222 ROUGHING IT IN SOUTHERN INDIA 



Several of the ladies could and did read, so they must 

 have come to know something of the narrowness of their 

 lives compared with ours, and must, I should think, have 

 chafed at their limitations. Many black slave-girls moved 

 about among their mistresses, and I could not but recall 

 the stories I had heard, and which I knew to be not one 

 whit exaggerated, though we saw nothing painful. Never- 

 theless, it was on the whole a saddening visit, and I never 

 wished to repeat it. ' The dark places of the earth are full 

 of cruelty,' and few places were darker at one time than the 

 dim rooms behind the Zenana lattices. 



On leaving India the main impressions one carries away 

 are those of her gorgeousness and her cruelties ; and, 

 together with her treacheries, the dog-like fidelity of her 

 people, once that be evoked. This is evidenced so often 

 amongst one's own servants in their blind devotion, given in 

 return for the slightest consideration and kindness. They 

 will stop for days and weeks on guard at a sick-room door, 

 faithfully seeing to it that medicines are to hand to the 

 moment ; and so cautious are they as to the food the cook 

 prepares that they will force him to taste everything before 

 it is given to the invalid. All that lies in their power they 

 will do, and at these times may be trusted with property 

 and money unreckoned. This we have proved. 



It may be that I have dwelt on the cruelties of India with 

 too much detail for the hypersensitive ; yet it should be 

 possible to read of what other people endure. Her gorgeous- 

 ness must be seen to be realised ; it can hardly be depicted, 

 and cannot be exaggerated. Before visiting Hyderabad 

 an expression often used to describe India and other 

 Eastern lands — ' the Gorgeous East ' — seemed to me no 

 more than a phrase ; afterwards I recognised it as only a 

 plain truth, happily worded. 



There are two Hyderabads : one is the capital of Sindh, 

 in the Bombay Presidency ; the other is the name of the 



