38 GARDENS OF THE PLAINS AGRA 



at Agra, where one of his first concerns was 

 the carrying out of the old Turki traditions in 

 the building of an Imperial char-bagh (garden- 

 palace, literally " four gardens "). At Agra, how- 

 ever, the flat character of the country afforded 

 little scope for planning a fine garden, such as 

 the great terraced enclosures of Samarkand or 

 the Kabul Hills. 



The Hindus themselves, at that time, appear 

 to have lost much of their earlier taste for garden- 

 ing and the skill which characterised the Indian 

 Buddhist monks, and to have done little more 

 than plant groves of trees round the tanks con- 

 structed to catch the summer rains, making no 

 effort to irrigate such gardens as existed. This 

 lack of irrigation struck the new Emperor of 

 India very forcibly, accustomed as he was to 

 the elaborate care and skill with which the fields 

 and gardens were watered in Persia and his own 

 country of Ferghana. " It always appears to 

 me," he writes, " that one of the chief defects 

 of Hindustan is the want of artificial water- 

 courses. I had intended, wherever I might 

 fix my residence, to construct water-wheels, to 

 produce an artificial stream, and to lay out an 

 elegant and regularly planned pleasure-ground. 



