From the Tower of Fame we made our way to the other great landmark of
Chitor--the Tower of Victory.
Passing and examining _en route_ many elaborately-carved temples, whose
domes rose amid the strangling masses of desert tree and shrub, we came to
the base of the red tower, whose shaft, four-square and in perfect
preservation, has, with its more venerable brother of Fame, watched for so
many centuries over the fallen fortress of Chitor.
Not far away, the rocky wall on which the city stands is shattered into a
gloomy chasm, half-hidden in rank vegetation, which, clinging with knotted
root to ledge and crevice, hangs darkly over a stagnant pool. Here was the
awful portal, "the Gau Mukh," or "cow's mouth," by which, when all was
lost to Chitor save honour, her women entered the subterranean cavern
while the fuel was heaped high, and an honourable death by suffocation
awaited them.
The burning Indian day was over, and the sun blazed red in the west, as we
mounted our elephant and paced along the road towards the Hathi Pol.
Darker grew the ghostly domes and shattered battlements against a golden
sky, and the swift southern night fell, dark yet luminous, as we turned
down the hill and left the dead city, splendid in its loneliness and
isolation, asleep within its crumbling walls.
Our dinner-table was set out on the platform of the station at Chitorgarh,
and our bedrooms were close by, our host and hostess sleeping in the
"special" by which they were to return to Udaipur in the morning, while we
slept in a siding, ready to be coupled up to the early train from Bombay.
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