But the most wonderful part of all is how the mahout steers the elephant. It is one of the mysteries that foreigners can never understand. He carries a goad in each hand--a rod of iron, about as big as a poker, with an ornamental handle generally embossed with silver or covered with enamel. One of the points curves around like half a crescent; the other is straight and both are sharpened to a keen point. When the mahout or driver wants the elephant to do something, he jabs one of the goads into his hide--sometimes one and sometimes the other, and at different places on the neck, under the ears, and on top of the head, and somehow or another the elephant understands what a jab in a particular place means and obeys cheerfully like the great, good-natured beast that he is. I have never been able to understand the system. Elephant driving is an occult science. The road to Amber passes through an interesting part of the city of Jeypore and beyond the walls the broad highway is crowded with carts loaded with vegetables and other country produce coming into town and quite as many loaded with merchandise going the other way. Some of them are drawn by bullocks and some by camels; there are long caravans of camels with packs and paniers upon their backs. As you meet hundreds of pedestrians you will notice that the women all have baskets or packages upon their heads. The men never carry anything. On either side of the broad highway are cultivated gardens and gloomy looking houses and acres covered with ruins and crumbling tombs. The city of Amber, which, as I have already told you, was once the capital of the province and the scene of great splendor, as well as frequent strife, is now quite deserted. It once had 50,000 inhabitants, but now every house is vacant. Few of them even have caretakers. The beautiful palace with its marble coverings, mosaics and luxuriant gardens is occupied only by a number of priests and fakirs, who are supposed to spend their time in meditation upon heavenly things, and in obedience to an ancient custom they sacrifice a sheep or a goat in one of the temples every morning. Formerly human beings were slain daily upon this altar--children, young girls, women and peasants, who either offered themselves for the sake of securing advancement in reincarnation or were seized by the savage priests in the absence of volunteers. This was stopped by the British a century ago, and since then the blood of rams and goats has atoned for the sins of Jeypore. XI ABOUT SNAKES AND TIGERS