Page:ER Scidmore--Winter India.djvu/239

Rh parrot cut from a single emerald its crowning ornament. That fabled emerald parrot, like the so-called emerald Buddha at Bangkok, was undoubtedly nothing but a very fine and clear piece of fei tsui jade, but it went with all the other loot that Nadir Shah carried away in 1739—loot the value of which amounted to thirty-eight million pounds, and which was scattered by the Kurds when he was murdered. India was drained of its riches then, for no good end. After Nadir Shah had gone his way with the Peacock and nine other jeweled thrones, this palace suffered neglect as well as sacking. When Lord Auckland's sisters saw it in 1838, the old King of Delhi sat in a neglected garden, his own dirty soldiers lounged on dirty charpoys in the beautiful inlaid bath-rooms, and the precious inlays were being stolen, bit by bit, from the rooms of the princes. One regrets the destruction that followed the Mutiny, when the zenana and whole labyrinths of guest-rooms were torn away to make space for barracks. Sir James Fergusson has dealt with these destroying British barbarians very thoroughly in "Indian and Eastern Architecture" (Vol. II, p. 208), and hands on to immortality the name of Sir John Jones, who tore up the platform of the Peacock Throne and divided it into sections which he sold as table-tops, the pair now in the India Museum at London having fetched him five hundred pounds.

The audience-halls, the baths, and the rooms around the Diwan-i-Khas were repaired and restored at great expense in preparation for the Prince of Wales's visit in 1876, and close watchfulness has