The thannadar of Kerowlee is a very intelligent old soldier, with certificates of good conduct from all the officers of distinction who commanded in Lord Lake's Maharatta war, and able to speak of most of the events which occurred in it. I was sorry to find that during the early part of that war, some of the British officers disgraced themselves by rapacity and extortion. Such instances, I believe and hope, are now neither of frequent nor easy occurrence.

January 18.-We went on this morning to Futtehpoor-sicri, about ten miles, through a verdant and tolerably well cultivated country, but with few trees. We passed Kerowlee, a small town, with a ruined rampart and towers, seated on a low gravelly hill, with a few poor attempts at gardens round it. The country all seemed to have benefited greatly by the late rain, which is still standing in pools in many parts of the road. There had, indeed, been more, and more recent rain here than what we saw in Delhi. The approach to Futtehpoor is striking; it is surrounded by a high stone wall, with battlements and round towers, like the remaining part of the city walls at Oxford. Within this is a wide extent of ruined houses and mosques, interspersed with fields cultivated with rice and mustard, and a few tamarind trees, and nearly in the middle, on a high ridge of rocky hills, is a range of ruinous palaces, serais, and other public buildings, in the best style of Mussulman architecture; and to form the centre of the picture, a noble mosque, in good repair, and in dimensions equal, I should think, to the Jumna Musjeed of Delhi.

This town was the favourite residence of Acbar, and here, in his expeditions, he usually left his wives and children, under the care of his most trusted friend, Sheikh Soliman. The mosques, the palace, and the ramparts, are all Acbar's work, and nearly in the same style with the castle of Agra and his own tomb at Secundra. The two former, are, however, plainer than this last, and there is a far less allowance of white marble.

We found our tents pitched among the ruins and rubbish, about a bow-shot from the foot of the hill, and in full view of the great gate of the mosque, which is approached by the noblest flight of steps I ever saw. The morning was still cool, and we determined to see the curiosities without loss of time. The steps of which I have spoken lead to a fine arch surmounted by a lofty tower; thence we pass into a quadrangle of about 500 feet square, with a very lofty and majestic cloister all round, a large mosque surmounted by three fine domes of white marble on the left hand, and opposite to the entrance, two tombs of very elaborate workmanship, of which that to the right contains several monuments of the imperial family; that to the left a beautiful chapel of white marble, the

shrine of Sheikh Soliman, who had the good fortune to be a saint as well as a statesman.

The impression which this whole view produced on me will be appreciated when I say, that there is no quadrangle either in Oxford or Cambridge fit to be compared to it, either in size, or majestic proportions, or beauty of architecture. It is kept in substantial repair by the British Government, and its grave and solid style makes this an easier task than the intricate and elaborate inlaid work of Secundra and the Taje Mahal. The interior of the mosque itself is fine, and in the same simple character of grandeur, but the height of the tal tower, and the magnificence of the quadrangle, had raised my expectations too high, and I found that these were the greatest, as well as the most striking beauties of Futtehpoor.

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A little to the right is the palace, now all in ruins, except a small part which is inhabited by the Tusseldar of the district. We rambled some time among its courts and through a range of stables worthy of an Emperor, consisting of a long and wide street, with a portico on each side fifteen feet deep, supported with carved stone pillars in front, and roofed with enormous slabs of stone, reaching from the colonade to the wall. There are four buildings particularly worthy of notice, one a small but richly ornamented house, which is shown as the residence of Beerbal, the Emperor's favourite minister, whom the Mussulmans accuse of having infected him with the strange religious notions with which, in the latter part of his life, he sought to inoculate his subjects. Another is a very beautiful octagonal pavilion in the corner of the court, which appears to have been the Emperor's private study, or the bed-chamber of one of his wives who was a daughter of the Sultan of Constantinople. It has three large windows filled with an exquisite tracery of white marble, and all its remaining wall is carved with trees, bunches of grapes, and the figures of different kinds of birds and beasts, of considerable merit in their execution, but the two last disfigured. by the bigotry of Aurungzebe, who, as is well known, sought to make amends for his own abominable cruelty and wickedness towards his father and brothers, by a more than usual zeal for the traditions and observances of Islam. The third is a little building which, if its traditional destination be correct, I wonder Aurungzebe allowed to stand. It consists merely of a shrine or canopy supported by four pillars, which the Mussulman ciceroni of the place pretend was devoted by Acbar to the performance of magical rites. Whatever its use may have been, it is not without beauty. The fourth is a singular pavilion, in the centre of which is a pillar or stone pulpit richly carved, approached by four stone galleries from different sides of the room, on which the Emperor used to

sit on certain occasions of state, while his subjects were admitted below to present their petitions. It is a mere capriccio, with no merit except its carving, but is remarkable as being one of the most singular buildings I have seen, and commanding from its terraced roof a very advantageous view of the greater part of the city, and a wide extent of surrounding country.

Of this last much appears to have been laid out in an extensive lake, of which the dam is still to be traced, and the whole hill on which the palace stands bears marks of terraces and gardens, to irrigate which an elaborate succession of wells, cisterns, and wheels, appears to have been contrived adjoining the great mosque, and forcing up the water nearly to the height of its roof. The cisterns are still useful as receptacles for rain-water, but the machinery is long since gone to decay. On the whole, Futtehpoor is one of the most interesting places which I have seen in India, and it was to me the more so, because, as it happened, I had heard little about it, and was by no means prepared to expect buildings of so much magnitude and splendour.

