A GARDEN BURJ 215 



go to celebrate some special festival, or to spend 

 two or three days of relaxation. Being far away 

 from forts and walled cities, the garden had to 

 be built for defence as well as for pleasure, and 

 the defences of this garden are on a very consider- 

 able scale. An outer enclosure commanding 

 the high-road was dismantled in 1793, but the 

 two upper gardens are still surrounded on three 

 sides by great walls, loopholed and crenellated, 

 with bastions at intervals, and having octagonal 

 towers at the corners, while on the fourth side 

 there is a retaining wall with a sheer drop of 

 thirty or forty feet to the terrace below. 



Early one morning, climbing up through 

 what, on the garden side, appeared to be only an 

 ornamental summer-house, I found that the 

 stairway led out on the top of a strong octagonal 

 burj. This tower on its southern side faced the 

 long road to Umballa, commanding the direct 

 route up from the plains. The masonry at its 

 foot sloped sharply down into a moat, at the far 

 side of which the road, abruptly turning, dis- 

 appeared behind trees. The blue foot-hills 

 quivered in the rapidly increasing morning heat. 

 Far off, from somewhere down in the ravine, 

 through which the road at length found its way 



