Anon we whirled round a corner, and plunged into the seething life of the native city.  The road was crammed with an apparently impenetrable crowd of men and beasts, the latter—­water-buffaloes, humpy cattle, and donkeys—­strolling about and getting in everybody’s way with perfect nonchalance, while men in strange raiment of gaudy hue pursued their lawful occupations with much clamour.  The variety of smells—­all bad—­was quite remarkable.

We could only go at a walk, as the streets were very narrow and the inhabitants thereof—­particularly the cows—­seemed very deaf and difficult to arouse to a sense of the need for making room, though our good driver yelled himself hoarse and employed language which I feel sure was highly flavoured.  Our progress was a succession of marvellous escapes for human toes and bovine shoulders, but our “helmsman steered us through,” and we emerged from the kaleidoscopic labyrinth into the open space before the Fort of Lahore, whose pinkish brick walls and ponderous bastions rose above us.

The last thing I would desire would be to usurp in any way the functions of grave Mr. Murray or well-informed Herr Baedeker, but there are certain points to which I will draw attention, and which it seems to me very necessary to keep in mind.

To the ordinary traveller in the Punjab and Northern India no buildings are more attractive, no ruins more interesting, than those of the Mogul dynasty, and the rule of the Mogul princes marks the high-water limit of Indian magnificence.  It was but for a short time, too, that the highest level of grandeur was maintained.

For generations the Moguls had poured in intermittent hordes into Northern India, but it was only in 1556 that Akbar, by defeating the Pathans at Panipat, laid India at his feet.  Following up his success he overthrew the Rajputs, and extended his dominion from Afghanistan to Benares.  Having conquered the country as a great warrior, he proceeded to rule it as a noble statesman, being “one of the few sovereigns entitled to the appellation both of Great and Good, and the only one of Mohammedan race whose mind appears to have arisen so far above all the illiberal prejudices of that fanatical religion in which he was educated, as to be capable of forming a plan worthy of a monarch who loved his people and was solicitous to render them happy."[1] This “plan” was to study the religion, laws, and institutions of his Hindu subjects in order that he might govern as far as possible in conformity with Hindu usage.  The Emperor Akbar was the first of the Mogul monarchs who was a great architect.  The city of Fattepur Sikri being raised by him as a stately dwelling-place until want of water and the unhealthiness of the locality caused him to move into Agra, leaving the whole city of Fattepur Sikri to the owls and jackals, and later to the admiration of the Sahib logue.