TIMUR BEG. 
107 
with white cloth, with a broad ring of red, bordered 
by two of blue round the middle of it. Those upon 
the palace, and other houses belonging to the rajah, 
are gilt, and become a showy ornament.” The build- 
ing in the foreground of the engraving on the left 
is a guardhouse, in which there is always a body of 
Boutea soldiers ; near it are several flagstaffs. On the 
brow of the hill behind appears a small village. 
When Timur had ascended the mountains as far as 
the Cow’s Mouth, he turned his steps towards the 
plains. Satisfied that he had marched to the eastern 
extremity of the Indian empire, and acquired the en- 
viable merit of having performed a successful crusade 
against the infidels, he resolved to retire into his own 
dominions. He was now master of the whole coun- 
try betwixt the Indus and the Ganges, by far the 
most fruitful portion of the vast continent of Asia. 
His return was marked by the same desolation as his 
advance : he fought no less than twenty battles in 
thirty days. Upon one occasion he made captive a 
Hindoo prince, and butchered all his followers, as was 
usual with him on all similar occasions, then blessed 
the Almighty for having delivered the enemies of the 
faithful into his hands, and, in order to signalise his 
zeal, prevailed upon the captive idolater to embrace 
the Mohammedan faith and eat the flesh of oxen, as 
a proof of the sincerity of his conversion. 
Timur finally pillaged Lahore, allowing his army 
to commit dreadful ravages, disbanded them on the 
23rd of March 1399, and sent them by different 
routes to their native land. 
