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Peshawar, Feby.18/95.

Dear Mr. Hecker:

Oodeypore gave me supreme pleasure. It's the most beautiful place I have ever seen and nothing could have been more courteous and pleasing than the hospitality of the Maharajah and Fateh Lal Mehta. I was furnished carriages, boats, guards, and everything in most lavish way, including fruits and flowers. Fateh Lal Mehta himself took me about the place showing all things of interest and gave me a delightful evening on the lake. The Maharajah gave me an audience lasting over an hour and when I left the palace the outer court with its crowds of gaily dressed princes, etc. waiting to see the Maharajah was particularly fine. I can scarcely ever hope for impressions of any earthly place more completely to my liking than those I expect always to cherish of Oodeypore. At Ulwar, I received similar politeness but much less genuine, and the place although beautiful compares not with Oodeypore. Its copy of the Culistan and splendidly illuminated Persian manuscripts, also its wonderful stable (unusual combination)are worth a long journey to see. 

Peshawar as you know is the extreme Northwestern city of India. It is rarely visited by Europeans out strikes me as a very important place to see. Its history goes back centuries, its population is a splendid aggregation of outcasts, horse thieves, adventurers, fakirs, traders and highwaymen from all over Central Asia. Tomorrow, Col. Warburton Political Officer of Khyber Pass, sends me with an escort to see the famous pass. It is open only two days of each week and no European is allowed to enter without pass and escort and under no circumstances to travel beyond Ali Masjid. It will be very interesting to meet the trains of traders from Afghanistan and beyond. Their camels are fine beasts and their horses not for sale superb,---those they sell are of the kind George delights to handle---"they might be better they might be worse". Skins from the Himalayas and Kabul are very plenty and cheap here. 

I bought a magnificent Himalayan snow squirrel lap robe and a rare specimen of baby camel skin, the two for 25 Rupees less than 7.00. I shall send them along with a jungle bird skin to Mr. Watson at Bombay who in turn, will forward them to you along with the other things I bought while at Bombay. If I could spend one week here and devote the whole time to the bazaars I could make money enough off my purchases to pay all of my personal expenses in India. But then one hates to become a dealer in stolen property. For a type of the traders one meets here read Kiplings Dray Warn Yow Dee. Like the grey: they are devils unlicked. I would give several of my recent unique experiences, to see Tom Jerome walk through the main