The people wear colors even more brilliant than those of their houses, and in whichever direction you look you see continual streams passing up and down each broad highway like animated rainbows, broken here and there by trains of loaded camels, huge elephants with fanciful canopies on their backs and half-naked Hindus astride their heads, guiding them.  Jeypore was the first place we found elephants used for business purposes, and they seemed to be quite numerous—­more numerous than horses—­and some of them were covered with elaborate trappings and saddles, and had their heads painted in gay tints and designs.  That was a new idea also, which I had never seen before, and I was told that it is peculiar to Jeypore.  The bullock carts, which furnish the only other means of transportation, are also gayly painted.  The designs are sometimes rude and the execution bears evidence of having been done with more zeal than skill.  The artist got the giddiest colors he could find, and laid them on without regard to time or expense.  The wheels, bodies and tongues of the carts; and the canopies that cover those in which women are carried, are nightmares of yellows, greens, blues, reds and purples, like cheap wooden toys.  Everything artificial at Jeypore is as bright and gay as dyes and paint can make it.

A great deal of cloth is manufactured there, both cotton and silk; most of it in little shops opening on the sidewalk, and it is woven and dyed by hand where everybody can see that the work is honestly done.  As you walk along the business part of town you will see women and children holding long strips of red, green, orange, purple or blue cloth—­sometimes cotton and sometimes silk, fresh from the vats of dye, out of the dust, in the sunshine, until the colors are securely fastened in the fibers.  Even the men paint their whiskers in fantastic colors.  It is rather startling to come up against an old gentleman with a long beard the color of an orange or a spitzenberg apple.  You imagine they are lunatics, but they are only pious Mohammedans anxious to imitate the Prophet, who, according to tradition, had red whiskers.

About half of the space of the four wide streets is given up to sidewalk trading, and rows of booths, two or three miles in length, occupy the curbstones, with all kinds of goods; everything that anybody could possibly want, fruits, vegetables, groceries, provisions, boots and shoes, ready-made clothing, hats and caps, cotton goods and every article of wearing apparel you can think of, household articles, furniture, drugs and medicines, jewelry, stationery, toys—­everything is sold by these sidewalk merchants, who squat upon a piece of matting with their stock neatly piled around them.

One feature of the street life in Jeypore, however, is likely to make nervous people apprehensive.  The maharaja and other rich men keep panthers, leopards, wildcats and other savage beasts trained for tiger hunting and other sporting purposes, and allow their grooms to lead them around through the crowded thoroughfares just as though they were poodle dogs.  It is true that the brutes wear muzzles, but you do not like the casual way they creep up behind you and sniff at the calves of your legs.