From Sea to Sea; Letters of TravelKipling, Rudyard
General
From Sea to Sea; Letters of Travel
Kipling, Rudyard
Asia -- Description and travel; Kipling, Rudyard, 1865-1936 -- Travel; United States -- Description and travel; Voyages and travels
It would be a week's work to pick out even roughly the names of the dead
who have added to the buildings, or to describe the bewildering
multiplicity of courts and ranges of rooms; and, in the end, the result
would be as satisfactory as an attempt to describe a nightmare. It is
said that the rock on which the Fort stands is four miles in circuit,
but no man yet has dared to estimate the size of the city that they call
the Palace, or the mileage of its ways. Ever since Ras Joda, four
hundred years ago, listened to the voice of a _Jogi_, and leaving
Mundore built his eyrie on the "Bird's nest" as the Hill of Strife was
called, the Palaces have grown and thickened. Even to-day the builders
are still at work. Takht Singh, the present ruler's predecessor, built
royally. An incomplete bastion and a Hall of Flowers are among the works
of his pleasure. Hidden away behind a mighty wing of carved red
sandstone lie rooms set apart for Viceroys, Durbar Halls and
dinner-rooms without end. A gentle gloom covers the evidences of the
catholic taste of the State in articles of "bigotry and virtue"; but
there is enough light to show the _raison d'être_ of the men who wait in
the dak-bungalow. And, after all, what is the use of Royalty in these
days if a man may not take delight in the pride of the eye? Kumbha Rana,
the great man of Chitor, fought like a Rajput, but he had an instinct
which made him build the Tower of Victory at, who knows what cost of
money and life. The fighting-instinct thrown back upon itself must have
some sort of outlet; and a merciful Providence wisely ordains that the
Kings of the East in the nineteenth century shall take pleasure in
shopping on an imperial scale. Dresden China snuff-boxes, mechanical
engines, electro-plated fish-slicers, musical boxes, and gilt
blown-glass Christmas-tree balls do not go well with the splendours of a
Palace that might have been built by Titans and coloured by the morning
sun. But there are excuses to be made for Kings who have no fighting to
do.
In one of the higher bastions stands a curious specimen of one of the
earliest _mitrailleuses_--a cumbrous machine carrying twenty gun-barrels
in two rows, which small-arm fire is flanked by two tiny cannon. As a
muzzle-loading implement its value after the first discharge would be
insignificant; but the soldiers lounging by assured the Englishman that
it had done good service in its time.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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