They do not understand that nobody cares a
straw for the internal administration of Native
States so long as oppression and crime
are kept within decent limits, and the ruler
is not drugged, drunk, or diseased from one
end of the year to the other. Native States
were created by Providence in order to supply
picturesque scenery, tigers and tall-writing.
They are the dark places of the earth,
full of unimaginable cruelty, touching the
Railway and the Telegraph on one side, and,
on the other, the days of Harun-al-Raschid.
When I left the train I did business with
divers Kings, and in eight days passed
through many changes of life. Sometimes I
wore dress-clothes and consorted with Princes
and Politicals, drinking from crystal and
eating from silver. Sometimes I lay out
upon the ground and devoured what I could
get, from a plate made of a flapjack, and
drank the running water, and slept under
the same rug as my servant. It was all in a
day’s work.

Then I headed for the Great Indian Desert
upon the proper date, as I had promised, and
the night Mail set me down at Marwar Junction,
where a funny little, happy-go-lucky,
native managed railway runs to Jodhpore.
The Bombay Mail from Delhi makes a short