Page:Wanderings of a Pilgrim Vol 1.djvu/300

 From the Calcutta John Bull, July 26th, 1831.

"The Governor-general has sold the beautiful piece of architecture, called the Mootee Musjid, at Agra, for 125,000 rupees (about £12,500), and it is now being pulled down! The taj has also been offered for sale! but the price required has not been obtained. Two lacs, however, have been offered for it. Should the taj be pulled down, it is rumoured that disturbances may take place amongst the natives."

If this be true, is it not shameful? The present king might as well sell the chapel of Henry the Seventh in Westminster Abbey for the paltry sum of £12,500: for any sum the impropriety of the act would be the same. By what authority does the Governor-general offer the taj for sale? Has he any right to molest the dead? To sell the tomb raised over an empress, which from its extraordinary beauty is the wonder of the world? It is impossible the Court of Directors can sanction the sale of the tomb for the sake of its marble and gems. They say that a Hindoo wishes to buy the taj to carry away the marble, and erect a temple to his own idols at Bindrabund!

The crows are a pest; they will pounce upon meat carried on a plate, and bear it off: they infest the door of the Bawarchī Khānā (cook room), and annoy the servants, who retaliate on a poor kawwā, if they can catch one, by dressing it up in an officer's uniform, and letting it go to frighten the others. The poor bird looks so absurd hopping about. Sometimes they drill a hole through the beak, and passing a wire through it, string thereon five cowries; this bears the poor crow's head to the ground, and must torture it. Such cruelty I have forbidden. The crow is a bird of ill omen.

On a babūl-tree in the grounds are twelve or fifteen beautiful nests pendant from the extremity of slender twigs—the habitations of a little community of Byā birds. I took down three of the nests; they contained two, three, and four little white eggs; the parent birds made a sad lament when the nests were taken. If you take a nest with the young birds in it, the parent bird will follow and feed them. The natives consider it highly improper