whose field is upon the bank of a river. The water is drawn in many
ways. One peasant employs the simple method of watering by hand,
filling his pots and emptying them upon the roots of the thirsty plants;
but if the crop be rice, which demands a flood of water, a pair of oxen
are set to the work. They are harnessed to a rope which runs over a
pulley and has a huge water-skin fastened to its farther end. As the
oxen go away from the well they pull up the skin full of water till it
reaches a prepared channel. Here a man is waiting, who empties the skin
into the channel, and the water runs away to the field. Now the oxen
come back, and the skin sinks to the water; then they turn again, and
the skin rises. One man drives the team, the other empties the water,
and so the work goes on from dawn to dark.
[Illustration: WATERING CATTLE. _Page 32_.]
These are the people who produce the wealth of India, these quiet,
patient toilers growing their endless crops of wheat, of rice, of
barley, of poppies for opium, of cotton, and of maize. They cut their
ditches for irrigation, and flood a once-barren stretch of country with
water. Thenceforth they take from it always two, and often three, crops
in a year.
*CHAPTER VIII*
*THE LAND OF THE MOGUL KINGS*
Far in the north-west of the great plain of Hindostan, the ancient and
famous city of Delhi stands on the broad Jumna, the chief tributary of
the Ganges, and around her lies the land of the Mogul Kings. Delhi has
a great name in the history of India. She saw the empire of the
powerful Mogul Kings; she saw some of the most desperate fighting of the
Great Indian Mutiny of 1857, when the last Mogul was driven from his
throne. But long before the Mutiny the power of the Moguls had
vanished. Their palmy days were in the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries, and the strongest of them all, Akbar, the Great Mogul, began
to reign in 1556. He came to the throne two years before Elizabeth
became Queen of England; he died two years after her, in 1605.
Akbar the Great was only fourteen years old when he became King, but
"from that moment his grip was on all India." He proved a wonderful
ruler and leader of men. India was a welter of conflicting races,
tongues, and creeds. Under his firm and wise government strife died
away, peace and order took its place, and those who had been the
fiercest enemies lived side by side in friendship. He was at once
law-maker, soldier, ruler, and philosopher. He was tall, and as strong
in body as in mind, for he was the best polo player in India, and it is
recorded of him that he once rode 800 miles on camel-back, and then,
without staying for rest, at once gave battle to his enemy.
To find the wonderful buildings which the Great Mogul left behind him,
we must leave Delhi and go down the Jumna to Agra and its neighbourhood.
Agra is still called by the natives Akbarabad, the city of Akbar, and
here stands the mighty fort which the monarch built, a city in itself.
In a land of magnificent buildings there is nothing grander than the
fort at Agra. Its battlements of red sandstone tower 70 feet from the
ground, the walls run a mile and a half in circuit, and the immense mass
of masonry dwarfs the modern town. Within the fort is a maze of courts,
pavilions, corridors, and chambers, wrought in dazzling white marble,
and decorated with the most beautiful carving and exquisite tracery in
stone. The chief features of the vast building are Akbar's palace, with
its golden pinnacles glittering in the sunshine, and the Moti Masjid, a
small mosque of most beautiful proportions, so perfect both in design
and in the beauty of its ornaments that it is called the Pearl Mosque,
being the pearl of all mosques.
From Agra a drive of twenty-two miles takes us to Fattehpore-Sikri, a
marvellous town, erected by Akbar himself, "where every building is a
palace, every palace a dream carved in red sandstone." The name of the
place means "The City of Victory," and was given to it because Akbar's
grandfather defeated the Rajputs at this place in 1527. Here Akbar
built a splendid mosque, which stands on the west side of a great
courtyard. From the south the courtyard is entered by the Sublime Gate,
or Gate of Victory, "the noblest portal in India." Akbar's palace may
still be seen, and the chief place of interest is the Throne Room,
where, in the centre of a large chamber, rises a huge column of red
sandstone, with a spreading capital surrounded by a balustrade. Akbar's
seat was placed on the top of this mighty pillar, and from it ran four
raised pathways, leading to the places where his ministers sat, in four
galleries, one at each corner of the room.
