The Sukh Mahal was completely separated from the city, and might have been a country-house. It should be mentioned that Boondi is jammed into a V-shaped gorge--the valley at the main entrance being something less than five hundred yards across. As it splays out, the thickly-packed houses follow its line, and, seen from above, seem like cattle being herded together preparatory to a stampede through the gate. Owing to the set of the hills, very little of the city is visible except from the Palace. It was in search of this latter that the Englishman went abroad and became so interested in the streets that he forgot all about it for a time. Jeypore is a show-city and is decently drained; Udaipur is blessed with a State Engineer and a printed form of Government; for Jodhpur the dry sand, the burning sun, and an energetic doctor have done a good deal, but Boondi has none of these things. The crampedness of the locality aggravates the evil, and it can only be in the rains which channel and furrow the rocky hill-sides that Boondi is at all swept out. The Nal Sagar, a lovely little stretch of water, takes up the head of the valley called the Banda Gorge, and must, in the nature of things, receive a good deal of unholy drainage. But setting aside this weakness, it is a fascinating place--this jumbled city of straight streets and cool gardens, where gigantic mangoes and peepuls intertwine over gurgling water-courses, and the cuckoo comes at mid-day. It boasts no foolish Municipality to decree when a house is dangerous and unhabitable. The newer shops are built into, on to, over and under, time-blackened ruins of an older day, and the little children skip about tottering arcades and grass-grown walls, while their parents chatter below in the crowded bazaar. In the back slums, the same stones seem to be used over and over again for house-building, perhaps, because there is no space to bring up laden buffaloes. Wheeled conveyances are scarce in Boondi City--there is scant room for carts, and the streets are paved with knobsome stones, unpleasant to walk over. From time to time an inroad of _Bunjaras_’ pack-bullocks sweeps the main street clear of life, or one of the Raja’s elephants--he has twelve of them--blocks the way. But, for the most part, the foot passengers have all the city for their own. They do not hurry themselves. They sit in the sun and think, or put on all the arms in the family, and, hung with ironmongery, parade before their admiring friends. Other men, lean, dark men, with bound jaws and only a tulwar for weapon, dive in and out of the dark alleys, on errands of State. It is a blissfully lazy city, doing everything in the real, true, original native way, and it is kept in very good order by the Durbar. There either is or is not an order for everything. There is no order to sell [Illustration: Page 202--“One of the Raja’s elephants--he has twelve of them--blocks the way.”]