SKETCHES OF INDIA.

II.


I had now learned to place myself unreservedly in the hands of Bhima
Gandharva. When, therefore, on regaining the station at Khandallah, he
said, "The route by which I intend to show you India will immediately
take us quite away from this part of it; first, however, let us go and
see Poona, the old Mahratta capital, which lies but a little more than
thirty miles farther to the south-eastward by rail,"--I accepted the
proposition as a matter of course, and we were soon steaming down the
eastern declivity of the Gháts. As we moved smoothly down into the
treeless plains which surround Poona I could not resist a certain
feeling of depression.

"Yes," said Bhima Gandharva when I mentioned it to him, "I understand
exactly what you mean. On reaching an unbroken expanse of level
country, after leaving the tops of mountains, I always feel as if my
soul had come bump against a solid wall of rock in the dark. I seem
to hear a dull _thud_ of discouragement somewhere back in my soul, as
when a man's body falls dead on the earth. Nothing, indeed, could
more heighten such a sensation than the contrast between this and
the Bombay side of the Gháts. There we had the undulating waters,
the lovely harbor with its wooded and hilly islands, the ascending
terraces of the Gháts: everything was energetic, the whole invitation
of Nature was toward air, light, freedom, heaven. But here one spot