five feet high--each elephant having a two-storied castle on its
back--each castle containing sleeping and eating rooms for the twelve
men that formed its garrison, and were keeping watch on the roof--each
roof bearing a flag-staff twenty feet long on its top, the
crescent glittering with a thousand gems, and round it the imperial
standard,--each standard of silk velvet and cloth-of-gold, bearing the
well-known device of Holkar, argent an or gules, between a sinople of
the first, a chevron, truncated, wavy. I took nine of these myself in
the course of a very short time after, and shall be happy, when I come
to England, to show them to any gentleman who has a curiosity that way.
Through this gorgeous scene our little cavalcade passed, and at last we
arrived at the quarters occupied by Holkar.

That celebrated chieftain's tents and followers were gathered round
one of the British bungalows which had escaped the flames, and which he
occupied during the siege. When I entered the large room where he sat,
I found him in the midst of a council of war; his chief generals and
viziers seated round him, each smoking his hookah, as is the common
way with these black fellows, before, at, and after breakfast, dinner,
supper, and bedtime. There was such a cloud raised by their smoke you
could hardly see a yard before you--another piece of good luck for
me--as it diminished the chances of my detection. When, with the
ordinary ceremonies, the kitmatgars and consomahs had explained to the
prince that Bobbachy Bahawder, the right eye of the Sun of the universe
(as the ignorant heathens called me), had arrived from his mission,
Holkar immediately summoned me to the maidaun, or elevated platform, on
which he was seated in a luxurious easy-chair, and I, instantly taking
off my slippers, falling on my knees, and beating my head against the
ground ninety-nine times, proceeded, still on my knees, a hundred and
twenty feet through the room, and then up the twenty steps which led to
his maidaun--a silly, painful, and disgusting ceremony, which can only
be considered as a relic of barbarian darkness, which tears the knees
and shins to pieces, let alone the pantaloons. I recommend anybody who
goes to India, with the prospect of entering the service of the native
rajahs, to recollect my advice and have them WELL-WADDED.

Well, the right eye of the Sun of the universe scrambled as well as he
could up the steps of the maidaun (on which in rows, smokin