Our Viceregal Life in India

Excerpt from Our Viceregal Life in India: Selections From My Journal, 1884-1888 As we mounted the steps we saw before us a suite of rooms Open to the court, glittering with gold and light. One of these was the durbar hall, and His Excellency went and took his seat on the throne there, while we were admitted to a room at the back of the chairs of state, raised above them, but with Open arches into the great hall. It was a most curious place, the whole decoration being painted and enamelled glass, very gorgeous and rather pretty. The climax of our admiration was, however, only reached when we looked out of the windows of this room on to the most lovely bit of illumination I have ever seen. Immediately below' us was a great tank with marble walls and with kiosks jutting out into the water on every side, and the whole way round this was a palisade of light The effect was produced by a diamond shaped lattice-work paling, in which at every diamond point a little oil lamp burned. This wall of soft-coloured light reżected in the water was too beautiful 3 and straight up behind it rose the illuminated hill. From try to prose, and from the delight of the eye to an ordinary mm 1 The Maharajah took me in and sat for a little while just behind me he then went away for his own dinner, and only came back in time to propose the Queen's health. The girls and I afterwards visited the zenana, and then pro. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.