Page:Letters from India Vol 1.djvu/327

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LETTERS FROM INDIA.
319

would have charged four times as much for their goods to any of our family. It was very amusing to see my servants when Captain —— said none of them were to go with me. They evidently felt that a mad patient was escaping from her keepers, and my jemadar ventured to represent that he ought to go with me, which is very unusual with a native servant. We went off alone, however, and had to walk down the narrowest alleys, and then to go up to the housetops of such wretched-looking houses, where the owners were sitting smoking, or asleep, and out of their dirty-looking thatched tenements they produced such shawls, gold brocades that were thicker than the doors of their transparent houses, and the men that sold them leoked as if they were cut out of the ‘Arabian Nights.’ The jewellers’ shops are disappointing, except that they produce out of some odd corner of their dresses handfuls of diamonds and pearls; but they have nothing set nicely. I never go to any of these sights without wishing for Landseer, or Wilkie. There is something about natives so ultra-picturesque, they would make the fortunes of an artist.

We are going to make up a small party to