Nadir Shaw invaded India with his Persian Army. The apart- 

 ments occupied by the Emperor and his wives are in beautifully 

 carved and inlaid marbles. 



The British Army now uses this place for barracks. It is 

 kept in excellent repair and visitors are permitted to wander 

 through its precincts at their leisure. 



While the entire limits of Delhi are interesting to the ethnolo- 

 gist, with the exception of the splendid Mosques, there is nothing 

 of beauty to attract the attention of the speculator or excite the 

 admiration of the aesthetic. The city has a poverty-stricken 

 aspect ; most of its building^s appear to be about to fall from age, 

 and the unpaved streets are foul with the congestion of camels, 

 horses, cows, goats, donkeys and children wallowing in the 

 squalor of poverty. 



Of the numerous and magnificent Temples for worship. I 

 have space to mention only one, the Juma Masjid, the largest and 

 most noted Mosque ever constructed by man. It was the work 

 of Shah Jehan when building his new Delhi. It faces a quad- 

 rangle 450 feet square, paved with granite, inlaid with marble, 

 around which are most picturesque cloisters. The Mosque ex- 

 tends 261 feet and is approached by a marvellous ascent of granite 

 steps, the landing and interior being paved with white marble in 

 intricate designs. It has three large Domes of white marble and 

 a lofty minaret rises from each of the front corners. The interior 

 walls and roof are lined with white marble, and within this 

 mosque and its great court during religious festivals, more than 

 ten thousand worshippers assemble at one time. 



Ancient Delhi was located upon an area of over 45 square 

 miles. South of the modern city, and it exhibits on every side of 

 its dusty sterility, the extensive ruins of Temples, Palaces, 

 Mosques, great residences surrounded by crumbling walls and 

 dismantled Tombs, the evidences of a once populous and wealthy 

 city, which must have been a center of education and culture of 

 the highest rank before the power of Europe extended to this 

 land. "The whole region seems to ache with age and penury." 

 What has been the cause of this desolation and the obliteration of 

 such a city, whose location is now inhabited by a degenerate 

 people swarming in huts of mud or excavated in the stone mason- 

 ry of the ruined walls surrounding the visitor for miles? An in- 

 telligent investigator of the cause of this most lamentable effect 

 may arrive at a satisfactory answer. 



In the center of this desolation stand the buildings of the 

 great Astronomical Observatory. There are six separate struc- 

 tures of the most ponderous masonry, one of which bears a. tablet 

 reciting that they were all restored to perfection in the year 1910. 

 Two of them are circular, with niches in the walls upon which 

 can be indicated the ascension and declension of the stars. These 

 stand immediately South of the great Sun-dial. 



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