Page:History of India Vol 5.djvu/83

 THE SPOILS OF HIND 55 berlains, Altuntash and Asightigin, to take care of the treasures of gold and silver and all the valuable prop- erty, while he himself assumed charge of the jewels. The treasures were laden on the backs of as many camels as they could procure, and the officers carried away the rest. The stamped coin amounted to seventy thousand thousand royal dirhams, and the gold and silver ingots were 700,400 mans in weight, besides wear- ing-apparel and fine cloths of Sus, respecting which old men said they never remembered to have seen any so fine, soft, and embroidered. Among the booty was a house of white silver, like to the houses of the rich, which was thirty yards in length and fifteen in breadth. It could be taken to pieces and put together again. There was also a canopy, made of fine Byzantine linen, forty yards long and twenty broad, supported on two golden and two silver poles, which had been cast in moulds. Sultan Mahmud thereupon appointed one of his most confidential servants to take charge of the fort and the property in it. After this he returned to Ghazni in triumph; and on his arrival there, he ordered the court- yard of his palace to be covered with a carpet, on which he displayed jewels and unbored pearls and rubies, shining like sparks or like wine congealed with ice, and emeralds like fresh sprigs of myrtle, and diamonds like pomegranates in size and weight. Thereupon, ambassadors from foreign countries, including the envoy from Taghan Khan, King of Turkistan, as- sembled to see such wealth as they had never even