If this were a ponderous folio of travels, one could detail the pleasures and polite attentions of one's Bhopalese host; of the social _utter-pán_; of the sprinklings with rose-water; of the dreamy talks over fragrant hookahs; of the wanderings among bazaars filled with moving crowds of people hailing from all the ports that lie between Persia and the Góndwana; of the _fêtes_ where the nautch-girl of Baroda contended in graceful emulation with the nautch-girl of Ulwur, and the cathacks (or male dancers) with both; of elegantly-perfumed Bhopalese young men; of the palaces of nobles guarded by soldiers whose accoutrements ranged from the musket to the morion; of the Moharum, when the Mohammedan celebrates the New Year. But what would you have? A sketch is a sketch. We have got only to the heart of India: the head and the whole prodigious eastern side are not yet reached. It is time one were off for Jhansi. At Bioura we encountered modern civilization again in the shape of the south-west branch of the Grand Trunk road, which leads off from the main stem at Agra. The Grand Trunk is not a railroad, but a firm and smooth highway, with which the English have united Calcutta to the North-west Provinces and to the west of India. Much of this great roadway is metaled with _kunkur_, an oolitic limestone found near the surface of the soil in Hindustan; and all Anglo-India laughed at the joke of an irreverent punster who, _apropos_ of the fact that this application of kunkur to the road-bed was made under the orders of Lord William Bentinck, then governor-general, dubbed that gentleman William the Kunkurer. We had abandoned our _chapaya_--which, we may add for the benefit of future travelers, we had greatly improved as against jolting by causing it to be suspended upon a pair of old springs which we found, a relic of some antique break-down, in a village on the route--and after a short journey on elephants were traveling _dâk_; that is, by post. The _dâk-gharri_ is a comfortable-enough long carriage on four wheels, and constitutes the principal mode of conveyance for travelers in India besides the railway. It contains a mattress inside, for it goes night and day, and one's baggage is strapped on top, much as in an American stage-coach after the "boot" is full. Frequent relays of horses along the route enable the driver to urge his animals from one station to the other with great speed, and the only other stoppages are at the _dâk_-bungalows. "I have discovered," I said to Bhima Gandharva after a short experience of the _dâk-gharri_ and the _dâk_-bungalows--"I have discovered a general remark about India which is _not_ absurd: all the horses are devils and all the _dâk_-bungalow servants are patriarchs." "If you judge by the heels of the former and the beards of the latter, it is true," he said.