Page:Life in India or Madras, the Neilgherries, and Calcutta.djvu/111

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Mount St. Thomé, amid the crowd of conveyances that continually throng it, I turned to the right at the Tanna (police station) and entered the main street of Triplicane. There is one pleasant thing about these native policemen, and that is their love of flowers. Wherever, in Madras, you see a Tanna, you see a little flowerbed at the door, or a few pots with a rose-bush or two, or if nothing better can be had, a crop of holyhocks; and the peon will be twirling a flower in his hand. On either side of the Triplicane road stretches a continuous row of low houses, plastered with chunam, and roofed with tiles. The palace of the nabob of the Carnatic, a temple or two, and a few mosques give variety to the street, which is met by cross streets also closely built. The palace of the nabob has no beauty to boast, as it presents only a bare wall to passers-by, and a gate guarded by native soldiers of his own troop. They are dressed in an imitation English uniform, and have a very cheap and shabby appearance, far inferior to that of the native troops or sepoys of the East India Company. The nabob, though the descendant of the former rulers of the land, and always received by the governor with a royal salute, and honours