54 _. A COLLECTING TRIP 
each side. The palace of the old Mogul emperors 
is simply beyond description. It is situated in a 
British military reservation, so we could take 
no pictures, but we bought some of the licensed ones. 
Here stood the peacock throne, carved of marble in- 
laid with jewels and surmounted by two life size 
peacocks, their natural colors shown in rubies, sapph- 
ires and emeralds. Two life size parrots were in the 
corners opposite the peacocks, each parrot said to 
have been cut out of a single emerald. These were 
carried to Persia by Nadir Shah and are now, also 
said to be, in the royal treasury in Teheran. The 
whole of the palace is inlaid, lotus and iris flowers, — 
in lapiz lazuli, malachite, carnelian, jasper, coral, ete. 
All were more or less badly damaged by the fighting 
in 1857. The largest Mohammedan mosque in India 
is superb, the Jumma Masjid. It stands across a 
great dusty open plain from the Fort. Here the 
Mogul emperors came every Friday to pray. We 
were in Delhi on a Friday and we saw the faithful 
swaying towards Mecca in prayer. In the sanctuary 
two thousand priests can find room to worship and 
the great court yard is large enough to hold twenty- 
two thousand people at once. It was certainly a 
wonderful sight. We saw here a hair from Moham- 
med’s beard, one of his sandals, a copy of the Koran 
written by his son-in-law and his grandson and 1 
fossil footprint, said to be his, imprinted by a mir- 
acle. The high priest would show these to any dog 
of an infidel for about thirty-two eents. The second 
day in Delhi we drove eleven miles to Kutab Minar, 
passing through a continuous series of splendid ruins 
of various old Delhis of the past, many palaces of 
