NOTES ON TEAVEL 253 



they found they were to be his guests during their 

 stay there. His real home was in the club, but when he 

 had visitors he moved into the Ram Bagh, one of the 

 old Moghul palaces, now used as an official bungalow 

 for entertaining. It stands on the high bank over- 

 looking the Jumna and has been little changed in the 

 passing of the centuries. It is built wholly of white 

 stone inside and out, and the ceilings of the rooms are 

 dome-shaped, but the interiors of the domes are broken 

 up into outstanding geometrical figures, so that it was, 

 as Ramsay used to describe it ; like living inside a large 

 pudding mould. At Agra there was much to see bearing 

 on Ramsay's mission, but there was also much to talk 

 over, which could be done while visiting the points of 

 interest in and near the town, such as the Fort, with 

 the lovely Jasmine Tower, and the world-famed Taj 

 Mahal. Of all he saw in India nothing struck Ramsay 

 so much as the deserted town of Fatipur Sicri, which was 

 built, lived in and abandoned all in the space of about 

 forty years, in the reign of Akbar. It is built of red 

 sandstone, on a hilltop about twenty miles from Agra, 

 -and untouched by time it stands just as it did in the 

 days of the Great Mogul. After Agra came a visit to 

 Roorkee to see the engineering college there. The head 

 of it was Colonel Clibborn, R.E., and he and Mrs. Glib- 

 born did everything to make the visit happy, but a 

 great shadow lay over the world at that time, for it was 

 the night before they left that the news came that 

 Queen Victoria, " The Great White Queen," was no more. 



