He went always in flowing masses of white, from the
top of his big turban down to his bare feet. His voice was low. He
glided about in a noiseless way, and looked like a ghost. He was
competent and satisfactory. But where he was, it seemed always Sunday.
It was not so in Satan's time.
Jeypore is intensely Indian, but it has two or three features which
indicate the presence of European science and European interest in the
weal of the common public, such as the liberal water-supply furnished by
great works built at the State's expense; good sanitation, resulting in a
degree of healthfulness unusually high for India; a noble pleasure
garden, with privileged days for women; schools for the instruction of
native youth in advanced art, both ornamental and utilitarian; and a new
and beautiful palace stocked with a museum of extraordinary interest and
value. Without the Maharaja's sympathy and purse these beneficences
could not have been created; but he is a man of wide views and large
generosities, and all such matters find hospitality with him.
We drove often to the city from the hotel Kaiser-i-Hind, a journey which
was always full of interest, both night and day, for that country road
was never quiet, never empty, but was always India in motion, always a
streaming flood of brown people clothed in smouchings from the rainbow, a
tossing and moiling flood, happy, noisy, a charming and satisfying
confusion of strange human and strange animal life and equally strange
and outlandish vehicles.
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