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These, it was explained, were the mementoes of pilgrims who had brought to the feet of the Prophet special petitions. In the event of their being granted, the faithful Moslem returned, took away his rag, leaving a flower for the Prophet, and a few coppers for the keeper of the Prophet's hair and toe-marks-a practice singularly akin to that noted at the temple of Nikko, where men and women brought petitions to Buddha written on scraps of paper, which they left on a string before his altar. As in Japan, I noted that there was an accumulation of these scraps, showing a gathering store of unfulfilled desire.

The Cashmere Gate still stands, its walls broken with cannon ball, and a tablet recording the names of the six English and five natives who blew it up. Through its shattered framework Nicholson led the storming party, and it is easy to trace his way through the narrow streets in which fighting hand to hand with the mutineers, and falling in scores under the fire poured upon them from windows and roofs of houses, the little band made its way. Their object was to reach the Cabul Gate, where a rebel battery still harassed the besiegers. The young general, a conspicuous object on horseback, rode sword in hand at the head of his men, and had

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driven the rebels a few paces past the entry to the troublesome battery when a shot, fired from a mosque hard by, brought him down. The mosque has been angrily demolished, but a plain tablet let into the city wall marks the place where the hero fell. Nicholson sleeps in a shady cemetery overlooking the city where he completed his deathless fame, and where he fell in the hour of victory and in the earliest prime of manhood.

CHAPTER XX.

AN ELEPHANT RIDE.

JEYPORE is perhaps the prettiest town in India, as its men are certainly the handsomest. There is none of the manifold races of India, not excepting the Sikhs, which has a prouder history than the Rajputs. They date their ancestry back to the Sun god, the Hindoo Apollo, whose ideal type of manly beauty is well preserved in his descendants of to-day. To be six feet high is the normal condition of manhood in Jeypore, and it would not be difficult for the Rajah, if he were so minded, to have a body-guard of giants averaging six feet four. The Rajputs have always been soldiers from the time they came down, a Scythian horde, and swarmed over the Himalayas to take possession of the fertile plains. They were ever a thorn in the side of the Mogul conquerors. Akbar, attracted by their chivalry, made friends with

them, and they gladly did battle for him; but they were always at war with the proselytizing, meddlesome Auranzeb, and took their full share in bringing about the dismemberment of the Mogul Empire.

Whilst the great majority of the native states of India have been merged in the British Empire, Rajputana still maintains a kind of complimentary independence, and lodges its sovereign prince in royal state at Jeypore. Though there is no more fighting to be done, Afghans, Persians, Moslems, and Maharattas all being gathered into the British fold where the lion lies down with the lamb, the Rajput still carries his sword. Driving about the outskirts of Jeypore we did not find single man unarmed. The common labourers, weighed down with burdens they carried to and from the city, always found a loose hand for their sword, a good serviceable weapon, with a small hilt capable of being firmly gripped. They were not content to sling the sword to their belt, but carried it in their hand as if peradventure an enemy lurked at the next turning.

Jeypore stands upon a plain surrounded by hills, grateful to the eyes wearied with the level stretch of country from Benares to Delhi. The streets are unusually wide, and

full of life and colour. Strange to say, the women are not handsome above the average, the type of beauty being retained only in the male line; but they are graceful in figure, and delight in gay colours. As elsewhere in India, daily life is carried on out of doors, the broad long streets lending fuller effect to the picturesque scene. Jeypore is a great agricultural centre, and along the pavement are strewn heaps of grain of beautiful colours, from soft greens to golden yellows. It is not likely that they were spread there with æsthetic purpose; but nobody seemed to buy, and they made a rarely beautiful street decoration.

Dyeing is a great business in Jeypore. The cloths-orange, rose colour, pale green, yellow, and deep crimson - are of course dried out of doors. As they come from the dyer's hands, the womenkind of the family take them up, spread them out at full length, and wave them hither and thither in the summer air to dry. Glancing down the street and seeing a dozen groups thus engaged, it looks like some graceful scarf dance which the women are engaged in, out of sheer idleness, love of bright colours, and of langrous movement. Through the throng in the broad streets glide troups of camels, of a much finer breed than we have been accus

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