102 
SCENES IN INDIA. 
are the royal baths ,* they are composed entirely of 
marble and elaborately embellished,, the floors and 
sides being elegantly inlaid with flowers of variously 
coloured stones. 
A few days after our arrival at Delhi a male ele- 
phant, having killed its driver, escaped from its stable 
and,, running through the city in a state of great ex- 
citement, created considerable alarm. The enraged 
animal, when it got outside the walls, stood eyeing 
the approaching multitude which had followed it from 
the town, with a most mischievous expression and a 
very sinister motion of the proboscis. Its look was 
so determined that no one had the courage to ap- 
proach, when an English soldier from a small de- 
tachment on its march to Cawnpore, rendered more 
than usually courageous from having indulged in 
liberal potations of arrack, advanced with the most 
undaunted bearing towards the angry animal, which 
calmly awaited his approach. The spectators ima- 
gined that instant destruction must be the issue of 
this mad freak. On the contrary, to the astonish- 
ment of all present, the elephant permitted the drun- 
ken soldier to seize it by the trunk with impunity, 
bent its knees and inclined its head to enable the 
man to mount, who, assisted by the animal, now no 
longer refractory, got upon its neck and drove it into 
the city amid the acclamations of the crowd, by whom 
it was finally secured. 
After we quitted this interesting capital of a once 
flourishing but now subverted empire, on passing by 
Feroz Shah’s cotilla,* a few leagues from Delhi, our 
* A fortified house. 
