Thus occupied in thought and conversation, we rode on until
the advanced sentinel challenged us, when old Puneeree gave the word,
and we passed on into the centre of Holkar's camp.
It was a strange--a stirring sight! The camp-fires were lighted; and
round them--eating, reposing, talking, looking at the merry steps of the
dancing-girls, or listening to the stories of some Dhol Baut (or Indian
improvisatore) were thousands of dusky soldiery. The camels and horses
were picketed under the banyan-trees, on which the ripe mango fruit was
growing, and offered them an excellent food. Towards the spot which the
golden fish and royal purdahs, floating in the wind, designated as the
tent of Holkar, led an immense avenue--of elephants! the finest street,
indeed, I ever saw. Each of the monstrous animals had a castle on
its back, armed with Mauritanian archers and the celebrated Persian
matchlock-men: it was the feeding time of these royal brutes, and the
grooms were observed bringing immense toffungs, or baskets, filled with
pine-apples, plantains, bandannas, Indian corn, and cocoa-nuts, which
grow luxuriantly at all seasons of the year. We passed down this
extraordinary avenue--no less than three hundred and eighty-eight
tails did I count on each side--each tail appertaining to an elephant
twenty-five feet high--each elephant having a two-storied castle on its
back--each castle containing sleeping and eating rooms for the twelve
men that formed its garrison, and were keeping watch on the roof--each
roof bearing a flag-staff twenty feet long on its top, the
crescent glittering with a thousand gems, and round it the imperial
standard,--each standard of silk velvet and cloth-of-gold, bearing the
well-known device of Holkar, argent an or gules, between a sinople of
the first, a chevron, truncated, wavy.
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