Page:The Slave Girl of Agra.djvu/154

 green foliage, dotted with white mansions and villas, pleased the eye, and the stone houses of rich Hindu merchants appeared like feudal castles buried in forests.

But the scene lost its charm as the horsemen gradually descended from the eminence and entered into those narrow, irregular and winding streets which intersected the busy hive of men in all directions. The houses here were mostly constructed of earth and thatched with straw. Large numbers of soldiers and camp followers lived with their wives and children amidst people following other trades and professions in those thatched huts. Small traders and shop-keepers too displayed their goods in humble stalls. The fruiterer made a fair show of the fruits of Kabul and Sumarkand—almonds, pistachioes, walnuts, raisins, prunes and apricots, grapes, dark and white, wrapped in cotton, pears and apples, and those admirable melons which lasted the whole winter. Bakers and confectioners supplied the needs of their customers, and meat, mostly of the kid, roasted and dressed in different ways, was sold on the wayside.

Narrow lanes led to the fish and vegetable Bazaar, which was already crowded at this early hour, but the Bazaar was so different from what Noren had been accustomed to see in Bengal. The vegetables of Agra were scanty compared with those of the markets of fertile Bengal. The fish obtained from the Jumna were poor in comparison with those obtained from the numberless streams and marshes of the lower country. And in place of the ample supply of ducks and fowls seen in Bengal, a few poor pigeons and partridges and some fowls were exhibited in the Bazaar of Agra.