wo
days from now," explains one of the men carrying sword and shield, "that
tiger there,"--indicating a sullen beast,--"is to fight a wild elephant
for the Maharajah's entertainment. Would the sahibs care to witness the
combat?" The visitors promptly regret that they have unbreakable
engagements in another part of India. Cheetahs are then led forth for
admiration. Zoos and menageries know them as leopards--in India they are
cheetahs, and are trained to course deer and antelope. A huntsman
releases a cheetah, whose gaze has been directed to a fleeing deer on
the plain, and in a few minutes the deer is a captive.

So much for the diversions of Jeypore's autocrat.

A distinct touch of beauty is imparted to his capital by the peacocks of
imperial strut and plumage. They are everywhere--on the crenelated city
wall, in the hurly-burly of the streets and bazaars, even on the steps
leading to temples and mosques. The peacock is sacred to Jeypore; it
crowns in miniature the street lamps, and is sculptured in hundreds of
places. Chattering parrots by the roadside may arrest attention, but are
forgotten in a moment--a strutting peacock is beautiful enough to place
the parrot family in eclipse. When blue-rock pigeons descend by
thousands in the market-place to profit by an over-turned sack of grain,
visitors marvel at their irridescent necks and breasts--but a beauteous
peacock appearing on the scene attracts an admiration amounting to
monopoly.

But the appointment with the state elephant--what of that?

Surely, Ambir must be seen. There it was that all the ancient splendor
originated and dwelt for centuries, and until a practical maharajah
decided that a mountain retreat was ill-suited to the needs of a
capital. The possessor of this astute mind moved himself and his
machinery of government to the plain below--and all his people followed.
This explains why Ambir is now deserted, and why a court steeped in
medievalism has a setting bristling with newness.

Every adjunct of a fortified residence is there in the hills. Miles of
battlemented masonry, pierced every few feet for bowmen, surrounds the
straggling mass of buildings. Terraces are set upon the mountainside
like a gigantic staircase, and fringed with railings of stone so
artistically wrought as to suggest the grill-work of the matchless Taj
Mahal. Great gray monkeys descend from the mountain slope to feed from
the hands of your guides; and they are not of the moth-eaten