The weather was splendid; hot in the middle of the day--for the
season is late, and the monsoon has greatly failed in its cooling
duty--but delightful in morning and evening.
Rising one morning at early dawn, before the sun leaped above the eastern
hills, we took boat and rowed to one of the island palaces, where, after
fishing for mahseer, we breakfasted on a marble balcony overlooking the
ripples of the Pichola Lake, which lapped the feet of a group of great
marble elephants.
Not the least interesting expedition was to the south end of the lake one
afternoon to see the wild pigs fed. Traversing the whole length of the
Pichola, past the marble ghats where the crimson-clad women washed and
chattered, while above them rose the roofs and temple domes of the fairy
city culminating in the walls and pinnacles of the palace--past the fleet
of queer green barges wherein the Maharana disports himself when
aquatically inclined, we left the many islands marble-crowned on our right;
and finally landed at a little jutting ledge of rock, whence a jungle
track led us in a few minutes to a terrace overlooking a rocky and steep
slope which fell away from the building near which we stood. The scene was
surprising! Hundreds of swine of all sorts and sizes, from grim slab-sided,
gaunt-headed old boars, whose ancient tusks showed menacing, to the
liveliest and sprightliest of little pigs playing hide-and-seek among
their staid relatives, were collected from the neighbouring jungle to
scramble for the daily dole of grain spread for them by the Maharana.
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