Page:The life of Captain Sir Richard F. Burton (IA b21778401).pdf/103

Rh British India is the ever-growing gulf that yawns between the governors and the governed; they lose touch of one another, and such racial estrangement leads directly to racial hostility.

The day in Cantonment-way is lively. It began before sunrise on the parade-ground, an open space, which any other people but English would have converted into a stronghold. Followed, the baths and the choti-hazri, or little breakfast, the munshi (language-master), and literary matters till nine o'clock meal. The hours were detestable, compared with the French system—the déjeuner à la fourchette, which abolished the necessity of lunch; but throughout the Anglo-American world, even in the places worst adapted, "business" lays out the day. After breakfast, most men went to the billiard-room; some, but very few, preferred "peacocking," which meant robing in white-grass clothes and riding under a roasting sun, as near the meridian as possible, to call upon "regimental ladies," who were gruff as corporals when the function was neglected too long. The dull and tedious afternoon again belonged dto munshi, and ended with a constitutional ride, or a rare glance at the band; Mess about seven p.m., possibly a game of whist, and a stroll home under the marvellous Gujarat skies, through a scene of perfect loveliness, a paradise bounded by the whity-black line.

There was little variety in such days. At times we rode to Baroda City, which seemed like a Mansion, to which the Cantonment acted as porter's Lodge. "Good Water" (as the Sanskritists translate it) was a walled City, lying on the north bank of the Vishwamitra river, and containing some 150,000 souls, mostly hostile, who eyed us with hateful eyes, and who seemed to have taught even their animals to abhor us. The City is a mélange of low huts and tall houses, grotesquely painted, with a shabby palace, and a Chauk, or Bazar, where four streets meet. At times H.M. the Gaikwar would show us what was called sport—a fight between two elephants with cut tusks, or a caged tiger and a buffalo—the last being generally the winner—or a wrangle between two fierce stallions, which bit like camels. The cock-fighting was, however, of a superior kind, the birds being of first-class blood, and so well trained, that they never hesitated to attack a stranger. An occasional picnic, for hunting, not society, was a most pleasant treat. The native Prince would always lend us his cheetahs or hunting leopards, or his elephants; the jungles inland of the city swarmed with game, from a snipe to a tiger, and the broad plains to the north were packs of nilghai and the glorious black buck. About twenty-eight miles due east, rises high above the sea of verdure the picturesque hill known as Pávangarh, the Fort of Eolus, and the centre of an old Civilization. Tanks and Jain temples were