He went accordingly, and was assured by the old man, then ninety-six years of age, that the Empress Jodh Bai, the daughter of a Hindoo prince, would be delivered of a son, who would live to a good old age.  She was then pregnant, and remained in the vicinity of the old man’s hermitage till her confinement, which took place 31st of August, 1569.  The infant was called after the hermit, Mirza Salim, and became in time Emperor of Hindostan, under the name of Jahangir.[7] It was to this Emperor Jahangir that Sir Thomas Roe, the ambassador, was sent from the English Court.[8] Akbar, in order to secure to himself, his family, and his people, the advantage of the continued intercessions of so holy a man, took up his residence at Sikri, and covered the hill with magnificent buildings for himself, his courtiers, and his public establishments.[9]

The quadrangle, which contains the mosque on the west side, and tomb of the old hermit in the centre, was completed in the year 1578, six years before his death; and is, perhaps, one of the finest in the world.  It is five hundred and seventy-five feet square, and surrounded by a high wall, with a magnificent cloister all around within.[10] On the outside is a magnificent gateway, at the top of a noble flight of steps twenty-four feet high.  The whole gateway is one hundred and twenty feet in height, and the same in breadth, and presents beyond the wall five sides of an octagon, of which the front face is eighty feet wide.  The arch in the centre of this space is sixty feet high by forty wide.[11] This gateway is no doubt extremely grand and beautiful; but what strikes one most is the disproportion between the thing wanted and the thing provided—­there seems to be something quite preposterous in forming so enormous an entrance for a poor diminutive man to walk through—­and walk he must, unless carried through on men’s shoulders; for neither elephant, horse, nor bullock could ascend over the flight of steps.  In all these places the staircases, on the contrary, are as disproportionately small; they look as if they were made for rats to crawl through, while the gateways seem as if they were made for ships to sail under.[12] One of the most interesting sights was the immense swarms of swallows flying round the thick bed of nests that occupy the apex of this arch, and, to the spectators below, they look precisely like swarm of bees round a large honeycomb.  I quoted a passage in the Koran in praise of the swallows, and asked the guardians of the place whether they did not think themselves happy in having such swarms of sacred birds over their heads all day long.  ‘Not at all,’ said they; ’they oblige us to sweep the gateway ten times a day; but there is no getting at their nests, or we should soon get rid of them.’  They then told me that the sacred bird of the Koran was the ‘ababil’, or large black swallow, and not the ‘partadil’, a little piebald thing of no religious merit whatever.[13] On the right side of the entrance is engraven on stone in large