House and Garden 
of it is a level plain. . . . They have no 
good horses, no good flesh ; no grapes or 
musk-melons, no good fruit, no ice or cold 
water, no good food or bread in their bazars, 
no candles or torches—never a candlestick!” 
Undoubtedly India owes a great deal to 
the Mogul love of gardening. Though, as I 
have observed above, the artistic traditions of 
their garden-craft are practically dead, the 
old gardens were frequently laid out so solidly 
ferred among the beautiful hills and streams 
of his dearly loved and never-forgotten home 
in Central Asia. Unfortunately none ot 
Babar’s Indian gardens now remain except 
that at Agra, which is now known as the 
Ram Bagh ; this has been so Kuropeanized 
that it is unsuitable for illustration. 
Jahangir, the great-grandson of Babar 
(1605-1627), gives in his memoirs a de¬ 
scription of one of Babar’s Agra gardens, 
THE UPPER PAVILION OK THE SHAHLIMAR GARDENS 
in marble and stone that it is possible to get a 
very accurate idea of the Mogul or “regular¬ 
ly planned pleasure-grounds” from the frame¬ 
work of them which still exists. At Agra 
the gardens were generally planted along the 
banks of the river Jumna, which not only 
formed a noble background but made it easy 
to provide the irrigation and “artificial water¬ 
courses.” The flatness and monotony of 
the country around Agra which so disgusted 
Babar, and also the climatic conditions of 
India, probably forced him to adopt a more 
formal design than he would have pre- 
with a four-storeyed marble pavilion decorated 
with gold and lapis-lazuli and approached by 
a magnificent avenue of areca-nut palms 
ninety feet high. It was planted with vines, 
apricots, apple and plum trees brought from 
Kabul, with pineapples and other foreign 
fruits introduced by the Portuguese, besides 
innumerable Indian fruits. Of flowers he 
mentions a great variety of roses, especially 
the musk and damask rose, the jasmine 
and gult-chemeily, which is either Jasminum 
grandiflora , or the gardenia. Babar’s grand¬ 
son, Akbar, laid out many gardens at Fateh- 
217 
