Snakes. Delhi 315 



patrolling the cramped, winding ways bullock-carts 

 and cars, decked with flowers, carrying masked figures. 

 It was a weird and gorgeous spectacle in the midst 

 of the darkness ; the houses were burning coloured 

 lights, and blue and gold flame curled up the streets, 

 while here and there a bright flare from a pot of 

 resinous stuff gleamed upon the moving sea of dark 

 faces and bright garments. 



Before one low house the crowd had come to a 

 standstill ; it was gorgeously illuminated, and native 

 music was thumping wildly from the roof-top. A 

 curtain was drawn aside, and a rough stage revealed 

 half-way up the front of the house. The play was 

 in dumb show ; the masks were grotesque, the dresses 

 simple. The spectacle might have been interpreted 

 in many ways. It was full of meaning, both obvious 

 and obscure ; but the surroundings lent themselves 

 to heighten the effect, and the whole scene not only 

 demanded much from the imagination, but supplied 

 it as well. There was about it a mysticism which 

 seems somehow to belong to Hindus and Mohamme- 

 dans, to all Orientals alike ; an unreality woven round 

 their lives which makes them beings apart from 

 Europeans, and occasionally sheds a glamour about 

 their inexplicable ways. 



A show of this nature in London by Cockneys 

 would have been a painful fiasco, falling absurdly flat ; 

 but here in Delhi it was in perfect keeping with the 

 incomprehensible old Eastern race, and its crudities, 

 its garish lights, its bizarre colours, were only 



