Book Description

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1783 edition. Excerpt: ... which contained his crumbling remains. There was an old Mollah who attended, and had the keys of the interior of the building, (which is still held in veneration) and who obtains a precarious subsistence by (hewing it to the curious traveller. The inside of the tomb is a vast hall, occupying the whole space of the interior of the building, which terminates in a dome; a few windows at the top admit a " dim religious" light, and the whole is lined with white marble. In the center the body is deposited in a sarcophagus of plain white marble, on which is written, in black marble inlaid, simply the name of A C B A R. From the summit of the minarets in the front a spectator's eye may range over a prodigious circuit of country, not less than thirty miles in a direct line, the whole of which is flat, and filled with ruins of ancient grandeur: the river Jumna is seen at some distance, and the glittering towers of Agra. This fine country exhibits, in its present state, a melancholy proof of the consequences of a bad government, of wild ambition, and the horrors attending civil dissentions; for when the governors of this country were in plenitude of power, and exercised their rights with wisdom, from the excellence of its climate, with some degree of industry, it must have been a perfect garden; but now all is desolation and silence. Surrounding the monument of Acbar are many tombs; some of them very beautiful: most probably they cover the remains of certain branches of his family. The traditionary report is here, that they are the tombs of his wives. On the high road from Agra to Dehli there are many small buildings, the form of which is a square pedestal, upon which rises a cone, to the heighth of about eight feet. In this cone there are a great...