The tomb of Akbar is at Sikandra, about six miles from Agra. It stands
in the midst of a garden, which is entered by four lofty gateways of red
sandstone. From each gateway a broad causeway of stone runs to the
centre of the enclosure, where rises the great building which contains
the tomb of the Great Mogul. The building rises in terraces something
in the form of a pyramid, the lower stories of red sandstone, the top
story of white marble, the latter decorated with pierced panels of
marble wrought in the most beautiful patterns. The floor of the building
is open to the day, and in the centre stands the grandly simple tomb, a
huge block of white marble, on which is inscribed a single word,
'Akbar.' Near at hand is a small pillar in which the famous diamond the
Koh-i-noor was once set.
Splendid as were the buildings of Akbar, yet his grandson, Shah Jehan,
was destined to surpass him; for Shah Jehan built the Taj Mahal, the
most glorious tomb that grief ever raised in memory of love, and one of
the wonders of the world. In 1629 Shah Jehan lost his wife, and he
determined to raise to her memory a monument which should keep her name
immortal. He employed 20,000 men for eighteen years, and the splendid
building was completed in 1648, the date being inscribed upon the great
gate. The most famous artists and workmen of India were gathered to
this task, and the result is a palace of the most wonderful beauty and
magnificence.
The Taj Mahal stands in a great garden about a mile from Agra, and is
surrounded by trees and flowers and fountains: "the song of birds meets
the ear, and the odour of roses and lemon-flowers sweetens the air." It
is built of the purest white marble, and shines with such dazzling
brilliance that to look full upon it in strong sunshine is scarcely
possible. Seen by moonlight, it is a radiant vision of beauty, and the
charm of its lovely form is felt to the full. The great domes seem to
swim above in the silver light, the stately minarets shoot up towards
the dark blue of the sky, and the scene is one of unearthly beauty.
Glorious as is this mighty building in the mass, it is just as full of
beauty when examined closely and in detail. Every part is covered with
the most graceful and exquisite designs, inlaid in marbles of different
colours. Every wall, every arch, every portal, is ornamented and
finished as if the craftsmen had been engaged upon a small precious
casket instead of a corner of an immense palace tomb. One striking
feature is seen in the arches of the doorways and windows. Around them
run inlaid letters most beautifully shaped in black marble. These
letters form verses and chapters of the Koran, the sacred book of the
Moslems, and it is said that the whole of the Koran is thus inlaid in
the Taj.
The heart of the building is the vault where Shah Jehan and his wife
sleep together, for he was laid beside her. The tombs are formed of the
purest white marble, inlaid most beautifully with designs formed of
agate, cornelian, lapis-lazuli, jasper, and other precious stones, and
they are surrounded by a pierced marble screen whose open tracery-work
is formed of flowers carved and wrought into a thousand designs.
*CHAPTER IX*
*THE LAND OF THE MOGUL KINGS (*_*continued*_*)*
It was Shah Jehan who returned to Delhi as the seat of government of the
Mogul Kings, and largely rebuilt the city. But the memories of Delhi
reach far, far back before the time of the Mogul Kings; they stretch
away into the dim dawn of Indian history, where the threads of truth and
fable are so intermingled that the historian cannot disentangle them.
The modern Delhi stands in the midst of a plain covered with ruins--the
ruins of many cities built by many Kings before the present Delhi came
into being. It is a striking sight to drive from the city to the great
Tower of Kutb Minar, eleven miles away to the south. The road runs
through the traces of the Delhis that have been: heaps of scattered
brick, a mound that was once a gateway, a broken wall that was once the
corner of a fort, a tumbling tower, and a ruined dome. Through these
tokens of shattered palaces and tombs of dead and forgotten Kings you
pass on till the vast shaft of the Kutb rises from the plain like a
lighthouse from the sea.
It is an immense tower of five stories, rising 240 feet into the air.
At the base it measures about 50 feet through, but the sides taper till
it is only 9 feet wide at the top. The three lower stories are of red
sandstone; the two upper are faced with white marble, and the whole
forms a very striking and wonderful monument.
