43^ 
SERINGAPATAM. 
whether this would not have been repaid by the additional salubrity 
of Bangalore: Seringapatam is far from healthy; and without the 
town, particularly toward the lower part of the island at the Lol- 
baug, fevers are frequent. 
Seringapatam is much inferior to any capital which I have visited 
in India : the palaces of the Sultaun have neither the imposing mas- 
sive dignity of the Hindoo architecture, nor the light airy elegance 
of the Mussulmaun buildings atLucknow. The public apartments of 
Tippoo were handsome, but those of Hyder were plain in the ex- 
treme. The zenanas of both were extremely bad. They consisted 
each of a quadrangular building, two stories high, with verandahs 
all around, opening into the centre. Some of the rooms were 
large, but unornamented, and the pillars were of wood. I had seen 
several gentlemen who had entered them immediately after they 
were quitted by the females, and they assured me that they were 
then in as dirty a state as I now found them. The lamps had been 
placed in nitches in the walls, and the oil from each had been per- 
mitted to run down to the floor, forming a black stripe the whole 
way ; and the wooden pillars in the largest rooms, and in the ve- 
randahs, had lost their colour by grease and dirt. How different from 
the description which Eastern tales have given us of these secluded 
apartments ! In another respect they seem to have been more faith- 
fully described ; for it was evident the females here confined had a 
most vehement desire to view, at least, the forbidden males. The 
two zenanas of Tippoo and Hyder joined, and had a communication 
with each other. On each side was a palace of one of these princes. 
In the front was an entrance from the public square where the 
troops exercised, well secured, and guarded by eunuchs, yet in the 
