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Updated: May 8, 2025
The Maharajah's howdahs were all of cane-work, with a softly padded seat and a leather-strap back, which yielded to the motion of the great beast. The Maharajah owned about sixty elephants, in which he took the greatest pride, and he was most careful in providing his guests with proved "tiger-staunch" animals.
They came in marvelous palanquins, in curtained howdahs, on camels, in splendid bullock carts. Many a rupee resolved itself into new-bought finery, upon the vague chance of getting it back with compound interest. What was most unusual, they came without pedigree or dowry, this being Ramabai's idea; though, in truth, Umballa objected at first to the lack of dowry.
After those infantine seven years, the captain took her with him to his station up the country, where she lived she knew not how long, in a strong hill-fort, one Puttymuddyfudgepoor, where there was a great deal of fighting, and besieging, and storming, and cannonading; but it ceased at last, and the captain, who then soon successively became both major and colonel, always kept her in his own quarters, making her his little pet; and, after the fighting was all over, his brother-officers would take her out hunting in their howdahs, and she had plenty of palanquin-bearers, sepoys, and servants at command; and, what was more, good nurse Mackie was her constant friend and attendant.
The train of elephants was splendidly equipped with silver howdahs, and accompanied by suwarrs, or horsemen, in red and yellow, followed by an irregular though picturesque body of infantry, armed with swords, long matchlock guns, and shields. Some had enormously long spears covered over with silver; while amid them were carried large triangular green banners.
On the opposite side were a number of native vehicles of various descriptions, and some elephants with painted faces and gorgeous trappings, and with howdahs shaded by pavilions glittering with gilt and silver.
This Umballa was supernaturally keen. What to do now? "Quick!" cried Ahmed. "Get the howdahs off the elephants." It was done. "Hobble them." It was immediately accomplished. "Into the bungalow, all of you. Mem-sahib, follow me!" "What are you going to do?" asked Bruce. "Hide her where none will dare to look," answered Ahmed. He seized Kathlyn by the hand and urged her to run.
Phileas Fogg and Sir Francis Cromarty, plunged to the neck in the peculiar howdahs provided for them, were horribly jostled by the swift trotting of the elephant, spurred on as he was by the skillful Parsee. But they endured the discomfort with true British phlegm, talking little, and scarcely able to catch a glimpse of each other.
Sometimes a few of the elephants were sold, and taken away by Indian Princes, to live in stables near the palaces, to have gold and silver cloths fastened on their backs, and then the howdahs, in which rode the rich Indians, would be strapped on. Sometimes other wild elephants were brought in, having been caught as Umboo had been.
They looked down on men and women in Roman chariots, men on horseback, women on horseback, on elephants, on camels painted ladies in howdahs, painted ladies in sedan chairs Cleopatra, Pompadour history reduced to pantomime, color imposed upon color, glitter upon glitter, the beat of the tom-tom, the crash of the band, the thin piping, as the white-turbaned snake-charmer showed in the press of the crowd.
We formed a curious procession as we entered the valley rajah and civilians, military men and mahowts, black and white, on pads and in howdahs the last being the little towers that you see on elephants' backs in pictures. "Gun-men had been sent up to the head of the valley to block the way in that direction. The sides were too steep for elephants to climb.
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