shops of all sorts, from those whose stock is jewellery and precious stones, to those dealing in paper kites and sweetmeats. The streets of which it is composed are so narrow that in some places our gharry makes a tight fit of it: happily other gharries are not often met in it, and we thread our way through without meeting anything more bulky than a bullock; an elephant or another gharry would have caused a 'jam' absolute. Our next route from the hotel must be in an opposite direction to the Imambarras, out towards the Dilkoosha and the Martinière. We drive past the Chutta Munzil, and through the two miles of streets, lined with houses, up which the relieving forces of Havelock and Sir C. Campbell had to fight their way, and of which one of them, in reporting his hard-won successes, said that every house was a fortress, every fortress filled with armed men.' We pass by the Shah Nujjeef, an old Moslem tomb, strong in its own construction, and surrounded in addition by a high and solid wall, round which raged one of the fiercest of the many fierce struggles in the course of the second relief. Soon afterwards we come to the Secunder Bagh, a square garden, whose solid wall resisted for some hours. the battering of Peel's naval guns. But when once a breach was made, it soon became the scene of a terrible retribution for Cawnpore: the 93rd Highlanders and a body of Sikhs entered it, and within two hours the place had been turned into a human slaughter-house, for of the 2,000 rebels who fought desperately inside, not one was left alive. A mile further on we reach the Martinière, a large and handsome, but grotesquely-decorated building, founded in the last century as a school for Eurasians by the French General Martine. We pass through the schoolrooms and the dormitories, all very clean and neat, and see some of the boys playing about or reading, with much more of a European than an Asiatic cast of countenance, and apparently in almost as 'rude health' as our English-bred and English-reared specimens of the genus schoolboy generally enjoy. From a look-out at the top of the building we get a distant view of all the prominent buildings in the city and of the woods on either side. In one direction only, the southeast, a flat piece of desert-looking land appears. Half a mile from the Martinière, standing in a park well dotted with trees and slightly undulating, is the Dilkoosha House, built some twenty-five years ago by a native potentate as a country residence, now deserted and decaying. It was for awhile the head-quarters of Sir C. Campbell in his advance on Lucknow, and also was used as a resting-place for the relieved garrison on their way to Cawnpore. It was here that Havelock died, when he had lived just long enough to see the final relief of the garrison for whom he had fought so well, and to hear that his country and his Queen were not ungrateful for his life spent in their service. From the Dilkoosha we may strike to the south-eastwards till we reach the Alumbagh, another house within a walled garden which formed an important military point in the operations before Lucknow. It was the first outpost stormed by Havelock and Outram on their entrance into Lucknow, and it was held by the latter general with a force of 4,000 men against a horde of 20,000 rebels, through the three months which intervened between Sir Colin's two advances on the city. In the garden is Havelock's tomb, bearing on it a very lengthy inscription. It is a pity that a hero, whose best epitaph is the unwritten memory of his deeds, should lie buried under what looks like a list of post-mortem compliments. At the Alumbagh we may suitably end our visit to Lucknow, the city of brick palaces but recently emptied of royalty, and of brick walls but recently invested with interest. We shall pass on to Agra and Delhi, where we shall find the relics of a more substantial greatness- the noble buildings left by the Mogul Emperors and by native monarchs who preceded them; some of these, too, famous as the scenes of memorable episodes of the Mutiny. CHAPTER VI. THE CITIES OF THE PLAIN. THE CITY OF AKBAR. 'Divided by a river, on whose banks With towers and temples proudly elevate.'-Paradise Lost. IN passing from Lucknow to Agra we have to return first to Cawnpore, and join the Great Trunk Line there. Leaving Cawnpore at 5 A.M., we roll steadily through a hundredand-fifty miles of bare, flat, hot-looking country, varied with occasional patches of wood or cultivated fields. We reach the station for Agra at mid-day. The sun is intensely hot, and at every station there are frequent calls for the Bheestie,' who is always in attendance with a goat-skin full of fresh water. Natives seem to feel the thirsty effects of the sun almost as much as foreigners. Of the former there are always great numbers travelling to and fro along this line of railway. To look at an apathetic Hindu, squatting by his hut door smoking a hookah in a blissful state of semioblivion, one would think that he would be the last man to be induced, by the advent of a railway, to take to it as a means of conveyance. Accordingly, when these Indian railways were in course of construction, many were the prophecies that they would be an utter failure as regarded the natives, who would never learn to take to them as a regular mode of conveyance. But results prove the fallacy of these conjectures: the THE CITY OF AKBAR. 65 third-class carriages of every train are crowded with dusky figures going from one wayside station to another, or even over longer distances. One great inducement to them to travel by the railway instead of by bullock-carts and gharries is the extremely low fare at which they are carried. The third-class fare, instead of being as with us rather less than half that of the first-class, is only a seventh of the higher fare, and averages rather less than a halfpenny a mile. Though they must appreciate to some extent the saving of time effected by the railway, their innate disregard to the value of hours is curiously shown in the way in which a native catches' a train. Having determined to make a journey by rail to any place, he proceeds leisurely to the nearest station as soon as he thinks it convenient; and never dreaming, happy soul, of diving into the depths of an Indian Bradshaw, he squats down in a waiting-room or on the platform, and waits minutes or hours, as the case may be, in perfect contentment, till a train arrives to take him up. If he were under his own roof during the interval of waiting, he would probably be smoking, chewing betel, eating sweetmeats, or sleeping; and as he can do one or all of these at the station, he is equally happy there, if a sluggish, dreamy nonchalance, can be called happiness. But we have reached the Agra station, and our carriagedoor is surrounded by half-a-dozen coolies anxious to earn 'bucksheesh,' by conveying our baggage to a gharry. Leaving the station, we cross the Jumna by a bridge of boats, and enter the city of Akbar. It is only 300 years since that Great Mogul began to make a capital out of what was then a mere village, and it was only eighty years afterwards that the seat of government was transferred by Shah Jehan, Akbar's grandson, from Agra, or Akbarabad as it was styled, to Delhi. But F |
