JAIPORE 53 



Of all the cities of India, Jaipore, from the point 

 of view of life and color, leaves with one the clearest 

 and most lasting impressions. It is not the Maha- 

 raja's palace, gardens, or stables that one recalls, 

 though they are striking, nor the Albert Museum, 

 though that too is of the greatest interest ; nor yet 

 is it the architecture of the regular blocks of plaster 

 houses, which is monotonous and commonplace : it 

 is the whole city itself, the great broad-s tree ted, 

 wall-inclosed city, with its ring of encircling hills 

 and its seven great gates, hiving with life and 

 gaiety, that impresses one with its charm. Imagine, 

 if you can, a street of such length and breadth that 

 the avenues of our greatest cities would appear 

 small beside it, and two far-reaching lines of flat- 

 topped plaster houses, colored of all colors in the 

 rainbow a brilliant pink, forming with the in- 

 tensely blue sky above and the reddish earth below 

 a combination of hues which in anything but nature 

 would jar atrociously, but which here combine in 

 the most pleasing harmony; imagine a throng of 

 natives of the most varied castes, continually min- 

 gling and remingling like the bits of glass in a kalei- 

 doscope, every caste being represented by a dis- 

 tinctive color or shade of turban, and every man 

 with some gay blanket or lui thrown about his 

 shoulders; imagine a continuously passing stream 