This colossal tower preserves the name of Kutb, one of the "slave"
Sultans of Delhi. Seven hundred years ago Kutb, who had been a slave,
rose by his military talents, first to the position of a General, and
then made himself Emperor of Delhi. He was the first of ten Moslem
rulers who reigned from 1206 to 1290, and it is believed that the Kutb
Minar was raised as a tower of victory. It is possible to ascend the
lofty shaft by a flight of 378 steps, which winds up the interior, but
"the view from the top is nothing. The country is an infinite green and
brown chess-board of young corn and fallow, dead flat on every side,
ugly with the complacent plainness of all rich country. Beyond the
sheeny ribbon of the Jumna, north, south, east, and west, you can see
only land, and land, and land--a million acres with nothing on them to
see except the wealth of India and the secret of the greatness of
India."
But near at hand is a far more ancient monument than that of the slave
King. This is the famous Iron Pillar, the "arm or weapon of victory."
It is a pillar of pure malleable iron, and its erection is ascribed to
the fourth century before Christ, when it was raised to commemorate a
great Hindu victory. At present it projects some 23 feet from the
earth, and it is about a foot in diameter at the capital, but a great
part of it is buried.
In Delhi itself stand the great fort and the great mosque, the Jama
Masjid, both built by Shah Jehan. The fort was at once the stronghold
and the palace of the Mogul Emperors who followed Shah Jehan. It is
surrounded by a towering wall built of gigantic slabs of sandstone,
crested with battlements and moated below. The usual entrance to the
fort is through the noble Lahore Gate, and the palace stands before you.
You enter the hall of audience, a great hall of red sandstone open on
three sides. There is an alcove in the centre of the wall at the back,
and from the alcove projects a great slab of marble. From the four
corners of this marble platform spring four richly-inlaid marble pillars
supporting an arched canopy. The marble is beautiful, but the work upon
it is ten times more beautiful. The wall of the alcove is gorgeous with
tiny pictures of flowers and fruits and birds, wrought most cunningly in
paint and precious stones. In this alcove was sometimes set the Peacock
Throne, whose glories are still celebrated in story and song, the
marvellous throne which Shah Jehan had built for himself, the throne
which blazed with gems set by the most skilful jewellers of Delhi, men
famous throughout India for their craftsmanship.
Next comes the hall of private audience, where the King sat among his
Court. This, too, is open, a noble pavilion on columns, where the
breezes could blow if any such were moving in the burning heats of
summer. "The whole is of white marble, asheen in the sun; but that is
the least part of the wonder. Walls and ceilings, pillars, and
many-pointed arches, are all inlaid with richest, yet most delicate,
colour. Gold cornices and scrolls and lattices frame traceries of mauve
and pale green and soft azure. What must it have been, you ask
yourself, when the Peacock Throne blazed with emerald and sapphire,
diamond and ruby, from the now empty pedestal, and the plates of
burnished silver reflected its glory from the roof?"
Peacock Throne and plates of silver have long been gone. Nadir Shah
carried them off in 1739, when he entered the city with his victorious
troops, put the inhabitants to the sword, and sacked the place. Many an
attack has been made on the fort, but none, in English eyes, has so deep
an interest as the assault of 1857, and all English travellers visit the
Cashmere Gate.
[Illustration: THE TAJ MAHAL. _Page 35_.]
The Siege of Delhi by our troops is one of the great incidents of the
Indian Mutiny, and the historic ridge to the north-west is the site of
the British camp. After a patient siege the fort was attacked, the
Cashmere Gate was blown open by a storming-party, and the British poured
in, victorious at last. Upon the gate is an inscription telling of the
deeds of the noble forlorn hope who led the way and opened a path for
their comrades to rush in. Other monuments speak of the heroic
telegraph operators who "saved India" by sending far and wide news of
the Mutiny, and stuck to their posts though it cost their lives; and of
the gallant party under Lieutenant Willoughby who blew up the
powder-magazine in which they were posted rather than let its precious
contents fall into the hands of the rebels.
Beyond the fort stands the Jama Masjid, the vast mosque, said to be the
largest in the world. It is a great building of red sandstone and
marble, "upstanding from a platform reached on three sides by flights of
steps so tall, so majestically wide, that they are like a stone
mountain." At the head of each flight is a splendid gateway, and that
which faces eastward is opened for none save the Viceroy, who rules
India, and the Lieutenant-Governor of the Punjab. At the mosque are
preserved some Moslem relics, which the guardian priest will show for a
fee--a slipper of Mohammed, a hair of the Prophet, his footprints in
stone, and a piece of the green canopy which was once over his tomb.
