We Were Rather Disappointed With The General
Appearance Of The City:
Dirt and grandeur were closely combined,
and the combination gave the usual impression of shabby genteelness
in general, not at first sight prepossessing.
After driving through
what might have been an Eastern Sebastopol, from the amount of ruin
about, we reached a cut-throat-looking archway; and the coachman, here
pointing to a dirty board, above his head, triumphantly announced the
"Punch Gur!" Hot and thirsty, we got out, with visions of rest and
cooling sherbets, too soon to be dispelled. Passing through long dirty
halls, and up unsavoury steps, we at last reached a sort of court,
with beds of sickly flowers, never known to bloom, and from thence
issued to a suite of musty hot Moorish-looking rooms, with gold-inlaid
dust-covered tables, and a heavily-draped four-post bedstead, the
very sight of which, in such a climate, was almost enough to deprive
one of sleep for ever. Our speech forsook us, and without waiting to
remark whether the lady of the house was an ogress, or possessed of a
"rose-coloured body" and face like the full moon, we fairly turned
tail, and drove in all haste to our despised dak bungalow, where,
meekly and with softened feelings towards that edifice, we were
glad to deposit ourselves on a couple of charpoys, or "four-legs,"
as the bedstead of India is called, and endeavour to sleep the best
way we could. "Delhi," we found, quite kept up its reputation of being
the hottest place in India.
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