Altogether it was a most fascinating collection, different from,
but in its way quite as interesting, as the fine armoury at Madrid."

Thus did Jane triumph over me with her description of what she had seen
and what I had missed; and I had been trying to delineate the Temple of
Jagganath, and had been disastrously defeated, for it is indeed a
complicated piece of drawing, and the children, both large and small,
crowded round me to my great hindrance. Therefore, it was not until I had
been soothed with an excellent lunch, and the contents of a very long
tumbler, that I felt strong enough to take an intelligent interest in the
contents of the Maharana's curiosity-shop!

_Monday, October_ 30.--The more we see of Udaipur the more we are charmed
with it. The whole place is so absolutely unspoilt by modernism, is so
purely Eastern--and ancient Eastern at that--that we feel as though we
were in a little world far apart from the great one where steam and
electricity shatter the nerves, and drive their victims through life at
high pressure.

Ringed in by a rampart of arid hills, beyond which the scrub-covered
desert stretches for miles, the peaceful city of Udaipur lies secluded in
an oasis, whose centre is a turquoise lake. High in his palace the
Maharana rules in feudal state, and, like Aytoun's Scottish Cavalier,

"A thousand vassals dwelt around--all of his kindred they,
And not a man of all that clan has ever ceased to pray
For the royal race he loves so well."

For to his subjects the Maharana is little less than a divinity, for is he
not a direct descendant of the Sun? Likewise is he not the chief of the
only royal house of Rajputana, who disdained to purchase Mogul friendship
at the price of giving a daughter in marriage to the Mohammedan?

There are greater personages among the ruling Princes of India, according
to British ruling--Hyderabad, for instance. And in the matter of
precedence and the number of guns for ceremonial salutation, the Chief of
Mewar--like other poor but proud nobles--is treated rather according to
his actual power than the cloudless blue of his blood. Hence he is
extremely unwilling to put himself in a position where he might fail to
obtain the honour which he considers due to him. He was most averse from
attending the Delhi Durbar, but such pressure was put upon him that he was
induced to proceed thither in his special train running, as far as
Chitorgarh, upon his own special railway. H