Round the World

by Andrew Carnegie

We had a talk to-day with an officer of the forest department of India, which vainly strives to save the forests from wandering tribes who practice nomadic agriculture, reaping indeed where they sow, but rarely sowing twice in the same place, which is the difficulty. These tribes inhabit the hills of India, and depend for food solely upon crops grown in the forests. They make a clearing by burning the timber and scatter the seed, rarely taking the trouble to turn up the soil, although some tribes scratch the surface with sticks. The virgin soil yields forty and fifty fold of rice as a first crop. This is gathered and off go the gypsies to another locality for next season. The destruction of timber upon these small clearings is nothing, as our friend explained, compared to that caused by the spread of the fires. The government imposes heavy penalties upon these nomads, if discovered, but vast, tracts remain where no restraint is possible. He was on his way to solitude among the hills, which he preferred to even the plains with their crowds. But England, England some day! was his dream. Ah, poor fellow! the chances are that he will fall and lie in his Indian forest; or, sadder yet, should fortune reach him and he realize his dream, that he would find life in England intolerable and return to die here a disappointed man. We have met several such, and for no class am I so profoundly sorry. Never to realize one's life dream is bad enough, but to have it sent you and then find it naught—that seems to me the keenest thrust which can enter the soul of man.

Among the attractions of Agra are the palaces and tombs of the Great Moguls, and we have been busy visiting them day after day. This was the capital during the most brilliant period of that extraordinary family's reign. The founder, Baber, lies buried at Cabool, which was the chief place before the invaders penetrated farther south. Six of these Moguls reigned, and no dynasty in history has six consecutive names of equal power to boast. Hereditary genius has strong support in the careers of these illustrious men; besides this, Baber was a lineal descendant of Tamerlane himself, on his father's side, and of a scarcely less able Tartar leader on his mother's side. So much for blood.

The greatest of the six was Akbar, who proved to be that rare combination, soldier and statesman in one. He, Mohammedan by birth, dared to marry a Hindoo princess as an example for his people to follow, but which, unfortunately, they have failed to do. It is strange to remember that the Moguls were seated on their thrones only three hundred years ago, Akbar being contemporaneous with Henry VIII., and ruling India when Shakespeare was still on earth.

Six successive generations of great men, like the Great Moguls, cannot be matched, I think, elsewhere; but it would not be fair to attribute this unbroken line altogether to the doctrine of hereditary genius. Much lies in the fact that upon each of these rulers in turn, depended the maintenance and success of his empire. The Moguls were real powers, indeed the only powers, and not only reigned but governed. Had the doctrine of the divine right of kings been overthrown in India during the reign of even the ablest of the six, and the heir to the throne been debarred the exercise of power; taught from his infancy that his role was to be wholly ornamental, a sham king whose chief end and use was the opening of fancy bazaars or the laying of foundation stones, he too would have developed into something suited for the purpose in view, just as heirs apparent have done elsewhere. It was the continual exercise of high functions which made the race great and kept it so. To play the part of king when one knows himself the political valet of his prime minister, would soon have taken manhood out of Akbar himself, if we can imagine such a man willing to play the part.

I am not going to give a catalogue of what is to be seen in Agra, having no notion of writing a guide-book or of filling notes with long passages from such sources, as I see many writers have done; but I must speak of three or four structures which have pleased me most.

The "Fort" is a most impressive pile of masonry, a Warwick Castle upon a large scale, the ramparts being one and a quarter miles in circumference. This was Akbar's principal palace, or rather series of palaces, for it embraces the Pearl Mosque, Public Audience Hall, and Jessamine Tower, all of which are within its walls.

The tomb of her father, built by that rare woman, Noor Mahal, she who sleeps in the Taj, is a marble structure of exquisite proportions, and quite unlike others because of the great number and extent of the perforated screens of marble of which it is principally composed. Up to the time we had seen this I think I liked it the best of any; but then Noor Mahal had built it for her father, and I was predisposed to like this proof of her filial devotion.

There is one romantic and perfect love story concerning her in the annals of the Moguls. Akbar's son, the future ruler, fell desperately in love with a young lady, but for reasons of state she was not eligible, and the emperor quietly provided a husband for her in the person of one of his generals. The young heir only knew that she was married and he condemned to take to wife the woman provided for him. Two years after he had become emperor the husband of his first love died, and although she was then a middle-aged woman, he, the emperor, sought her out and not only married her (she could have been his slave), but raised her to the throne with himself, stamping her image with his own upon the coin of the realm. Such an unbounded influence did this capable and high-spirited woman acquire over not only her devoted husband but the circle of the court, that she became the constant adviser in all important affairs; and that she might not be less thoroughly feminine, I am glad to see it recorded that she introduced improved modes of dress and manners among her ladies. The emperor told his priests one day that until he had married this paragon he had not known what marriage meant. But her grandest achievement is yet to be told. The emperor had previously been dissolute, probably from his first pure dream of love having been so cruelly dispelled—who knows?—but Noor Mahal lifted him into higher regions, and made him a better man. She loved him fervently, and, on more than one occasion, when the emperor was attacked, she imperilled her own life to save his. As they grew old they became more and more to each other, and at her death was it any wonder the emperor ordered that a tomb should rise excelling all previous tombs as much, if possible, as Noor Mahal excelled all other women? This tomb, the Taj Mahal (Diadem Tomb), is said to have cost more than two millions sterling, which is equal to an expenditure of fifty millions of dollars with us to-day. Truly a costly monument, you say. No doubt, but if it has given to mankind one proof that the loftiest ideal can be wrought out and realized in practice, the Taj would be cheap even if its erection had emptied the Comstock lode; and there are men—wise men too—who affirm that it performs this miracle and inspires them with the pleasing hope that in the far ages yet to come the real and the ideal may grow closer together. The emperor built no tomb for himself, as was customary, but as the kind fates decreed, he was placed side by side with her who had been to him so much, and they rest together, under the noblest canopy ever made by human hands. Taking into account the degraded position accorded to women, and remembering to what Noor Mahal raised herself, I think she must be allowed to rank as the greatest woman who ever reigned, and perhaps the greatest who ever lived, for no one has climbed from such a depth to such a height as she, as far as I know. Assuming that Cleopatra was all that Shakespeare has made her for us, a human being of whom it could be truly said

"Age cannot wither nor custom stale her infinite variety,"

yet the Egyptian was born to the purple, a queen recognized by her nation, and entitled to rule from the first. What was this general's daughter in India? A woman, to begin with, which in India meant an inferior being, and yet she rose to equality with the Mogul and was consulted upon affairs of state—not simply because she was, in a bad sense, the ruler's favorite, but by the inherent force of her own abilities.