338 COFFEE. 



most celebrated. It is a beautiful structure of white marble, 

 constructed in an octagonal form, and occupying a square of one 

 hundred and eighty feet upon a raised platform, also of white 

 marble, four hundred feet square. At each corner of this plat- 

 form is a graceful minaret, said to be two hundred feet high, 

 while on the right and left of the platform, at a distance of per- 

 haps three hundred feet, is constructed a mosque, apparently as 

 outworks for the Taj, and constituting, in an architectural sense, 

 a sort of frame for the central structure. This is certainly very 

 beautiful, although it hardly justifies the enraptured descriptions 

 which many travellers have written. The Italian workers in 

 marble of the same era have produced work as fine, and the inlaid 

 work is evidently after the Florentine school, probably executed 

 tinder the tuition of Florentine masters. The central dome rises 

 two hundred and sixty feet, and directly beneath this are situated 

 the sarcophagi of Banoo Begum and her husband. Shah Jehan. 

 These are also white marble, and upon them are most elaborately 

 carved texts from the Koran. They are also inlaid with malachite, 

 topaz, jasper, garnet, cornelian, and other precious stones, in the 

 Florentine style. The chamber directly below these contains the 

 real sarcophagi, which hold the remains, and which are much 

 plainer in execution than those above. The whole structure is 

 more or less inlaid with colored marbles, and on the main floor 

 there are a number of beautifully carved white-marble screens. 

 ■It is said that the building of the entire structure occupied twenty 

 thousand men for eighteen years. More extensive in its planj 

 and more massive than this, but not so beautiful, is the tomb of 

 the Emperor Akbar, or Ukbur, the greatest of the Mogul dynasty. 

 The enclosure in which it is built at Sikundra, several miles from 

 the Taj, is surrounded with enormous walls four miles in extent^ 

 enclosing a perfect square, in the centre of which is constructed 

 what is called a tomb. It is composed of four storiesj or plat- 

 forms, of red sandstone, supported by pillars of the same mate- 

 rial, and on the top of these is built a fifth of white marble, 

 which was originally covered by a dome, but is now open to the 

 air. In the centre of this space is a marble sarcophagus contain- 

 ing the ashes of Akbar. The walls surrounding this story are 

 filled with elaborately carved- marble screens,, but none of this 



