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354 the railway and the automobile displacing it as a means of travel, and American overhead machinery crowding it out of timber-yards; and the Delhi durbar of 1903 very probably the last great parade of state elephants.

All the way out from the city the road had been streaming with people in brilliant clothes and the kaleidoscopic street crowds of Jeypore continued far into the country. Troops of Rajputs in green, white, and yellow clothes, on foot, in bullock-carts, sitting by the roadside, and going in and out of temples, enlivened the way, and, as we mounted the side of the mesa, we could see this brilliant ribbon of road stretching away through the level of the abandoned city of Amber. The lurching elephant gave us momently finer and wider views out over the plain of ruins, and finally lumbered into a court of the fortress palace and knelt for us thankfully to dismount. In the little temple to Kali, at the palace entrance, the floor was still red with the blood of the goat just sacrificed, and we had heathendom fresh and hot there at the maharaja's door. Guide-books and sentimental tourists have said so much in praise of Amber that we had keyed our expectations too high. Also, one must land at Bombay and see Amber before seeing Agra, Fatehpur Sikri, Delhi, and the rest to value it so highly. The tinsel looking-glasses and plaster rooms at Amber were wearisome. We had seen too many before. The pavilions, the baths, and the gardens seemed small and contracted, and even the pomegranate-trees grew in pots. Best of all in the palace was the high balcony, where