Page:ER Scidmore--Winter India.djvu/362

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340
WINTER INDIA

to a pyramidal temple ruin very similar to the Buddhist ruins in Java. The same indefatigable Major Keith who rescued and preserved the old carved and tiled palace worked over this temple, too, restoring the gateway and replacing as far as possible every carved fragment. We remounted, and the mahout guided the monster down the road and then close beside the parapet, goaded it until it was as close to the coping as possible, and then bade us look down and see the rock-sculptures that adorn the perpendicular face of a ravine of the rock. With three hundred feet of space below our feet, the breathing of the elephant seeming enough to burst the girths that bound the car to it, and its lurches as it shifted its weight from one foot to the other enough to propel us into the air, we cared nothing for bas-reliefs and images. A tank far below, and the winding white Lashkar road, seemed to sway in air and rise toward us, and we clutched the car-frame in agony and begged only to be taken down to the safe level of the plain again, to horses and wheeled vehicles. We could easily believe that much elephant-riding makes one mad, and that the motion and the heat of the elephant's body affect the spine and shorten the life of a mahout. After the jerking and jolting of its downhill progress we gladly left the gentle giantess in the red-velvet cloak salaaming and putting its trunk to its forehead in thanks, in ridiculous parody of the slim little mahout beside it.

We were allowed to peep into the court of the Jama Masjid without unshoeing, and went then to