Page:The tourist's guide to Lucknow.djvu/163

Rh The Tehree Kothi is now the residence of the Judicial Commissioner, who holds his Court in the General's Kothi.

Chutter Mnnzil is a term properly applied to those buildings surmounted with a “Chutter,” or gilt umbrella: of these there are two; the greater is well-known as the United Service Club, which recently removed its Library, containing several thousand volumes of books, into the adjoining building, on the northwest side, lately vacated by the Union Club, for subordinates of the Uncovenanted Service, and known as the Furhat Buksh (built by General Martin) while the lesser is occupied by the Small Cause Court, Registration Ofﬁce, and Ofﬁce of the Department of Email Records and. Agriculture, N.-W. Provinces and Oudh.

This block of buildings is separately described below.

Occupied by the United Service Club for Officers of the Military and Covenanted Civil Services, is a three storied building having tykhanas, or underground rooms. It was built by Nasir-ud-din Haidar as a residence for the ladies of the harem, he himself occupying the adjoining palace called the Furhat Buksh. Between the two Chutter Munzils was a very pretty garden, with a beautiful marble tank, in the centre of which was an island covered with a pavilion. To convey to the reader an idea of the beauty of this place, the following description of it by the Honorable Miss Eden may not be uninteresting:—

“Such a place! the only residence I have coveted in India. Don’t you remember reading, in the Arabian Nights, Zobeide bets her Garden of Delight amidst the Caliph’s Palace of Pictures! I am sure this was the Garden of Delight.

“There are four small places in it fitted up in the eastern way with velvet, gold, and marble; with arabesque ceilings, orange trees and roses in all directions, and with numerous wild paroquets of bright colours ﬂitting about. And, in one place, there was an immense hummam, or Turkish bath, of white marble, the arches intersecting each other in all directions, and the marble inlaid with carnelian and bloodstone; and, in every corner of the place, there were little fountains; even during the hot winds, they say, it is cool from the quantity of water in the fountains playing; and in the verandah there were ﬁfty trays of fruits and ﬂowers laid out for us.

* *  *  It was really a very pretty sight.”