414 
SERINGAPATAM. 
the deputy of Purneah in the Patana district, also met me with a 
very large escort, and accompanied me into the town. I was 
received by the different guards with presented arms ; and on 
reaching the main guard, which is in the palace, found Colonel 
De Meuron, and all the officers of his regiment, waiting to receive 
me. After paying their compliments they attended me to the apart- 
ments of the late haughty tyrant of Mysore. 
The Lolmahal, or private residence of Tippoo, consists but of one 
square, three sides of which are divided into two stories, with a ve- 
randah of unpainted wood in front : behind were many small rooms, 
used by him as warehouses, but now painted and fitted up for the 
Resident ; the fourth side consisted of a single room the height of 
the whole building. It was the durbar of the tyrant, in which he 
sat and wrote, or received his ministers. It is a very handsome 
room, about seventy feet wide in front, and forty deep. The walls 
are painted red, with a gilt trellis-work running over it, formed by 
the tigers' scratch, the favourite ornament of Tippoo. Sentences 
from the Koran in letters of gold on a red ground, each about a 
foot high, run round the room as a cornice. Three rows of pillars 
sustain the roof, which is painted like the sides of the room. Each 
pillar is of a single piece of wood painted red, and highly varnished. 
The shape is fantastic, bulging much towards the bottom, but again 
narrowing till they join a base of black marble. Behind the durbar 
is a small room where the tyrant slept, when fear or anger would 
permit him. There are only two windows, both grated with iron, 
and the door is strongly secured. The only entrances into the Lol- 
mahal are through the harem that adjoined, and through a narrow 
winding passage, where his fears had chained some tigers as an 
