Jeypore is the best, the largest and most prosperous of the twenty Rajput capitals, and is beyond comparison the finest modern city in India.  It is also the busiest.  Everybody seems to have plenty to do, and plenty to spend.  The streets are as crowded and as busy as those of London or New York, with a bustling and stalwart race of men and women, happy and contented, and showing more energy than you often see in an oriental country.  The climate is cool, dry and healthful.  The city stands upon a sandy and arid plain, 1,600 feet above the sea, surrounded by stony hills and wide wastes of desert, but, even these natural disadvantages have contributed to its wealth and industries, for the barren hills are filled with deposits of fine clays, rare ores and cheap jewels like garnets, carbuncles and agates, which have furnished the people one of their most profitable trades.  Out of this material they make an enamel which is famous everywhere, and has been the source of great gain and fame.  It is shipped in large quantities to Europe, but the greater part is sold in the markets of India.

[Illustration:  Street corner—­Jeypore, india]

Jeypore is surrounded by a wall twenty feet high and nine feet thick, built within the last century, and hence almost in perfect condition.  Indeed the town, unlike most of the Indian cities, is entirely without ruins, and you have to ride five miles on the back of an elephant in order to see one.  The streets are wide and well paved, and laid out at exact angles.  Four great thoroughfares 111 feet wide run at equal intervals at right angles with each other.  All the other streets are fifty-five feet wide and the alleys are twenty-eight feet.  Parks and public squares are laid out with the same regularity, and the houses are of uniform heights and generally after the same pattern.  The facades are almost fantastic, being covered profusely with stucco and “ginger-bread work,” so much that it is almost bewildering.  The roofs are guarded by highly ornamental balustrades that look like perforated marble, but are only molded plaster; the windows are filled with similar material; the doorways are usually arched and protected with overhanging canopies, and the doors are painted with pictures in brilliant colors.  The entire city has been “whitewashed” a bright rose color, every house having almost the same tint, which gives a peculiar appearance.  There is nothing else like it in all the world.  The outer walls of many of the house are painted with pictures of animals and birds, trees, pagodas and other fantastic designs, and scenes like those on the drop curtains of theatres, which appear to have been done by unskilled amateurs, and the whole effect—­the colors, the gingerbread work and the tints—­reminds you of the frosted cakes and other table decorations you sometimes see in confectioners’ windows at Christmas time.  You wonder that the entire city does not melt and run together under the heat of the burning sun.