THE KUTAB MINAR.
So much is there to see, indeed, that it is not until the next day we can ride out for a sight beyond the walls.
Pull up your horse and look ahead. Do you see that huge column rising skyward from the plain? It is called the Kutab Minar and is two hundred and forty feet high. As we get under it and gaze up at it it seems to tower into the very sky. It is forty-seven feet across the base and narrows to the top, it is fluted all the way down, and has frills in stone around it here and there—truly a curious sight! There are three hundred and seventy-nine steps to climb to the top; do you want to try them? If so, I will wait here and hold your horse. You shake your head. Wise boy!
There are other buildings around, parts of a mosque, and inside is an iron pillar said to be one of the oldest things in India. The Kutab Minar is supposed to have been built about the reign of our King John, though there are some who put it further back; the pillar is considerably older than that, but it cannot compare in antiquity with many things we have seen in Egypt. After the Hindu kings came a line of Moghul or Mohammedan kings who swept the others away; of these the old king of Delhi, living at the time of the Mutiny, was the last, and it is supposed that it was at the beginning of the rule of the Moghul kings that the Kutab Minar was erected.
Notice that brown-faced, scantily clad boy, who keeps beckoning and shouting "Sahib." We follow him as he leads us to a well, and almost before we realise what he is doing he goes down head first, a drop of at least eighty feet, into the black water below. There is a tradition that the water of this well cannot drown anyone. At anyrate it hasn't rid the world of this rascal, for here he comes shaking the water off his oily body and grinning. He has earned his bakshish!
As we are in Delhi for several days more we can go at our leisure through the bazaars, which really are well worth seeing. We choose a late afternoon, when there is no hurry and we can watch the people in their daily life and get a glimpse into the real India.
The streets are narrow, mere passages mostly, and lined by the open-air stalls or wooden sheds which are what the native understands by shops. A marvellous array of slippers greets us first, for all of one trade tend to congregate together, a curious custom and one which you would think was not very good for trade, though convenient to the customer. There are slippers of all colours from scarlet to brown; you would never have thought they could be so decorative. They hang in bunches, festoons, and chains. Every man here wears slippers when he puts anything at all on his feet. Boots would be of no use to him, for he has so often to shuffle off his foot-gear in a hurry. Modern streets, with their stones and liability to nails and broken glass and other sharp things, has led to the native taking to strong soled slippers when he walks about his business.
HE GOES HEAD FOREMOST INTO THE BLACK WATER.