l accustomed to
sleeping in an Indian train, and Sabz Ali had our beds unrolled and our
innumerable hand luggage stowed away in no time, including four bottles of
soda-water, which he has carefully garnered in the washstand, and which no
hints, however broad, will induce him to relinquish.

[1] "Au dessus du ciel qui est faite en voute a quatre pans on voit un
Paon, qui a la queue relevee fait de Saphirs bleus et autres pierres
de couleur."--TAVERNIER, livre ii. chap. viii.

[2] _The Web of Indian Life_

[3] I fear this is somewhat misleading. Jey Singh was, _par excellence_,
an astronomer, not an astrologer,--T. R. S.

CHAPTER XVI

UDAIPUR

We arrived, very sleepy and gritty, at Chitor at 5.30 A.M., to find an
unprecedented mob of first-class passengers _en route_ for Udaipur, and
only one very minute compartment in which to stow them.

The station-master--a solemn Baboo, full of his own importance, becomingly
clad in a waving white petticoat, with bare legs and elastic-sided boots,
surmounted by a long cutaway frock-coat, topped by a black skull-cap, and
finally decorated by a pen behind his ear--seemed totally unable to cope
with the terrible problem he was set to solve.

I suggested that another carriage should be put on, but he had none, nor
any solution to offer; so we cleared a second-class compartment and
divided the party out, and then, with five people in our tiny compartment,
we set out on the fifty-mile run to Udaipur.

Five people in a carriage in Europe is nowise unusual, but five people in
an Indian one (and that a narrow, very narrow gauge), accompanied by rolls
of bedding, tiffin-baskets, and all the quantity of personal luggage which
is absolutely necessary, not to speak of a large-sized bird-cage (which
cannot, strictly speaking, be classed as a necessary), requires the
ingenuity of a professional packer of herrings or figs to adjust nicely!

By cramming the toilet place with bedding, khudsticks, a five-foot brass
lamp-stand, and the four soda-water bottles, we made shift to stow
portmanteaux, bags, tiffin-baskets, &c., under the seats and ourselves
upon them, and then arranged a sort of centre-piece of Jane's big tin
bonnet-box, surmounted by Freddy in his cage. The other passengers were
very amiably disposed, and not fat, and they even went so far as to
pretend to admire Freddy--a feat of some difficulty, as he is still very
bald and of an altogether forbidding aspect. T