The Faraway Drums
“I had travelled on campaign trains in the United States and they have a bizarre enough air to them, like a travelling fair, with political promises being sold like snake-oil and rhetoric streaming out from the rear platform thicker than the smoke from the locomotive up ahead. The Durbar Train made any campaign caravan look like a commuters’ drab streetcar. The carriages were festooned with ribbons and flags; that made them only imitations of American campaign cars. But no Presidential candidate had ever been trailed by wagon-loads of elephants, not even the Republicans in their wildest extravaganzas. There were twelve elephants, two to each of six wagons; there were two dozen horses, four to each of six wagons. And there were three flat-cars, two of them piled high with howdahs like wrecked fancy coracles, rolls of striped tents like rock candy, and a great sheaf of flags and pennants, the silver tips of their poles and lances glimmering in the afternoon sun. The third flat-car carrie...d the Ranee of Serog’s state coach.MoreLess
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