stance of Bho Pal, the minister
of King Bohoje, as long ago as the sixth century, by damming up the
waters of the Bess (or Besali) River, for the purpose of converting an
arid section into fertile land. It is still called the Bhopal Tal.

[Illustration: A NAUTCH-GIRL (OR BAYADERE) OF ULWUR.]

If this were a ponderous folio of travels, one could detail the
pleasures and polite attentions of one's Bhopalese host; of the social
_utter-pan_; of the sprinklings with rose-water; of the dreamy talks
over fragrant hookahs; of the wanderings among bazaars filled with
moving crowds of people hailing from all the ports that lie between
Persia and the Gondwana; of the _fetes_ where the nautch-girl of
Baroda contended in graceful emulation with the nautch-girl of Ulwur,
and the cathacks (or male dancers) with both; of elegantly-perfumed
Bhopalese young men; of the palaces of nobles guarded by soldiers
whose accoutrements ranged from the musket to the morion; of the
Moharum, when the Mohammedan celebrates the New Year. But what would
you have? A sketch is a sketch. We have got only to the heart of
India: the head and the whole prodigious eastern side are not yet
reached. It is time one were off for Jhansi.

At Bioura we encountered modern civilization again in the shape of the
south-west branch of the Grand Trunk road, which leads off from the
main stem at Agra. The Grand Trunk is not a railroad, but a firm and
smooth highway, with which the English have united Calcutta to the
North-west Provinces and to the west of India. Much of this great
roadway is metaled with _kunkur_, an oolitic limestone found near the
surface of the soil in Hindustan; and all Anglo-India laughed at the
joke of an irreverent punster who, _apropos_ of the fact that this
application of kunkur to the road-bed was made under the orders of
Lord William Bentinck, then governor-general, dubbed that gentleman
William the Kunkurer.

We had abandoned our _chapaya_--which, we may add for the benefit
of future travelers, we had greatly improved as against jolting by
causing it to be suspended upon a pair of old springs which we found,
a relic of some antique break-down, in a village on the route--and
after a short journey on elephants were traveling _dak_; that is, by
post. The _dak-gharri_ is a comfortable-enough long carriage on four
wheels, and constitutes the principal mode of conveyance for travelers
in India besides the railway. It contains a mattress inside, f