able specimens of architecture. The compounds are laid out in gardens, and planted with flowering shrubs and fruit-trees; and vegetation being very rapid, an oasis frequently thus springs up with wonderful rapidity in the midst of an arid desert. In these lines, also, the officers build their mess-rooms, ball-rooms, theatres, and occasionally racket-courts; and at a little distance race-stands, commanding an extensive view of fine level courses, where they have regular annual meetings, exclusive of frequent private matches, tiger-hunts, &c.
When in the field, officers are not at the expense of providing or conveying their tents, as the liberality of the Company supplies them with this accommodation of the very best kind. The tents which they contract for are fully twice as large as those used in Europe. They are made of thick cotton cloth; the shell or inner roof, as well as the canauts or walls, which are five or six feet high, being composed of two folds of white, and one of blue cloth, which last is placed innermost; and the fly or outer roof is made of the same material; so that an officer, when in camp, enjoys the great comfort in that sultry clime of having six folds of thick cotton cloth placed betwixt his head and the vertical rays of the sun.
The soldiers' tents hold each ten men with great ease, and have also two folds and a blue lining. Three bullocks are allotted for the carriage of each captain's marquee, and one for that of each subaltern's tent; but those of field-officers are so large as to require a camel or an elephant, which animals are also appropriated for the carriage of the soldiers' tents, mess-tents, and hospital-tents; Lascars, or tent-pitchers, are also allotted for, and two puckalie bullocks per company. These bullocks carry each two huge leathern bags for holding water, for the convenience of the soldiers in camp and on the line of march. Doolies, or sick-beds (an inferior sort of palanquin), are attached to each corps, in the proportion of one to every ten men, with four bearers to each.
A bazaar is also an indispensable appendage to an
