THE TOUR 337 



head bricks were required. The engineer in charge 

 was preparing to have them manufactured, when the 

 owner of a village in the neighbourhood happened to 

 call on him. The engineer consulted him as to the best 

 place for erecting the kilns. The village proprietor 

 informed the engineer in reply that the doing so was 

 quite unnecessary, for a few miles off in the forest there 

 were bricks in any amount lying ready to his hand ; and 

 then he related to him the story of the palace. 



The engineer, mounted on an elephant and accom- 

 panied by a gang of labourers, set out to discover it. 

 They passed through miles of forest, often having to 

 cut a track with their axes ; and then they came, not, 

 as might have been expected, on a collection of mere 

 crumbling ruins, but on a real palace, with halls, court- 

 yards, enclosing walls, gateways, and bastions, and all 

 almost as perfect as when, near two centuries before, 

 the Emperor had abandoned it. The scene must have 

 recalled the tale of the sleeping beauty ; and, to com- 

 plete the resemblance, there in the great hall lay a 

 beauty ready to receive them, not, indeed, an en- 

 chanted princess, but a magnificent tigress. She lay 

 there surrounded by her cubs, as in ancient days may 

 have reposed the ladies of the zenana. 



It is a pity that the palace as it then was was not 

 left to continue. The greater portion, I regret to say, 

 was demolished, and the materials carried away and 

 used in the construction of the dam, the bridges, and 

 the other buildings of the canal. I have been told by 

 those who had seen them that the parts of the palace 

 thus destroyed possessed but little of beauty or archi- 

 z 



