and round them--eating, reposing, talking, looking at the merry
steps of the dancing-girls, or listening to the stories of some
Dhol Baut (or Indian improvisatore)--were thousands of dusky
soldiery. The camels and horses were picketed under the banyan-
trees, on which the ripe mango fruit was growing, and offered them
an excellent food. Towards the spot which the golden fish and
royal purdahs, floating in the wind, designated as the tent of
Holkar, led an immense avenue--of elephants! the finest street,
indeed, I ever saw. Each of the monstrous animals had a castle on
its back, armed with Mauritanian archers and the celebrated Persian
matchlock-men: it was the feeding time of these royal brutes, and
the grooms were observed bringing immense toffungs, or baskets,
filled with pine-apples, plantains, bananas, Indian corn, and
cocoa-nuts, which grow luxuriantly at all seasons of the year. We
passed down this extraordinary avenue--no less than three hundred
and eighty-eight tails did I count on each side--each tail
appertaining to an elephant twenty-five feet high--each elephant
having a two-storied castle on its back--each castle containing
sleeping and eating rooms for the twelve men that formed its
garrison, and were keeping watch on the roof--each roof bearing a
flagstaff twenty feet long on its top, the crescent glittering with
a thousand gems, and round it the imperial standard,--each standard
of silk velvet and cloth-of-gold, bearing the well-known device of
Holkar, argent an or gules, between a sinople of the first, a
chevron truncated, wavy. I took nine of these myself in the course
of a very short time after, and shall be happy, when I come to
England, to show them to any gentleman who has a curiosity that
way. Through this gorgeous scene our little cavalcade passed, and
at last we arrived at the quarters occupied by Holkar.