Now we will go into the city proper. Here is indeed a change! Mill
chimneys pour into the blue sky their long trails of black smoke.
Marble halls and mighty Kings seem very far off as you traverse a
cotton-spinning quarter where Delhi measures itself against Manchester.
The narrow streets are dirty and squalid, and filled with a crowd whose
dingy robes and shabby turbans bespeak the modern artisan of industrial
India. Many strange things has this ancient city seen, but nothing
stranger than this last turn of her fortunes, when she bends to her
clacking loom, and boasts that with her own cotton she can spin as fine
as any mill in Lancashire.
*CHAPTER X*
*IN THE MUTINY COUNTRY*
Now we will leave Delhi and the Jumna, and strike away to the south-east
towards the parent river, the Ganges. Our journey lies across a rich
portion of the Great Plain, and this portion has a name of its own. It
is called the Doab, or Douab, the Land of Two Rivers, since it lies
between the Jumna and the Ganges. It is a most fertile stretch of
country, well watered and well tilled, yielding great crops of sugar,
rice, and indigo.
At last we reach Cawnpore, on the Ganges, and now we are in the very
heart of the Mutiny country. Here took place the most dreadful incident
of that great struggle--the massacre of white women and children who
fell into the hands of Nana Sahib, a rebel leader. Their bodies were
flung into a well, and to-day a beautiful monument stands over the
place. The well is enclosed by a fine stone screen, and over the gateway
is carved the words: "These are they which came out of great
tribulation." In the centre of the enclosure, directly over the well
itself, rises the figure of a beautiful white marble angel, and the well
bears this inscription: "Sacred to the perpetual memory of a great
company of Christian people, chiefly women and children, who near this
spot were cruelly murdered by the followers of the rebel Nana Dhundu
Pant, of Bithur, and cast, the dying with the dead, into the well below,
on the 15th day of July, MDCCCLVII." Near by is the pretty little
cemetery where the victims were buried when the British troops seized
Cawnpore two short days after the massacre.
The Cawnpore of to-day is a busy industrial town noted for the
manufactures of cotton and leather, and when the visitor has seen the
places connected with the massacre, the railway will soon carry him to
Lucknow, where the most deeply interesting memento of the Mutiny is to
be found. This is the Residency, the great house where the tiny British
garrison, with hundreds of women and children in their charge, held at
bay vast numbers of rebels from May to November, 1857.
The defence of Lucknow is among the finest stories of British valour and
British endurance. Assault after assault was made by hordes of
well-armed and well-trained mutineers, for the men who wished to slay
the British had been drilled by them. Ceaseless showers of shot and
shell were poured into the place, and by the middle of September
two-thirds of the gallant defenders were dead of wounds or disease.
Still the brave remnant held their own, and kept the foe at bay. Among
the earliest losses was the greatest of all. This was the death of Sir
Henry Lawrence, who governed at Lucknow. By the foresight and prudence
of this great and unselfish man means were provided by which the
garrison was enabled to make good its defence; but he was killed by a
shell, and died on the 4th of July, 1857. His grave is covered by a
marble slab, on which is carved this fine and simple inscription, chosen
by himself: "Here lies Henry Lawrence, who tried to do his duty."
Towards the end of September General Havelock cut his way into Lucknow,
but he had not men enough to carry away the besieged in safety. The
rebels closed round the Residency once more, and the siege went on. In
November Sir Colin Campbell arrived with a stronger army, and, after
most desperate fighting, defeated the mutineers and relieved the heroic
garrison.
As a memento of that stern struggle and noble defence, the Residency has
been preserved to this day just as it stood at the end of that terrible
six months. The walls still bear the marks of shot and shell, the
shattered gates show where assault after assault was delivered, the
brick gateway of the Baillie Guard is pointed out as the famous spot
where rescued and rescuers met.
The modern city of Lucknow is one of the largest in India. Standing on
the Gumti, a tributary of the Ganges, it is a place of great trade, and
its large native quarter is packed with bazaars devoted to commerce.
This part of the city was once famous for the excellence of its steel
weapons and the beauty of its jewellers' work. But the native Princes
and noblemen who purchased arms and ornaments are no longer to be found,
and these arts have decayed.
