he summer palace of Tippoo Sultan. If you have been at
Granada you can picture this as rather a thin Hindoo edition of
Generalife Villa. It is moresque in style, but small in structural
forms, smaller still in geometrical ornament, and without breadth or
much harmony of colour schemes. Some small rooms were passable in gold
and silver and primary colours, but the principal halls and galleries
were extremely crude. To be seen properly there should be people in
proportion, little Hindoo beauties sitting primly at the balconies that
open on to the inner court, and playing beside the long formal tanks
that extend far amongst shrubs and trees of the surrounding gardens.
There are mural paintings on the verandah walls, which are spoken of as
attractions and things to be seen; they are slightly funny. They
represent the defeat of our troops by Hyder Ali and the French, but they
are of no great count, except as records of costume. But enough about
this place: our interest lay in the battered walls and the cells behind
them where our Highland and Lowland soldiers were imprisoned so long.

We passed the Water-gate on our way back, then under a grove of
cocoa-nut palms, with many cocoa-nuts and monkeys in their tops; and we
threw stones up, but never a cocoa-nut did the monkeys throw back at us!
So we bought some at a price, a very small price indeed, and I for one
enjoyed seeing them in their green fresh state; when we got home to our
railway carriages, that had come on for us from Mysore to Seringapatam,
we had their tops slashed off with an axe: then put a long tumbler,
mouth down over the hole and upset the two, and so got the tumbler
filled with the water from the inside and drank it. We'd have drunk
anything we were so thirsty: so I will not offer an opinion as to its
quality, more than that it was distinctly refreshing. The shells and
husks were then split open, and we scraped the creamy white off the
inside of the soft shell with a piece of the rough green husk and ate it
and made believe it was delicious!

[Illustration]

As the sun is setting we cross the Cauvery River again, leaving
Seringapatam because it is said to be so malarial that it is unwise to
spend the night there.... The river is golden, the rocks violet, and the
sky above purple and vermilion; herons' scraik and duck are on the move,
almost invisible against the dark palms and bushes and shadowy banks--I
am not superstitious, but I think there were ghosts