Page:The Land of the Veda.djvu/21

 THE

CHAPTER I.

N my youth I read those amazing descriptions of Oriental magnificence recorded by Sir Thomas Roe—England's first Embassador to India—and others, describing the power and glory of “The Great Mogul” in such glowing terms that they seemed more like the romance of the “Arabian Nights” than the real facts, which they were, of the daily life witnessed in that splendid Court. Europe then heard for the first time of “The Taj,” “The Peacock Throne,” “The Dewanee Khass,” “The Weighing of the Emperor,” when on each birthday his person was placed in golden scales, and twelve times his weight of gold and silver, perfumes and other valuables, were distributed to the populace; but the statements seemed so distant from probability that they were regarded by many as extravagances which might well rank with the asserted facts of “Lalla Rookh;” so that the Embassador, who was three years a resident, and the Poet, who had never been there at all, with their authorities, seemed alike to have drawn upon their imagination for their facts, transcending, as their descriptions did, the ability and the taste of European Courts.

How little I then imagined that it would fall to my lot at a future day to be in that very Dewanee Khass, sitting quietly on the side of his Crystal Throne, beholding the last of the Mogul Emperors, a captive, on trial for his life, in that magnificent