[THE JEWELLED TOMB.]
WOULD the youthful readers of this volume like to hear about the most beautiful tomb in the world?
It is in the city of Agra in India, on the other side of the globe. When Boston children are eating their lunch or playing in the sunshine at noon-recess, it is midnight in India. It is so hot there that if anyone happened to be awake, he would probably be fanning himself and looking out of the window up at the stars which are bigger and brighter than in New England, or down at the gardens where hundreds of great fireflies dart and whirl as if it were Fourth of July without the noise.
The Jewelled Tomb was built about the time when your great-great-grandfathers first came to Plymouth. You know how cold and bleak they found it—the winds were stinging, the earth covered with ice and snow, storms were on the sea and savages on the shore. The Pilgrims made no grand tombs there; they dared not even pile up leaves to mark their graves as the robins did over the Babes in the Wood, but buried their dead in wheat-fields to be hid by the waving grain. They feared the Indians, watching to murder and scalp them, would come at night, count the graves and learn how few were left alive. SHAH-Jehan, the Mogul Emperor, built the Jewelled Tomb. His name means King of the World, because he ruled over so many people. Jewels were like the sand of the sea to him, he owned so many. The Koh-i-noor, “the mountain of light,” was his, and there is but one larger diamond in the world. The Brahmins say that the owner of the Koh-i-noor will always be ruler of India.
Shah Jehan’s soldiers and slaves could not be counted, and there seemed no end of his cities and palaces. One of the oldest establishments in his dominion was a hospital for sick monkeys, where kind nurses took care of the little mimics, cured or made them comfortable, while they jabbered and screeched to their hearts’ content, snatched the medicine or choice fruits from their keepers, and plagued each other like wizened spoilt children. But the great Mogul did not care so much for the health of his subjects—he had so many it did not seem worth while.
He was very fond of elephant fights, and used to sit in a balcony overlooking the space between his palace and the river Jumna to watch them. Sometimes a maddened elephant had to be driven by fireworks into the river and drowned to prevent its trampling to death the whole crowd which had no balcony to see from. So many riders were killed in the sport, that one would often kiss his wife and children, saying, “Good-by, you may never see me again—I am going to amuse the Emperor—we have an elephant fight to-day.” Shah-Jehan enjoyed this spectacle whether his subjects were killed or not. His balcony was hung with rich Persian silks. Diamonds and riches shone in his turban and sparkled on his breast. Every time he moved, his jewels threw rainbows over the crowd and often into the eyes of the combatants.
He had a plan of making a trellis over this balcony. The grapes were to be amethysts, the leaves emeralds, and the stalks pure gold. But one morning the head goldsmith came to him, saying: “May it please your Majesty, your trellis will take all the emeralds and amethysts in the world.”
For once in his life Shah-Jehan gave up his whim and only one bunch of grapes was ever finished.
This monarch loved power and splendor, but more than all he loved his wife Moomtazee. She was the niece of the famous Noor Mahal, and was called the most beautiful woman in the world, and was good as she was beautiful. “Light of the World,” “Pearl of Women,” “Crown of Delight,” were some of the names her husband gave her. For hours he would sit by her side in his palace garden, on seats made soft by cashmere shawls, finer than any that ever crossed the ocean. They listened to the murmur of the river; they watched the pink lilies, as large as christening cups, that floated on its waves. Great leaves and wonderful flowers, such as we see only in conservatories, bent their heads beneath the spray of the fountains. There are few singing birds in that land, but from musicians, hidden behind the trees, came melodies which mingled with the sound of rippling waters.
All this was real, and not a story from the Arabian Nights.