Page:Wanderings of a Pilgrim Vol 1.djvu/458

 were some time exploring and hunting for the passage, which, they say, leads to the temple of an Hindoo, who lives in the Tripolia; he will suffer no one to enter his temple, and declares the devil is there in propriâ personâ.

When I retired to rest on my charpāī, I found it difficult to drive away the fancies that surrounded me.

The walls of the Fort, and those buildings within it that are of carved red freestone, were built by Akbar: the marble buildings were erected by Shāhjahān.

The seat of the padshah is an immense slab of black marble, the largest perhaps ever beheld; it was broken in two by an earthquake. A Burā Bahādur, from this throne of the padshah, exclaimed, "I have come, not to succeed Lord Auckland, but Akbar!" The convulsion of the earth, that split in two the throne of black marble, could not have astonished it more than this modest speech—Allāhu Akbar!

In front, and on the other side of the court, is the seat of the vizier; a slab of white marble. The seat on which the padshah used to sit to view the fights of the wild beasts in the court below, is one of great beauty; the pillars and arches, of the most elegant workmanship, are beautifully carved; the whole plain and light.

The steam-baths are octagonal rooms below, with arched roofs; three of these rooms are of white marble, with inlaid marble pavements; and there is a fountain, from which hot water springs up from a marble basin. The baths in the apartments below the palace, which most probably belonged to the zenāna, were broken up by the Marquis of Hastings: he committed this sacrilege on the past, to worship the rising sun; for he sent the most beautiful of the marble baths, with all its fretwork and inlaid flowers, to the Prince Regent, afterwards George the Fourth.

Having thus destroyed the beauty of the baths of the palace, the remaining marble was afterwards sold on account of Government; most happily, the auction brought so small a sum, it put a stop to further depredations.

At sunrise, from the Bridge of Boats, nothing can be more