The maharaja usually furnishes elephants for visitors to his
capital to ride around on. We are told that he delights to do
it because of his good heart and the number of idle monsters
in his stable who have to be exercised daily, and might as well
be toting tourists about the country as wandering around with
nobody on their backs. But a certain amount of ceremony and delay
is involved in the transaction of borrowing an elephant from an
Indian prince, hence we preferred to hire one from Mr. Zoroaster,
who keeps a big shop full of beautiful brass and enamel work,
makes Indian rugs and all sorts of things and exerts a hypnotic
influence over American millionaires. One American millionaire,
who was over there a few days ahead of us, evidently came very
near buying out Mr. Zoroaster, who shows his order book with
great pride, and a certain estimable American lady, who owns a
university on the Pacific slope, recently bought enough samples
of Indian art work from him to fill the museum connected with that
institution. Mr. Zoroaster will show you the inventory of her
purchases and the prices she paid, and will tell you in fervent
tones what a good woman she is, and what remarkable taste she has,
and what rare judgment she shows in the selection of articles
from his stock to illustrate the industrial arts of India. He
charged us fifteen rupees, which is equivalent to five dollars
in American money, more or less, according to the fluctuations
of exchange, for an elephant to carry us out to Amber, six miles
and a half. We have since been told that we should have paid
but ten rupees, and some persons assert that eight was plenty,
and various other insinuations have been made concerning the
way in which Mr. Zoroaster imposed upon innocent American globe
trotters, and there was plenty of people who kept reminding us
that we might have obtained an elephant for nothing. But Zoroaster
is all right; his elephants are all right; the mahouts who steer
them are all right, and it is worth fifteen rupees to ride to
Amber on the back of a great, big clumsy beast, although you
don't realize it at the time.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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