ietly picking up freshly cut green food,
and tucking it into their mouths with their trunks, were half a dozen
elephants, three of which bore handsome trappings and howdahs, while the
others had only the ordinary pads.

A couple of handsomely dressed servants came forward to meet us as we
dismounted, and we were ushered into the open-sided tent, where
breakfast was waiting, spread on a soft Indian carpet, while the rajah's
men waited upon us with the greatest of attention.

But, as the doctor said, we had not come to eat, and very soon expressed
our readiness to start, when the elephants were guided to the front of
the tent, and we mounted, after giving orders to the drivers of the
vehicles in which we had come, to be in waiting for us just at dusk.
Then the huge animal on which I was mounted with the doctor moved slowly
on apparently, but covering a good deal of ground in his shuffling
stride.

A shout from Brace on the next elephant arrested us, though, and, on
turning, we found that he was pointing back.

The scene was worth stopping to contemplate, for there, miles away
behind us, lay Rajgunge, with its mosques and temples glittering in the
morning sun, and the dust which often shrouded the place now visible
only as a faint haze, while the sparkling river looked a very band of
silver curving round it like the fold of some wondrous serpent
undulating over the plain. The city lay in a hollow, from which the
land sloped away on one side, while, on the other, hill and valley
alternated, with the country rising higher and higher to where we stood,
and then rose more and more into a wild of jungle and mountain, whose
more distant eminences died into a soft blue mist.

"I never saw a more beautiful view," said the doctor to me. "Grand
place to send patients to. Sight of the country would do them more good
than my physic. Make much of it, Vincent," he said; "you may never see
the city look so beautiful again."

I looked at him so wonderingly that he laughed.

"Well, next time it may be dark or cloudy, or raining, or at a different
time of year."

The elephants were again in motion, and, leaving the well-beaten dak
road behind us, we were now following an elephant's track, going at
every step more and more into scenery such as I had pictured to myself
when thinking about India as my future home.

"Look!" I cried excitedly, as, from the edge of a patch of jungle, a
couple of peacocks ran along for a few yards,