in a shabby green velvet box, much the worse for constant handling. There is in another equally shabby box of tawdry green velvet a portion of the Koran writ by the hand of Mahomet's grandson. King Tamerlane, the showman says, brought these precious things from Medina.

Even of more absorbing interest is a red hair shown under glass in a mean little tin box, and looking at first sight like a cutting of stout thread. This is a hair from the beard of Mahomet, miraculously preserved through all these centuries. In another box is a stone with four very decided toe marks. This is the impress of Mahomet's foot. Looking at this bit of marble, and its deep imprint gravely held out to view by the hoary Mussulman in charge, it is borne in upon one that the Prophet was not a man in whose way it would be safe to stand. The hut in which these relics are kept is something like the dark room of a photographer, a similitude strengthened by the hasty manner in which the old Mussulman dives in, brings a relic out to the daylight, and when it has been duly examined, disappears in search of a second

one.

On a rail in front of the shed were tied bits of string and scraps of red and blue rag.

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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39

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 a 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