Snakes* Delhi 31 1 



fipdl and nim-trees, shading the street and the gay, 

 picturesque bazaars on either side. Delhi silver-work 

 is of the most beautiful design ; the Kashmir shawls 

 and the fhulkaris (wall-hangings), the woven stuffs 

 and the embroideries with gold thread running through 

 them, charm the rich merchants, while the quaint old 

 native armour and the interesting native jewelry 

 would gladden a collector's heart. 



Above and beyond its other memorials, Delhi has 

 its Jama Masjid, the great mosque. It stands out 

 boldly from a small piece of rocky rising ground, 

 and is one of the most impressive buildings of its 

 kind in the whole of India. It was begun by the 

 Mogul Emperor Shah Jehan (who also built the Taj) 

 in 1632, and it was finished six years later. We 

 climbed the forty steps to its gateway immense steps, 

 each a hundred and fifty feet long to find our- 

 selves in a vast courtyard four hundred and fifty feet 

 square, entirely paved with granite inlaid with marble. 



From the courtyard we looked down upon the 

 whole of the busy city which stretched below and 

 around us ; outside the walls the backbone of the 

 Ridge showed, lying solemn and quiet in the evening 

 light, and like the city, almost too matter-of-fact, 

 too peaceful, to ring in the imagination with the 

 sounds and sights of the Mutiny, to be peopled by the 

 ghostly troops of fancy. We walked over the granite 

 courtyard, surrounded by the usual Mogul cloister or 

 colonnade ; the blocks of sandstone in the roof of 

 the cloister were enormous fifteen feet long. 



