"To go there we found it necessary to 'lay a dawk,' as they say in India—that is, to arrange for relays of horses along the road. The manager of the hotel attended to the matter and sent out horses the day before we were to visit Futtehpoor-Sikra: there were two relays, one seven miles out and the other fourteen miles, and at each relay we found the horses ready, so that there was no delay in changing. We rolled along over an excellent road, and in two and a half hours we covered the twenty-one miles between Agra and our destination. In many places the road was shaded with tall trees; paroquets and other tropical birds were playing in the branches, and several times we saw monkeys swinging from the limbs, and evidently enjoying themselves.
"The country is generally flat and very fertile; but there are not many objects of interest to be seen on the way. The route we followed is the old one of the emperor's, and we saw traces of a canal that was built for irrigating the land at the time Shah Juhangeer made his home here. We kept a sharp lookout for the ruins, and soon after we passed the twenty-first mile-post there they were. We stopped at what was once the emperor's business-office, but is now kept as a restaurant for the accommodation of visitors; it is at the entrance of the palace grounds, and in just the place where you might expect an office to be situated.
ENTRANCE TO THE GREAT MOSQUE OF DURGAH.
"I am afraid I should weary you if I attempted to describe all the buildings, and so I will pick out a few of the most important. There is, in the first place, the great mosque which some have pronounced the finest in India, and it certainly is a magnificent structure. It is known as the Durgah, and has an entrance that reminded us of the gate of the Taj Mahal, but in some respects it is more imposing. It is said that the entrance did not belong to the mosque originally, but was erected a good many years after the completion of the latter. The mosque is on the highest part of the ridge, and you must climb a series of steps to reach it; the view from the top is quite extensive, and would amply repay the fatigue, even if there were no mosque there to interest us.
"Between the gate-way and the mosque there is a paved court-yard 433 by 366 feet, and the date on the main arch of the building corresponds to our year 1571. The pavement is in good condition, and so is that of the mosque itself; the Government applies the revenues of certain grounds in the vicinity to the preservation of the buildings at Futtehpoor-Sikra, and for the last twenty or thirty years they have not suffered any injury. The mosque has three domes, and a long façade, decorated with texts from the Koran, and with other inscriptions of Moslem origin. It is much larger than the Pearl Mosque, at Agra, but not half so pretty.
"I must tell you that a holy hermit named Sheik Selim lived here in a cave, and it was through his orders to the father of Juhangeer that the palace was built. They showed us the cave close to the mosque where the hermit lived, and hid himself away from the wolves and foxes, and then they brought us to his tomb, which is in the great court-yard I have described. As a work of art it is most remarkable, and we lingered some time to study it.
"The inside of the building containing the tomb is ornamented with paintings and mosaics of flowers, and over the tomb itself there is a canopy set with mother-of-pearl, which presents a beautiful appearance. A wide gallery or veranda runs around the outside of the building; there is a dome in the centre, and the eaves project so as to cover the gallery, and shelter anybody who may be there from the rain.