Once more was the Johur commanded, while 8000 Rajputs ate the last “beera” together, and put on their saffron robes.  The gates were thrown open, “and few survived to stain the yellow mantle by inglorious surrender.”

Thus in the blood-red cloud of battle sank for ever the Sun of Chitor; for from this, the third and last “saka,” the ruined city never rose.  Her doom has been as the doom of Babylon, of which Isaiah declared:  “It shall never be inhabited, neither shall it be dwelt in from generation to generation ... but wild beasts of the desert shall lie there; and their houses shall be full of doleful creatures; and owls shall dwell there....  And the wild beasts ... shall cry in their desolate houses, and ... in their pleasant palaces:...  Her days shall not be prolonged.”

The top of the long ascent being reached, the last gate, the Hathi Pol, is passed, and the wayfarer finds himself in the midst of the great dead city, which lies in ruins for three miles along the bastioned brow of the mountain.

Just beyond the first group of stately ruins, we came on the building which was probably the palace built by Lakha Rana in 1373.  Here we sat and rested until the elephant, bearing the ladies and the lunch, stalked sedately round the jutting angle of a decayed fort, and then we wended our way along a road lined with many a half-fallen temple, until we reached the ancient palace where, six hundred years ago, dwelt the ill-starred Padmani, whose loveliness brought such woe upon Chitor.  Here, in a cool chamber overlooking the tank, upon the brink of which the palace stands, we lunched; afterwards threading our way among the fallen fragments of many a stately shrine and palace towards the high point on which the great Jain Tower of Fame rears its deeply-sculptured shaft into the sky.

For a thousand years the innumerable stone gods which encircle the tower in endless profusion have watched with sightless eyes over the city.  Grey already with age were they when they saw, raised in pristine beauty, the shattered domes and broken columns which now lie prone in the brushwood far beneath their feet.  What ghastly scenes those stony faces have surveyed, when, swept by the scathing steel, the city has run red with blood, and her defenders have fallen to the last man.  One crowning horror, though, they have been always spared, for no maid or matron of Chitor ever deigned to bow her neck beneath the yoke of the Mogul, but rather dared to face a fiery death in the bowels of the great cavern beneath the city than yield her honour to the conqueror.