And the city itself is a curiosity. Any Indian city is that, but this
one is not like any other that we saw. It is shut up in a lofty turreted
wall; the main body of it is divided into six parts by perfectly straight
streets that are more than a hundred feet wide; the blocks of houses
exhibit a long frontage of the most taking architectural quaintnesses,
the straight lines being broken everywhere by pretty little balconies,
pillared and highly ornamented, and other cunning and cozy and inviting
perches and projections, and many of the fronts are curiously pictured by
the brush, and the whole of them have the soft rich tint of strawberry
ice-cream. One cannot look down the far stretch of the chief street and
persuade himself that these are real houses, and that it is all out of
doors--the impression that it is an unreality, a picture, a scene in a
theater, is the only one that will take hold.
Then there came a great day when this illusion was more pronounced than
ever. A rich Hindoo had been spending a fortune upon the manufacture of
a crowd of idols and accompanying paraphernalia whose purpose was to
illustrate scenes in the life of his especial god or saint, and this fine
show was to be brought through the town in processional state at ten in
the morning.
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