One can picture the enraptured diamond merchant examining this masterpiece of Oriental luxury with awe-struck eye, appraising the size and lustre of each gem, and taking the fullest notes with which to dazzle his countrymen on returning to the more prosaic Europe from what was then indeed the “Gorgeous East!” This world-famous throne was seized by Nadir Shah, when he sacked Delhi in 1739, and carried away (together with our Koh-i-noor diamond) into Persia.  Dow, who saw the famous throne some twenty years before Tavernier, describes two peacocks standing behind it with their tails expanded, which were studded with jewels.  Between the peacocks stood a parrot, life size, cut out of a single emerald!

Friday, October 20.—­Yesterday at 6 A.M. we spurned the dust of Delhi, hot and blinding, from our feet and clambered into the train, which whirled us across the sun-baked plain to Agra.

There has been a woeful shortage of rain in the Punjab and Rajputana, and a famine seems imminent—­not a great and universal famine, as, the monsoon having been irregular, only some districts have suffered to a serious extent, and they can be supplied from elsewhere, whereas in the great famine of 1901 the drought parched the whole land, and no help could be given by one State to another, all lying equally under the sun’s curse.  Not a great famine, perhaps; yet, to one accustomed to the genial juiciness of the West, the miles and miles of waterless hot plains, stretching away to where the horizon flickered in the glare, the brown and parched vegetation, the lean and hungry-looking cattle, tended by equally lean and famished herds, caused the monotonous view from the carriage windows to be strangely depressing.

This is the very battle-ground of Nature and the British Raj.  We have given peace and, to a certain extent, prosperity to the teeming millions of India, and they have increased and multiplied until the land is overburthened, and Nature, with relentless will, bids Famine and Pestilence lay waste the cities and the plains.  Then Science, with irrigation works and improved hygiene, strives hard to gain a victory, but still the struggle rages doubtfully.

Agra we liked as much as we disliked Delhi.  To begin with creature comforts (and the well-being of the body produces a pair of couleur de rose spectacles for the mental eye), Laurie’s Hotel at Agra is very much more comfortable than the den we abode in at Delhi, and after a good tiffin we set forth with light hearts to see the Fort.

This, the accumulated achievement of the greatest of the Mogul Emperors, is a magnificent monument of their power and pride.  The earliest part, built by Akbar, is all of rich red sandstone.  The great hall of audience and other portions show his broad-minded tolerance and catholicity of taste in being almost pure Hindu in style and decoration.  Later, with Jehangir and Shah Jehan, the high-water mark of sumptuousness was attained in the use of pure white marble, lavishly inlaid with coloured stones.