in
English, and panders to the "glaring race anomaly" by saying that every
carriage not under his control is "rotten, my lord, having been used by
natives." One of the privileges of playing at tourist is the brevet-rank
of "Lord."

There are many, and some very curious, methods of seeing India. One of
these is buying English translations of the more Zolaistic of Zola's
novels and reading them from breakfast to dinner-time in the verandah.
Yet another, even simpler, is American in its conception. Take a
Newman's _Bradshaw_ and a blue pencil, and race up and down the length
of the Empire, ticking off the names of the stations "done." To do this
thoroughly, keep strictly to the railway buildings and form your
conclusions through the carriage-windows. These eyes have seen both ways
of working in full blast; and, on the whole, the first is the most
commendable.

Let us consider now with due reverence the modern side of Jeypore. It is
difficult to write of a nickel-plated civilisation set down under the
immemorial Aravalis in the first state of Rajputana. The red-grey hills
seem to laugh at it, and the ever-shifting sand-dunes under the hills
take no account of it, for they advance upon the bases of the
monogrammed, coronet-crowned lamp-posts, and fill up the points of the
natty tramways near the Waterworks, which are the outposts of the
civilisation of Jeypore.

Escape from the city by the Railway Station till you meet the cactus and
the mud-bank and the Maharaja's Cotton-Press. Pass between a tramway and
a trough for wayfaring camels till your foot sinks ankle-deep in soft
sand, and you come upon what seems to be the fringe of illimitable
desert--mound upon mound of tussocks overgrown with plumed grass where
the parrots sit and swing. Here, if you have kept to the road, you shall
find a dam faced with stone, a great tank, and pumping machinery fine as
the heart of a municipal engineer can desire--pure water, sound pipes,
and well-kept engines. If you belong to what is sarcastically styled an
"able and intelligent municipality" under the British Rule, go down to
the level of the tank, scoop up the water in your hands and drink,
thinking meanwhile of the defects of the town whence you came. The
experience will be a profitable one. There are statistics in connection
with the Waterworks figures relating to "three-throw-plungers," delivery
and supply, which should be known to the professional reader. They would
not interest