130 
THE ORIENTAL ANNUAL. 
stranger ; until he has tasted the river water, which 
is so highly impregnated with nitre as to be quite 
unfit for domestic purposes. Indeed, the Tupti, 
although a lovely addition to the beauty of the 
scene, is utterly useless to the inhabitants of Boor- 
hanpoor ; for, besides the unserviceable quality of 
its waters, it is too shallow for the purposes of navi- 
gation, being in most places fordable, and nowhere 
navigable, even to small boats, for more than a few 
hundred yards at a reach ; except during the mon- 
soon, when a few flat-bottomed ferry-boats may be 
seen plying up and down and across the stream. 
It was in the middle of this river that the grand 
elephant fights used, in days of old, to take place, 
for the amusement of the royal inhabitants of the 
palace. Thevenot, who visited the city, about a. d. 
1666, describes an extraordinary monument of an 
elephant, erected in the stream by Shah Jehan ; but 
it has now disappeared. This entertaining author 
writes thus : — “ In the same place there is a figure 
of an elephant done to the natural bigness ; it is of a 
reddish shining stone ; the back parts of it are in the 
water, and it leans to the left side. The elephant 
(which that statue represents) died in that place, 
fighting before Shah Jehan, (the father of Aurung- 
zebe,) who would needs effect a monument to the 
beast, because he loved it ; and the Gentiles besmear 
it with colours as they do their Pagods.” 
The palace of the Ahu Kalina stands on the north 
