The fortress-crowned hills look down upon the strange medley. One of
them bears on its flank in huge white letters the cheery inscript
“Welcome!” This was made when the Prince of Wales visited Jeypore to
shoot his first tiger; but the average traveller of to-day may
appropriate the message to himself, for Jeypore takes great care of
strangers and shows them all courtesy. This, by the way, demoralises the
Globe-Trotter, whose first cry is:--“Where can we get horses? Where can
we get elephants? Who is the man to write to for all these things?”
Thanks to the courtesy of the Maharaja, it is possible to see
everything, but for the incurious who object to being driven through
their sights, a journey down any one of the great main streets is a
day’s delightful occupation. The view is as unobstructed as that of the
Champs Elysees; but in place of the white-stone fronts of Paris, rises a
long line of open-work screen-wall, the prevailing tone of which is
pink--caramel pink, but house-owners have unlimited license to decorate
their tenements as they please. Jeypore, broadly considered, is Hindu,
and her architecture of the riotous many-arched type which even the
Globe-Trotter after a short time learns to call Hindu. It is neither
temperate nor noble, but it satisfies the general desire for something
that “really looks Indian.” A perverse taste for low company drew the
Englishman from the pavement--to walk upon a real stone pavement is in
itself a privilege--up a side-street where he assisted at a quail fight
and found the low-caste Rajput a cheery and affable soul. The owner of
the losing quail was a sowar in the Maharaja’s army. He explained that
his pay was six rupees a month paid bi-monthly. He was cut the cost of
his khaki blouse, brown-leather accoutrements and jack-boots; lance,
saddle, sword, and horse were given free. He refused to say for how many
months in the year he was drilled, and said vaguely that his duties were
mainly escort ones, and he had no fault to find with them. The defeat
of his quail had vexed him; and he desired the Sahib to understand that
the sowars of His Highness’s army could ride. A clumsy attempt at a
compliment so fired his martial blood that he climbed into his saddle,
and then and there insisted on showing off his horsemanship. The road
was narrow, the lance was long, and the horse was a big one, but no one
objected, and the Englishman sat him down on a doorstep and watched the
fun. The horse seemed in some shadowy way familiar. His head was not the
lean head of the Kathiawar, nor his crest the crest of the Marwarri, and
his fore-legs did not seem to belong to the stony district. “Where did
he come from?” The sowar pointed northward and said “from Amritsar,” but
he pronounced it “Armtzar.” Many horses had been brought at the spring
fairs in the Punpab; they cost about Rs. 200 each, perhaps more, the
sowar could not say. Some came from Hissar and some from other places
beyond Delhi. They were very good horses.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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