110 GARDENS OF THE PLAINS DELHI 



its only ornament, a lily carved of precious jade, 

 green as the waving grass. 



Roshanara, the other sister, lies buried in her 

 own garden-house, an elaborate white pavilion 

 with creeper-clad walls, standing on a low wide 

 platform in the centre of the upper terrace in 

 the gardens still called by her name. A raised 

 canal, something after the style of the broad 

 watercourses at Safdar Jang's mausoleum, but 

 bordered by beds of flowers and still ornamented 

 with a row of little fountains, leads from this 

 building to the entrance gate. 



It must have been a gay sight when the 

 Begam Roshanara's elephant procession arrived 

 from Delhi fort : the huge animals, with their 

 gold-embroidered coverings, their solemn, ponder- 

 ous tread, their jangling silver bells, conveying the 

 "goddesses" of the Imperial harem enshrined 

 from the vulgar gaze; and then the Princess 

 herself escaping from the noise and stifling heat 

 of the royal palace came in her splendid rose- 

 curtained litter, swung between two smaller 

 elephants, to while away a few hours in her cool, 

 flower-scented, fountain-sprinkled gardens. 



To follow in her train to-day, one must leave 

 the dusty highway of the suburbs, with its swarm- 