Lucknow is the chief town in the province of Oudh, and when there were
Kings of Oudh, Lucknow was their capital. The palaces of the Kings
still stand in the court suburb, but there is nothing here to compare
with the magnificence of Delhi or Agra. The European quarter is of
great importance. Broad, smooth roads run through it, shaded by trees
and bordered by turf. On either side of these pleasant roads stand the
large, handsome bungalows of merchants, of officials, and of the
officers in command of the strong force of troops always stationed in
the place. There are beautiful gardens and parks, and the business
streets are lined with handsome shops and offices.
Returning to the Ganges, and descending the course of that great stream,
the next place of importance is Allahabad, standing at the point where
the mighty Jumna joins its flood to the parent river. Allahabad is a
town of Akbar's founding, and the Great Mogul built the fine red stone
fort which is the chief object in the place. The fort looks across the
broad waters of the Jumna, here about three-quarters of a mile wide.
"The appearance of the Jumna, even in the dry season, strikes one as
very imposing, with its enormous span from shore to shore, shut in by
high, shelving, sandy banks, its then placid waters a clear bright blue.
What must be the effect in the freshes, when its surging waters rush
resistlessly past, and its banks are hidden by a suddenly formed expanse
of water more resembling sea than river?"
The spot where the Jumna pours its bright flood into the muddy stream of
the Ganges is a sacred one in the eyes of all Hindoos. Great numbers of
pilgrims resort to it, above all at the time of the melas, or religious
fairs, held every year at the full moon in January and February. They
gather upon the sandy shores and recite their prayers and bathe in the
holy river.
But there is one spot on the Ganges still more sacred to Hindoo
worshippers, and that is Benares, the holy city. It lies below
Allahabad, and in the fort of the latter city the mouth of a small
subterranean passage is pointed out. The priests say, and the natives
believe, that this passage runs to Benares.
*CHAPTER XI*
*THE SACRED CITY OF THE HINDOOS*
There is one city of India to which pilgrims are for ever going or
returning. Its temples are always crowded with worshippers; its broad
stone ghats running down to the sacred Ganges are packed day after day
with adoring and reverent throngs. This is Benares, the most sacred
city in the world in Hindoo eyes.
Its sacred character arises from the fact that here stands the temple of
Buddha, the great Hindoo teacher, who was born six centuries before
Christ, and whose followers are to be counted in myriads in India. From
all parts of that great country they come on pilgrimage to see the place
where their master taught, and to bathe their bodies in the sacred
stream.
It is a wonderful sight to see the row of riverside palaces, temples,
and ghats which here fringe the broad river. It is still more wonderful
to see the vast crowd of worshippers who throng the wide stone stairs as
they stream up and down to the river to make their ablutions and to
repeat their prayers.
The best time to see this striking sight is at sunrise. Then the crowds
are thickest, for all wish to enter the water at that instant when the
sun springs into the cloudless Indian sky and pours a flood of golden
splendour over the wide stream, and lights up the long row of temples
and palaces which face him as he rises.
Viewed from a boat on the river, the scene is one of wonderful animation
and of most brilliant colour. The broad stone steps come down the bank
in stately sweep and vanish into the stream. They run on down to the
river-bed, and the saying goes among the natives that the river is here
so deep that it would cover the back of one elephant standing on the top
of another. Each ghat is crowded with Hindoo worshippers, and their
robes of bright and delicate colours make the flight of stairs look like
a huge bed of flowers. But it is a bed where the flowers are on the
move, and mingle with each other to form new pictures at every moment,
ever-changing combinations of the most delicate pinks, blues, greens,
yellows, of silk and muslin, with snowy turbans and white robes
intermingled with the brighter shades.
At the foot of the great flight many worshippers are already in the
water. The men cast aside their robes, and the sunlight strikes upon
their brown bodies and makes them glitter like figures cast in bronze,
and then flashes brighter still as the bronze glistens with the sacred
water flung by the hands or poured from a brazen ewer; the women slip a
bathing-robe over their shoulders, and then remove their ordinary dress,
and not only bathe themselves but their garments also in the sacred
water. Many of the devotees throw offerings of sandal-wood, betel,
sweetmeats, and flowers into the stream, and some of them have great
garlands of flowers round their necks. These have been worshipping at a
temple which gives such garlands to those who frequent it, and now these
worshippers go into the stream and bend lower and lower until the
garlands are raised by the water from their necks and float away down
the river.