We Saw Many Barouches Driving About With Fat
Pashas Lolling On The Cushions; Stately-Looking Colonels And
Doctors Taking Their
Ride, followed by their orderlies or footmen;
lines of people taking pipes and sherbet in the coffee-houses; and
one
Of the pleasantest sights of all, - a fine new white building
with HOTEL D'ORIENT written up in huge French characters, and
which, indeed, is an establishment as large and comfortable as most
of the best inns of the South of France. As a hundred Christian
people, or more, come from England and from India every fortnight,
this inn has been built to accommodate a large proportion of them;
and twice a month, at least, its sixty rooms are full.
The gardens from the windows give a very pleasant and animated
view: the hotel-gate is besieged by crews of donkey-drivers; the
noble stately Arab women, with tawny skins (of which a simple robe
of floating blue cotton enables you liberally to see the colour)
and large black eyes, come to the well hard by for water: camels
are perpetually arriving and setting down their loads: the court
is full of bustling dragomans, ayahs, and children from India; and
poor old venerable he-nurses, with grey beards and crimson turbans,
tending little white-faced babies that have seen the light at
Dumdum or Futtyghur: a copper-coloured barber, seated on his hams,
is shaving a camel-driver at the great inn-gate. The bells are
ringing prodigiously; and Lieutenant Waghorn is bouncing in and out
of the courtyard full of business.
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