94 GARDENS OF THE PLAINS— DELHI 



the taking of Gwalior from the Rajputs. But 

 that splendid offering to God was rejected. 

 Babar would have none of it : " The dearest 

 thing I have is my life, and that is the dearest 

 thing on earth to my son." Persisting in his 

 resolution, he walked, according to the solemn 

 sacrificial usage, three times round his son's bed, 

 praying earnestly. Suddenly he was heard to 

 exclaim : " I have borne it away ! I have borne 

 it away ! " From this moment, Mussulman 

 historians assert, Humayun began to recover, 

 while Babar slowly sank : his health impaired 

 with his forty-eight years of strenuous activities 

 and ceaseless hardships, and now fatally 

 undermined by anxiety and nervous prostra- 

 tion. So passed away the Emperor Babar, on 

 the 26th of December 1530, after thirty -six 

 years of kingship. 



Pilgrims still visit his grave at Kabul, the 

 grave of the first of the great Mughals. Well they 

 may, for there lies the most romantic, gallant, 

 genial Prince of Oriental history. " Heaven is 

 the eternal abode of the Emperor Babar," they 

 wrote on his tomb ; but his epitaph can best 

 be written in his own words — those in which 

 he describes his father in his Memoirs : — " His 



