RUINS OF THE RESIDENCY—LUCKNOW, INDIA
PEARL MOSQUE AT DELHI
Delhi is one of India's most ancient cities. When the Aryans came down from the northwest and conquered the aboriginal tribes, they founded a city which they called Indrapat, just south of the present site of Delhi. How old it is no one knows, for the names of its founders have been forgotten, its records, if it had any, have been destroyed, and its streets are winding footpaths which one follows with difficulty. Every wave of invasion that has swept down from the north or west has passed over Indrapat, and its stones would tell a thrilling story if they could but speak. The city has been rebuilt again and again, the last time about three hundred years ago, but it has little to exhibit now but its antiquity. There is a massive city wall with huge gates, there are tumble-down buildings occupied by a few people and some goats, and there is a stone library building erected hundreds of years before Carnegie was born, but the glory of Indrapat has departed. Not far from Indrapat is the splendid tomb of Humayun and another of the Asoka pillars.
Eleven miles south of the present Delhi is what is called old Delhi (Delhi seems to have had a movable site) immortalized by the famous Kutab Minar, or tower, erected near the close of the twelfth century by one of the earliest Mohammedan conquerors after the capture of Delhi. The tower—a tower of victory—is two hundred and thirty-eight feet in height, forty-seven feet in diameter at the base and nine at the top. It has been described as one of the architectural wonders of the world, and it certainly gives one a profound respect for the mind that planned it. There are so many mausoleums and mosques scattered over the plains around Delhi that space forbids particular description.