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IS 189.2 Story of an Emigrant.
tropical plants was such that a man from the North found
it difficult to realize that he was still on this earth of ours,
and not far away in the fairy world of fiction.
Realit}’ is so wonderful in India that I have hardly dared
to tell the following without gradually preparing my reader
for it. This young prince, whose guest I was and with
whom I talked a good deal, is a poor foundling, having
been adopted by the old prince, who died childless, and by
the consent of the English government he was made his sole
o o
heir. His landed estates were so large that he paid two
million two hundred thousand dollars to the English
government in annual taxes on the income from his lands ! How
large his total income is, nobody knows. Inside the palace
walls, which were protected by a strong body-guard night
and day, were deep subterranean vaults with secret
entrances, where gold and jewels were concealed in such
quantities as may be imagined only when it is remembered that
during a period of three hundred years the family has been
accustomed to accumulate these treasures by at least three
"lacs rupees," or one hundred and sixty thousand dollars, a,
3’ear. But during the same time millions upon millions
of people have starved to death in the principality of
Bur-dwan, and even now it is safe to say that nine-tenths of the
people who cultivate the soil and live 011 the estates of the
maharajah and pay him tribute are so poor that they could
scarcely sustain their life a single month in case of drought
or inundations.
To describe the whole fete would require a whole book,
and I therefore select the installation ceremony, which, by
the way, was the most important of the festivities. It took
place in a small mango forest, about a mile from the palace.
A pleasant country road, decorated with banners and
spanned by triumphal arches covered with flowers, led to
the place. A tent pavilion sixty feet long and forty feet wide
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