t without any
appearance of verdure or vegetation, since the few autumn crops that
lately stood upon them have been removed.[3] From Antri to Gwalior
there is no sign of any human habitation, save that of a miserable
police guard of four or five, who occupy a wretched hut on the side
of the road midway, and seem by their presence to render the scene
around more dreary.[4] the road is a mere footpath unimproved and
unadorned by any single work of art; and, except in this footpath,
and the small police guard, there is absolutely no single sign in all
this long march to indicate the dominion, or even the presence, of
man; and yet it is between two contiguous [_sic_] capitals, one
occupied by one of the most ancient, and the other by one of the
greatest native sovereigns of Hindustan.[5] One cannot but feel that
he approaches the capital of a dynasty of barbarian princes, who,
like Attila, would choose their places of residence, as devils choose
their pandemonia, for their ugliness, and rather reside in the dreary
wastes of Tartary than on the shores of the Bosphorus. There are
within the dominions of Sindhia seats for a capital that would not
yield to any in India in convenience, beauty, and salubrity; but, in
all these dominions, there is not, perhaps, another place so
hideously ugly as Gwalior, or so hot and unhealthy. It has not one
redeeming quality that should recommend it to the choice of a
rational prince, particularly to one who still considers his capital
as his camp, and makes every officer of his army feel that he has as
little of permanent interest in his house as he would have in his
tent.[6]

Phul Bagh, or the _flower-garden_, was suggested to me as the best
place for my tents, where Sindhia had built a splendid summer-house.
As I came over this most gloomy and uninteresting march, in which the
heart of a rational man sickens, as he recollects that all the
revenues of such an enormous extent of dominion over the richest soil
and the most peaceable people in the world should have been so long
concentrated upon this point, and squandered without leaving one sign
of human art or industry, I looked forward with pleasure to a quiet
residence in the _flower-garden_, with good foliage above, and a fine
sward below, and an atmosphere free from dust, such as we find in and
around all the residences of Muhammadan princes. On reaching my tents
I found them pitched close outside the _flower-garden_, in a small
dusty pl