Then set out in advance persons having a knowledge of the humidity or
otherwise of the soil, men skilled in making tents, brave delvers
engaged in their proper work; those capable of constructing canals and
water courses, people on pay, car-makers, men preparing machines,
carpenters, those intended to guard the ways, pioneers, cooks,
perfumers, makers of wicker-ware and able guides. And as the mighty
throng began to proceed, it resembled the swell of the sea on the
occasion of a _parva_. And numbers of men skilled in road-constructing
went before furnished with various implements. And hewing away boughs,
and plants and shrubs and woody projections, stones, and diverse trees,
they went on preparing a road. And they set up trees where there were
none, and at places they felled trees by means of axes, _tankas_, and
_daos_, others possessed of greater strength and more powerful, with
their hands uprooted masses of Virana and here and there leveled a
rising ground. And others filled up with dust wells and capacious
hollows, and speedily leveled deep places air around. And those men
threw bridges wherever they became necessary, and broke the earth
wherever such a process was required, and excavated whenever it was
necessary. In a short time, they made places poor of water overflow with
many and various expanses resembling the ocean. And in tracts void of
water, they digged divers receptacles of water, decorated with daises.
And the way of the army, furnished with pavements of bricks and clay,
with trees bearing blosoms, eloquent with the tunes of birds, decorated
with pennons, sprinkled with sandal showers, and garnished with flowers
of various kinds, looked exceedingly beautiful, like unto the way of the
celestials. Then having received the command of Bharata, the men that
were in charge of the tents, ordered (the workmen) to pitch the tents,
and when they had been pitched at a romantic spot filled with tasteful
fruits, in consonance with the injunction of the high-souled Bharata,
the men decorated splendidly the tents which themselves were like the
ornaments of the road. And under an auspicious statf and at a favorable
hour, men well up in the work set the encampment of the high-souled
Bharata. And the tenfs surrounded by an entrenchment paved with dust,
containing images made of sapphires, graced with goodly thoroughfares,
lined with edifices, encircled by towers and walls, decorated with
streamers, having well-made high-ways, and appearing like celestial
daises and containing stately mansions with dove-cotes, resembled the
metropolis of Sakra himself. And passing by the Jahnavi abounding in
various trees and woods, of cool and crystal waters, and filled with
mighty fishes, that way of the chief of men constructed by artizans,
looked more and more lovely as it proceeded, as the unclouded sky looks
beautiful at night, adorned with inumerable stars.