Page:Oriental Scenery — One Hundred and Fifty Views of the Architecture, Antiquities, and Landscape Scenery of Hindoostan.djvu/12

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magnificent Gate is built of reddish freestone, and the ornamental part inlaid with stones of various colours. The minars are of white marble, executed with great neatness; originally they were crowned with turrets, which have been destroyed by lightning. The Mausoleum within the garden, composed of the same materials, has a striking and grand effect; at the top of which, on the terrace, is placed the body of the Emperor, enclosed in a white marble tomb, elegantly ornamented.

Secundra is nine miles from Agra, and about one hundred and twenty-eight southward of Delhi.

 

large and populous City of Patna is in the province of Bahar. The gauts, or steps leading up from the river, are very numerous here, and are intended for the advantage of merchandise, as well as the convenience of the Hindoos, whose religious duties oblige them frequently to perform ablutions in the sacred river Ganges.

The larger building is the house of an Hindoo merchant, and is an example of the general style of buildings on the river side inhabited by men of that class.

Patna is four hundred miles N. W. of Calcutta.

 

building, composed of grey granite, is of singular construction, and has the appearance of great antiquity. The Hindoos, who formerly preferred elevated places for their temples, could not, it would seem, resist the temptation of building in this place, the situation being delightful, and water and wood, with every other convenience, abundant.

 

Mausoleum of Mucdoom Shah is celebrated for its beauty; it was built at the beginning of the sixteenth century, in the reign of the Emperor Jehangire, by Mucdoom Shah, who was chief of the district.

A small but neat mosque is attached to it, as well as a very considerable tank and garden.

The town Moneah is situated on the east bank of the Soane, nearly at the junction of that river with the Ganges, about twenty-five miles westward from the city of Patna.

 

, as it is generally called, is remarkable for the strength of its walls; within which there are the remains of a large mosque of excellent workmanship with many other buildings, but the whole are very much in ruins. It is situated without the walls of Shah Jehanabad, or modern Delhi, which is the third city of that name; the most ancient occupied a rising ground about twelve miles S. W. from the present city; the second, as well as the last, is on the S. W. banks of the river Jumma. 