GWALIOB 
89 
Northern India with a few showers of rain, but scarcely enough of 
the latter to affect either vegetation or insects.” On January 23rd 
there was gentle rain at Jhansi lasting several hours. 
At Gwalior, on January 15th, an untoward circumstance was 
near bringing the author to an untimely end. The splendid rest- 
house erected by the hospitable Maharajah Scindia for the accommo¬ 
dation of European visitors was full, but His Highness soon set up 
and placed at our disposal one of his own luxurious tents which had 
been made for the Delhi Durbar. Moreover, we went for a drive 
round the foot of the rock on which the fortress stands, in a carriage 
from His Highness’s stables, a Victoria drawn by a pair of sturdy 
transport horses. This carriage had no brake, the military harness 
no breeching. At one place a very steep road was carried on a low 
embankment; at the critical point one of the horses refused to pull 
back, the carriage “ took charge ” and, after a swerve or two, went 
over, and we were all pitched out on to a stony bank the other side 
of the deep ditch—the Victoria across my back ! 
All, myself included, thought my last moment was at hand: a 
dull aching suggested a severe internal injury. We had fancied that 
we were in a lonely spot, but, as always happens in India, coolies 
seemed to spring up from the ground, and they lifted the burden 
from my shoulders. A polite Hindu, a pleader of the High Court, 
came up and said: “ By the mercy of God, you are not killed! ” 
This gentleman most kindly sent for a palki, or palanquin, that he 
knew of, and despatched other messengers for the Civil Surgeon, who 
lived some miles away. I was carried back to my tent to await the 
arrival of Capt. Battye, I.M.S., an old acquaintance, as it turned out, 
for I had acted as his dresser in a tobogganing accident at Grindel- 
wald some years before. This surgeon, and subsequently two 
others, failed to find any broken bone, a fact that spoke well for my 
scapulae, since the other party to the impact—the Victoria—suffered 
from a comminuted fracture. One of the horses had been injured; 
the Maharajah, in true Oriental fashion, sent the driver to prison! 
So it befell that I was denied the undoubted dignity, but 
questionable joy, of visiting, on the back of one of the Maharajah’s 
elephants, the interior of the historic stronghold. As I wrote home 
at the time: “ Imagine an island exactly half the length of Lundy, 
and nearly its height, rising sheer from the dusty plain; along the 
top of its beetling cliffs a vast wall, nowhere less than 30 feet high, 
often more, its monotony broken by bold round bastions; carve on the 
cliffs colossal statues, scatter at intervals palaces, tombs, and temples 
of the three great Asiatic faiths, and—you have Gwalior.” 
