lained.

From the elephant stables the chaprassis scurry the visitors through
fragrant gardens and under bizarre arches to the crocodile department,
where a score of saurians are pastured in an enclosure that is half
swamp and half lake and is acres in extent. Visitors are placed at the
top of a staircase of masonry descending to the water, while two
wild-eyed Hindus seek to rouse the crocodiles from their siesta on a
grassy islet a hundred yards away by a series of shrieks that would
disgust self-respecting animals and reptiles. In a leisurely manner the
crocodiles seem to recognize the signal to mean that a new lot of
tourists desire to see them fed. It requires a good quarter of an hour
for the Indians to lure them to the foot of the staircase, and from the
first it is plain that the crocodiles view with indifference your visit
to Jeypore. The lower step is finally fringed with opened mouths which
in a moment engulf a mass of slaughter-house refuse almost thrust down
their throats by the wild-eyed showmen, whom you reward with a shower of
rupees which they believe marks your appreciation of their efforts.

As you are whisked through the palace yard, on the way to the carriage,
you espy through an open door a splendid room fitted with paraphernalia
not associated with medieval pastimes. It is the Maharajah's
billiard-room, sumptuously furnished, and filled with tables of the
latest English make.

Probably because they are proud of the fact that a former ruler of
Jeypore was a generous patron of science, the chaprassis pilot you to
the park given over to the apparatus of the celebrated Hindu astronomer
and mathematician, Jai Singh. It contains dials, azimuth masonry,
altitude pillars, astrolabe, and a double mural quadrant of enormous
size and height, on which the gradations have been marked. In a way this
exhibit of obsolete paraphernalia refutes the idea that Jeypore's
maharajahs have lived solely for the gratification of the senses by
amusements. A few minutes later you are at the public tiger-cages, where
a dozen bona fide "man-eaters" are lazily stretched in shaded corners of
their prison cages. Thirty odd years ago the present King of England
killed his first tiger near Jeypore, and the animal ever since has
played an important part in the city's pleasures. One inmate of the
cages has an authenticated record of ten Indians killed, before His
Highness's retainers lured him into ambush and made him a prisoner. "T