was

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sent to Benares on a pension of $3,000 a year. Although the avowed motive of the invasion of Bhurtpoor was to restore a prince and secure his rights, as soon as the British came into the town they plundered it. The state jewels were taken. Over $2,000,000 from the treasury was divided among the soldiers; the commander, Lord Combermere, who died not long since, one of the oldest of the British generals, and universally praised as a fine type of the old-fashioned sturdy officer and nobleman, put $300,000 of the money in his pocket. The walls

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of the town were leveled, and the prince, father to the present ruler, was restored to a crown which had been robbed of its jewels, a treasury which had been robbed of its treasure, a town which had been robbed of its walls, a palace which had been robbed of its adornments. Considering that the founder of the house was a good deal of a robber himself, I suppose there was not a serious invasion of the moral law in taking from Bhurtpoor what his ancestors had taken from somebody else. One does not like to read these things of an English

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