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" Hyderabad, the city of the Nizam, seemed
in those days to be scenes grouped and assembled
round his personality. With its crumbling ram-
parts and narrow crowded streets charmingly
eastern, it consisted of patches of squalor and
daubs of bright colour in happy union. Untidy
and insanitary, may be, but quaintly picturesque
in its remnants of 'barbaric' splendour. The
breath of sixty years has passed over its face and
changed it."
* * *
" Life too was picturesque in those days, and
colourful. Street scenes in the city might have
been copied to illustrate the Arabian Nights !
It was a common sight to see the nobility mounted
on gorgeously caparisoned elephants and horses
with rich housings, which were the usual means of
conveyance. They went surrounded by armed
Arabs and Rohillas and proceeded slowly along the
narrow streets as proud liegemen of their sovereign.
" It is amusing to think that elephants were
also used as mounts by boys going to school.
And there had been a time, years before that,
when the British Resident used to travel from
Bolarum to Hyderabad on an elephant with a
suitable escort 1
* * *
" Passing through the city streets and lanes
could be seen palanquins and raths—bullock
carriages on four wheels surmounted by a tapering
canopied roof. These were peculiar to Hyderabad
and were kept only by the nobility for the use of