ver a stagnant pool. Here was the
awful portal, "the Gau Mukh," or "cow's mouth," by which, when all was
lost to Chitor save honour, her women entered the subterranean cavern
while the fuel was heaped high, and an honourable death by suffocation
awaited them.

The burning Indian day was over, and the sun blazed red in the west, as we
mounted our elephant and paced along the road towards the Hathi Pol.
Darker grew the ghostly domes and shattered battlements against a golden
sky, and the swift southern night fell, dark yet luminous, as we turned
down the hill and left the dead city, splendid in its loneliness and
isolation, asleep within its crumbling walls.

Our dinner-table was set out on the platform of the station at Chitorgarh,
and our bedrooms were close by, our host and hostess sleeping in the
"special" by which they were to return to Udaipur in the morning, while we
slept in a siding, ready to be coupled up to the early train from Bombay.

Late into the warm and balmy night we paced the platform; for there seemed
to be always something still to say, and we found it hard to part from our
charming friends; realising, too, that this was the end of our holiday,
and that before us lay merely the toil and bustle of a return to
commonplace, everyday life. At last, though, the final fag-end of a
cheroot was thrown away, the last hand-grips given, and the parting came.

There is little more to say.

All Thursday we rushed through the wide landscape; saw the parched plains
stretch far into the dusty horizon; saw the lean men and leaner cattle, to
whom the grim spectre of famine is already foreshadowed; flew past
populous villages and creaking water-wheels, noting every phase of a scene
now familiar, yet always delightful.

Late in the evening we changed at Baroda, and dawn next morning saw us
speeding across the swamps and inlets, which gave place ere long to the
palm groves and clustering houses which marked the farther limits of the
suburbs of Bombay.

We found the heat--damp and oppressive--very trying after the drier air of
Rajputana, and the Taj Mahal Hotel below our expectations in all respects
save price. It is undoubtedly better than most Indian hotels, but yet it
is not good!

Bombay is chiefly connected in our minds with the inevitable fuss and
worry of packing and departure.

As we left the Taj Mahal Hotel, in a conveyance piled high with
miscellaneous baggage, we saw the last of our faithful and indisp