and shady. I asked the custodian if he could show us the fruit of the mango. He said that these trees had borne none for two years; and when I inquired the reason, I received the truly Eastern answer-"God knows!"

Next morning we were very busy, and took full advantage of our camel-carriage. The day before Christmas an exhibition of all the manufactures and artistic productions of the Punjaub, for which a special building has been erected, was to be opened, and Mr. Kipling, Director of the School of Art, who had charge of it, kindly allowed us to have a private view. There were a great many beautiful things, and some of them marvellously cheap. We next visited the Museum, chiefly remarkable for a valuable collection of Græco-Bactrian Buddhist sculptures, from the Peshawur district. After that we went to the College, in which two institutes are combined under one roof, and Dr. Leitner, the enthusiastic Principal, showed us over the building. There are ninety-seven students in the English department, each of whom receives two rupees a month from the Government, and 192

THE LAHORE College.

41

in the Oriental classes, which are supported entirely by voluntary subscriptions. Dr. Leitner, who told us that he himself was supposed to speak twenty-five languages, has raised among the rich natives three lacs of rupees for this institution; and we had the great satisfaction of seeing and hearing students from all parts of Central Asia, in clean, airy class-rooms, being taught mathematics, chemistry, medicine, law-in fact, all the branches of an ordinary University education. They were of all ages, and most of them holy men-priests of their respective faiths. Think for a moment of the immense influence which such an institution as this must have in all the vast regions north as well as south of the Himalayas !

We devoted the afternoon to the inspection of the native town of Lahore-a strange admixture of fantastically carved and painted houses with mud hovels. In the rough, narrow, unpaved and almost impassable streets, are open bazaars, where both wares and vendors are covered with flies. In spite of a great deal of filth and squalor, singularly enough, there is an almost

D

entire absence of bad smells. The Wazir and Golden Mosques are curious edifices, in the centre of the city.

These Punjaubees are a far finer and more stalwart race than the Hindoos, and some of

the regiments in our service look very well indeed.

CHAPTER IV.

AGRA AND THE TAJ MAHAL.

WE left by the evening train on 15th December, and soon after I awoke next morning I descried a range of dark mountains on the left. Presently, as the sun got a little above the horizon, it shone upon what I first thought was a cloud; for a moment it did not occur to me that the sky was cloudless. I took up Stanford's admirable travelling map of India, and saw at once that the object was the summit of Kedarnath, or an adjoining peak, 22,900 feet high, and about 130 miles off.

My first sight of the Himalayas was not disappointing; and for two or three hours afterwards, every time I looked out of the window, there was that great white solemn mountain piercing the sky. There were a number of birds flying all about us that morning-kingfishers, kites, cranes, storks, ducks, the beautiful blue Indian jay, and many others unknown to me.

We spent twenty-four hours in the Empress Hotel, Meerut-a building in which twenty-one people, being all its occupants, were murdered in 1857. Here the Mutiny commenced, and I wanted to see it on that account; and also because it is one of the most important cantonments and military stations in India. Some of the bungalows are very large, especially those occupied by the King's Dragoon Guards; and the Mall is the broadest and best-made avenue in our Eastern possessions, or perhaps anywhere else.

Returning to Ghazabad, we proceeded on the East Indian Railway over a poorly-cultivated plain, where many herds of cattle, buffaloes, sheep, and goats, and occasionally deer, derived a very precarious subsistence from the burnt-up pasture; mango-orchards and cotton-fields occasionally relieved the landscape. It was nearly 9 o'clock when, tired, dusty, and thirsty, we found ourselves drinking champagne in Laurie and Staten's hotel - a large bungalow in the European quarter, which covers a great space of ground outside Agra Fort.