[6]
Phul Bagh, or the _flower-garden_, was suggested to me as the best
place for my tents, where Sindhia had built a splendid summer-house.
As I came over this most gloomy and uninteresting march, in which the
heart of a rational man sickens, as he recollects that all the
revenues of such an enormous extent of dominion over the richest soil
and the most peaceable people in the world should have been so long
concentrated upon this point, and squandered without leaving one sign
of human art or industry, I looked forward with pleasure to a quiet
residence in the _flower-garden_, with good foliage above, and a fine
sward below, and an atmosphere free from dust, such as we find in and
around all the residences of Muhammadan princes. On reaching my tents
I found them pitched close outside the _flower-garden_, in a small
dusty plain, without a blade of grass or a shrub to hide its
deformity--just such a place as the pig-keepers occupy in the suburbs
of other towns. On one side of this little plain, and looking into
it, was the _summer-house_ of the prince, without one inch of green
sward or one small shrub before it.
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