Delhi mornings had cleared away, we had sunshine that mellowed grumblers to amiability, and they basked in the hot beams of noonday; but gloom settled on them with the damp chill of sunset, and there were the same depressed and depressing groups huddled before the few hissing twigs in the fireplaces of the chill white caves of rooms. Then the jackals came under our windows and laughed and shrieked hysterically, as well they might, at calling such a tour pleasure travel.
The old capital of the Moguls has great charm in sunshine, and Delhi's main thoroughfare, the Chandni Chauk (Silver Square), was the most brilliant and spectacular place we had seen. All native life was crowded into that street, which is a continuous market-place for a mile, with rainbow crowds of people streaming up and down, buying and selling everything from crown diamonds and jeweled jade to sheepskins and raw meat. The street has run with blood many times, and has been strewn and stacked with corpses. Nadir Shah put one hundred thousand to death, Timur had done worse, and the Mahrattas were the worst of all; so that the butchery after the Mutiny siege of Delhi was but another regrettable incident in its history. At the far end of the street towers the red sandstone gateway of Shah Jahan's fort, and driving in under this portal fit for kings and triumphal armies, we found sepoys lounging on charpoys by the guard-house door, tunics unbuttoned, turbans awry and at loose ends, and Moslem shoes hanging from one bare toe—the sans gêne of the race undisturbed by the noble
