At Bombay he visited the large mercantile establishments and investigated the prospects of trade; saw the people in their homes, at meals, prayers, marriages, and funerals, and studied the work of the carpenters in that celebrated shipyard where was constructed the man-of-war wherein the Star-Spangled Banner was written. He knew all about the city as it was when he saw it, and as it had been from its Portuguese beginning; and yet he remained but a single week. Who was the simpleton that circulated an unauthorized statement that Mr. Taylor travelled far and saw little? In fact, he knew more of the needs and enterprise of Bombay than many old residents.
In his haste to see as much of India as possible, and yet arrive in China in season to join Commodore Perry’s expedition to Japan, he determined to ride in one of the mail carts of India a distance of nearly four hundred miles. His new friends advised him not to attempt the journey, and entertained him with the deeds of assassins and robbers along the route, and the results of the fatiguing ride of seven days and nights in a two-wheeled vehicle without springs or mattresses. But his mind was made up to go, and go he would. So, regardless of warnings and advice, he started into the interior in a cart with a driver and the “Royal Mail.” The traveller who now lounges in the luxuriant carriages of the railway trains between Bombay and Calcutta, can have no idea of the trials of such a journey as Mr. Taylor undertook. Then, there were no railroads, no regular stages, even; nothing but lumbering carts drawn by oxen and decrepit old horses. But he endured the fatigue with his usual fortitude and good fortune, while his already remarkable experience among hospitable people was repeated there in a most praiseworthy style. Friends, friends, everywhere! Men divided their meals and beds with him. People with whom he could converse by signs only, gave him food and pressed themselves into his service, and would take no pay. In one place a soldier sat up all night to give the weary traveller his bed. Surely, the essence of human kindness and charity is not confined to Christian lands!
Through jungles, where there was not a single path; along highways, crowded with innumerable carts; riding in wildernesses, where water was scarce, and food not to be found; in every kind of vehicle known to the primitive people, from a horse chaise to a bullock-cart; surrounded by miasmatic marshes, and the lairs of tigers, he hurried on toward Delhi.
On his way he made a short stop at Agra and Futtehpoor-Sikra, where stand some of the mightiest and most costly temples which have been reared since the beginning of the Christian era. It well repays years of work and economy to wander among the palaces, mosques, and mausoleums of those great cities. No palace in all the world can be found to equal that of Akbar, the great Mogul, at Agra. When Mr. Taylor visited the city, nearly all the rubbish, made by wars and sieges, had been cleared away, and the scarred walls and marred mosaics had been restored, so that he stood under mighty domes, amid all the splendor of the East. No one can imagine its beauty and grandeur, unless he has seen it. Such lofty arches! such masses of pure white marble! such a profusion of pearl, jasper, cornelian, agate, and many stones of greater beauty and value! Such exquisite carvings, such lovely mosaics, such labyrinths of inwrought balustrades and porticos! Such tombs, so rich, so beautiful, so great, that the tomb of Napoleon in Paris is lost in comparison!
Mr. Taylor was delighted beyond measure by a visit to the tomb of the Empress Noor-Jehan, wife of the Shah Jehan. Moore uses her romantic history in his “Lalla Rookh,” for verily she was “The Light of the Harem.” Shah Jehan, “Selim,” erected that marvellously beautiful building, with its lofty dome, and slender minarets, its inlaid jewels wherein the walls are made to hold a copy, in Arabic, of the whole Koran. Beautiful as Eastern songs represent Noor-Jehan to be, the tomb in which she lies must surpass her in whiteness and delicacy of outline. Never, in harem of Cashmere, nor in garden of Mogul, were there more delicious odors than those which still fill the air about her tomb. No brighter, more various, or more odorous flowers bloomed in Mahomet’s Paradise, than now bewilder the visitor to that hallowed spot. It was fortunate for Mr. Taylor that he had seen the boasted palaces and temples of Europe and Western Asia, before he visited that enchanted spot. Dreams of Aladdin became literal there. In towers, arches, domes, colonnades, ceilings of pearl and precious stones, pillars wrought with the skilful jeweller’s art, inlaid floors in which no crease appears, in diamond-like foundations, and in the unity of its unbroken sculptures, the temples of Agra and of its suburbs, excel those of Venice and Florence, as the exquisite and angelic echoes in the dome of Queen Noor’s tomb excel, in length and sweetness, those of the Baptistry at Pisa.
From Agra, he rode over the wide highway, one hundred and fifteen miles, to Delhi, the former capital of the Moguls, and which, at that time, boasted the presence, in his palace, of Akbar II. There he was treated with the same hospitality as he had been in other cities, and kind-hearted residents guided him about the streets of the modern city, and accompanied him to the magnificent ruins in various quarters of the plain whereon stood the old city. Pile on pile of massive columns lay in ragged majesty about him, and bewildered his senses with their unnumbered towers. Ruins, ruins, ruins, as far as the eye can trace the broken plain. Palaces, fortresses, temples, mosques, harems, tombs, obelisks, and massive battlements lie hurled together in undistinguished profusion, while here and there the porch of some lofty building, or some imposing arch, still breaks the line of the horizon. One pillar stands in the plain, whose summit is two hundred and forty feet above the ground. Near this gigantic shaft are the ruins of the palace of Aladdin. But the stone that cumber the plain, and the stable platform, once the floor, do not suggest the palace of diamonds, emeralds, pearls, gold, and ivory of which we have read; and the beholder is tempted to believe that there was a mistake of location, and that Agra instead of Delhi, was the place after all. But Mr. Taylor, whose time was limited, could not linger long, nor hope to solve all the riddles which such an inexhaustible antiquarian museum suggested, and after visiting Hindoo temples, adorned with fascinating carvings and unintelligible inscriptions, and tombs covering the remains of known and unknown monarchs, he hastened back to the modern city, with its wide Boulevard, and made preparations to visit the Himalaya Mountains.
He left that interesting city with great regret, for, to the poet, it suggested a very attractive place for fanciful dreams, and peaceful moralizing. Moore incorporated in his poem a Persian inscription, which was shown Mr. Taylor in the palace of Akbar II.: “If there be an Elysium on earth, it is here, it is here.” And it might have been such an Elysium but for the dilapidated, dirty condition of the palace, in which the motto was seen, which did not harmonize with the sentiment, and may have robbed the whole palace of its poetical attractions.