Mr. Lushington was forced to leave me to return to Lucknow, and we parted with mutual hopes that we might often meet again, but in India how many chances are there against such hopes being accomplished! If his health is spared he will, I hope and believe, be a valuable man in this country, inasmuch as he has memory, application, good sense, excellent principles both religious and moral; and, what I have seldom seen in young Indian civilians, a strong desire to conciliate the minds and improve the condition of the inhabitants of the

country.

After dinner I again walked to the mosque, and went to the top of the gateway tower, which commands a very extensive view. The most remarkable object in the distance was the rampart of Bhurtpoor, eight coss from us, and hardly to be distinguished by the naked eye, but sufficiently visible with a pocket telescope. A number of miserable dependants on the religious establishment came up and begged for charity. One was blind, but officiated as porter so far as keeping the keys of the tower and other lock-up places. Another was deaf and dumb, and filled the place of sweeper; there were also some poor old women who "abode," as they told me," in the temple gate, and made prayer night and day." These people, as well as the two principal Muezzins who had been my ciceroni through the day, were very thankful for the trifles I gave them, and begged me in return " to eat some of the bread of the sanctuary," under which character they produced a few little round cakes of barley-meal stuck over with some thing like sugar. On leaving the building I was surprised to

on.

hear a deep-toned bell pealing from its interior, but on asking what it was, was told that it was only used to strike the hours Had I not asked the question, I might have been tempted to suppose (with the ingenious Master Peter in Don Quixote's celebrated puppet show) that "the Moors really used bells in their churches as well as Christians." As it was, the sound had a pleasing effect, and increased the collegiate character of the building.

January 19.-We rode this morning ten miles through a tolerably cultivated country, but strangely overspread with ruins, to a large dilapidated village named Khanwah. In our way we had a heavy shower of rain, and rain continued to fall at intervals through the greater part of the day. On my arrival at Khanwah, I found that this place, though laid down in Arrowsmith's map as within the British boundary, was in truth a part of the territory of Bhurtpoor, and that for the two following marches I should also be under the Raja's authority. Ignorant of this circumstance myself, I had omitted to procure a purwanu, which might have been obtained in a few hours from his vakeel resident in Agra, and without which none of his officers were likely to give me any assistance in my progress through his country; the people were civil, but pleaded that they had received no notice or instructions concerning my arrival, and that, without orders, they could not. venture to levy the necessary supplies on the peasants, who, on the other hand, were not willing to sell the grass and fuel which they had collected for their own use, unless they were called on to do so in a lawful manner. At last, after a good part of the morning had passed away, the Zemindar of the place, a venerable old man like a middling farmer, took the business on himself and supplied us from his own stores, on the assurance not only of payment, but of a letter of recommendation to the civility and kindness of any English who might pass that way. The business was thus settled for the day, but in order to prevent its recurrence the next morning, sent a letter to the Raja, in which I explained who I was, and requested him to give the needful purwanu to the bearer. It was despatched by the most intelligent of the judge's people to the court of Bhurtpoor.

Khanwah is at the foot of a remarkable ridge of gray gra nite, which protrudes itself, like the spine of a huge skeleton half buried, from the red soil and red rock of the neighbourhood. On its top is a small mosque, and, though in a Hindoo country, the great majority of the inhabitants of this village are Mussulmans. As I passed through the principal street in my evening's walk, I saw a very young man naked and covered with chalk and ashes, his hair wreathed with withered

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MANNER OF MAKING WELLS.

leaves and flowers, working with his hands and a small trowel in a hole about big enough to hide him, if he stooped down. I asked him if he were sinking a well, but a bystander told me that he was a Mussulman faqueer from the celebrated shrine near Agmere, that this was his dwelling, and that he used to make a fire at the bottom and cower over it. They called this a Suttee, but explained themselves to mean that he would not actually kill, but only roast himself by the way of penance. I attempted, as far as I could, to reason with him, but obtained no answer except a sort of faint smile. His countenance was pretty strongly marked by insanity. I gave him a few pice, which he received in silence and laid down on a stone, then touched his forehead respectfully and resumed his work, scraping with his hands like a mole.

There

The houses in this neighbourhood are all of red sand-stone, and several of them are supported by many small pillars internally, and roofed with large stone slabs laid from one pillar to the other. Wood is very scarce and dear. were no boughs to be had for the elephants and camels, to which, therefore, it was necessary to give an extra supply of gram, and the only fuel which could be found for our camp was dried cow-dung. There are, however, a few scattered trees here and there, one belonging to a species of fir which I had never before seen; and on the road from Futtehpoor we passed a fine mangoe tree, the first I had seen since leaving Delhi, except in the gardens of Secundra and the Tage.

The wells of this country, some of which are very deep, are made in a singular manner. They build a tower of masonry of the diameter required, and 20 or 30 feet high from the surface of the ground. This they allow to stand a year or more till its masonry is rendered firm and compact by time, then gradually undermine and promote its sinking into the sandy soil, which it does without difficulty and all together. When level with the surface they raise its wall higher, and so go on, throwing out the sand and raising the wall till they have reached the water. If they adopted our method, the soil is so light that it would fall in on them before they could possibly raise the wall from the bottom, nor without the wall could they sink to any considerable depth. I forgot to mention that the day before we left Agra, the poor camel-driver whom I had left in a jungle-fever at Moradabad, arrived safely and in restored health to join me. He had been very ill, and spoke with extreme gratitude of the kindness shown him by the staff-surgeon, Mr. Bell, who had, he said, taken great care of him, and had now procured him from the commissariate an advance of part of his pay, and a camel to ride on for his journey from Moradabad hither. It was pleasing to see