Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan, or the Central and Western Rajput States of India v2.c27.s7.t2.62

v2.c27.s7.t2.62

Indara.—October 29.—Camp at Indara, eleven miles. This small town, placed on the north bank of one of the nameless feeders of the ‘salt river,’ is the boundary of Godwar; here the reign of the yellow anwal terminates, and here commences Marusthali, or ‘the region of death.’ The transition is great. We can look back upon fertility, and forward on aridity, which does not, however, imply sterility: for that cunning artist, nature, compensates the want of verdure and foliage to the inhabitants of the desert by many spontaneous bounties. An entire race of cucurbitaceous plants is the eleemosynary equivalent for the mango and exotics of the central lands of Rajputana; while indigenous poverty sends forth her commercial sons from Osi, Pali, and Pokaran, to bring wealth from the Ganges and the Kistna, to the Luni, or to the still more remote oasis, Jaisalmer. From Indara everything assumed a new character: the sand, of which we had before scarcely a sprinkling, became occasionally heavy; the shallow beds of the numerous streams were white with saline incrustations; and the vegetable creation had been gradually diminishing, from the giant race of the sacred fig-tree with leaf “broad as Amazonian targe,” to the dwarfish shrubs of the desert. At once the satiric stanza of the bard of a more favoured region was brought to my mind, and as I repeated it to my old friend the Rana’s envoy, he enjoyed the confession, and afresh urged his wish that nature should decide the question of their boundaries: