This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
182
WINTER INDIA

four times its weight in silver, from the rose-water at twelve cents a quart that one carries for ablutions on railway trains.

Again we caught sight of the square gray tower,—the tower that Mrs. Steele has introduced so well in "Voices of the Night,"—and the dreadful depression of Mutiny memories fell upon us. The dark, vaulted bedchambers of the hotel were too suggestive of the Residency cellar, and rather than pass a night in the city of such associations, or stop the next day to feed on the greater horrors of Cawnpore, we took the afternoon train for Agra. Some tourists came on at Cawnpore, anxious to escape from the horror of it. They had seen it all, and suffered all the terrible deaths in imagination, from the ghats where the boat-loads of English were burned, drowned, or murdered in cold blood by the fiendish Nana Sahib, to the room where the women and children were bayoneted and clubbed against the wall, and the crowning agony of the memorial angel over the well of burial—all explained in detail by an old soldier survivor.

Regarding Agra as the most important tourist place in India, it is disconcerting to have to reach it by cross-roads, way-trains, and branch lines, arriving always between midnight and daylight. We changed at Tundla Junction in a deluge of rain, and rode in a crowded car, seven in a single compartment, without any lamps, for an hour to Agra.

A huge turban from the hotel claimed us, and when the file of baggage coolies had trailed after us to the entrance, I said, "Get me a gharry." "Very