Wherever the eye falls, it sees a camel or a string of camels--lean,
racer-built _sowarri_ camels, or heavy, black, shag-haired trading ships
bent on their way to the Railway Station. Through the night the air is
alive with the bubbling and howling of the brutes, who assuredly must
suffer from nightmare. In the morning the chorus round the station is
deafening.

Knowing what these camels meant, but trusting nevertheless that the road
would not be _very_ bad, the Englishman went into the city, left a
well-kunkered road, turned through a sand-worn, red sandstone gate, and
sank ankle-deep in fine reddish white sand. This was the main
thoroughfare of the city. Two tame lynxes shared it with a donkey; and
the rest of the population seemed to have gone to bed. In the hot
weather, between ten in the morning and four in the afternoon all
Jodhpur stays at home for fear of death by sun-stroke, and it is
possible that the habit extends far into what is officially called the
"cold weather"; or, perhaps, being brought up among sands, men do not
care to tramp them for pleasure. The city internally is a walled and
secret place; each courtyard being hidden from view by a red sandstone
wall except in a few streets where the shops are poor and mean.

In an old house now used for the storing of tents, Akbar's mother lay
two months, before the "Guardian of Mankind" was born, drawing breath
for her flight to Umarkot across the desert. Seeing this place, the
Englishman thought of many things not worth the putting down on paper,
and went on till the sand grew deeper and deeper, and a great camel,
heavily laden with stone, came round a corner and nearly stepped on him.
As the evening fell, the city woke up, and the goats and the camels and
the kine came in by hundreds, and men said that wild pig, which are
strictly preserved by the Princes for their own sport, were in the habit
of wandering about the roads. Now if they do this in the capital, what
damage must they not do to the crops in the district? Men said that they
did a very great deal of damage, and it was hard to keep their noses out
of anything they took a fancy to. On the evening of the Englishman's
visit, the Maharaja went out, as is his laudable custom, alone and
unattended, to a road actually _in_ the city along which one specially
big pig was in the habit of passing. His Highness got his game with a
single shot behind the shoulder, and in a few days it was pickled and
sent off to