just as it did in Shah Jehan's time. His was the most sumptuous court of his day and without an equal in history. In those good old times there was a stream of water flowing beneath the floor to cool the atmosphere when the Emperor was holding court. You may still see the open conduits passing under an arch into the ladies' apartments, which are screened off by a wonderful bit of open grillework in marble, in the center of which is a small window. A pair of scales is carved in marble above the window. Just what their significance is does not appear. They can have nothing to do with the dispensing of justice because all that commodity emanated from the Peacock Throne.

The principal hotels in Delhi are Maiden's and the Cecil. The business street is the Chandni Chauk. It is about three quarters of a mile long and leads from the Fort to the Lahore Gate. A beautiful row of pipal and neem trees divide the street down the center, creating a charming effect. Chandni Chauk is the headquarters in all India for gold and silversmith work and the finest of native jewelry. You probably will be surprised to know that in those bare, unpretentious shops, minus any display, may be found. some of the most precious gems and exquisite specimens of the jeweler's art. Take plenty of cash with you if you contemplate any worth-while purchases in this famous mart.

Should you happen to be in Delhi on Friday - the Mohammedan Sunday I would suggest a visit to the Jamma Masjid, or Great Mosque, as an exceedingly worth-while experience. If you will get there about eleven o'clock and cultivate the friendship of the moulvie, or priest, he will take you into a little relic-house, where you will see a red hair from the Prophet's beard, a print of his foot in stone, a slipper he wore, and a quotation from the Koran in his own handwriting, etc. If you are duly impressed to the point of

crossing his palm with a bit of silver, the priest will place you at a strategic point of observation on the tower over the eastern gateway, facing the pulpit. Then you'l' realize, as never before, the difference between Moslem and Christian worship.

There are no slackers in Mohammedanism. Doctors, lawyers, shopkeepers, and laborers, all leave their work for prayer. Below me on the floor of the mosque, which is three hundred and twenty-five feet square, was a veritable sea of turbans. In all that vast space there was not a vacant spot. As the worshipers entered, each and every one made hasty ablution in the marble tank in the courtyard before taking his place with the congregation. Followed the sermon by the Imam, after which he called the takbir: 'Allaho-Akbar, Allaho-Akbar.' As the voice of the preacher rose, the vast audience rose with it as one man, swayed forward, and then every forehead was pressed against the pavement below. Not a head was seen only a prodigious display of backs and soles of the feet. To attempt any more of a description of this tremendous spectacle would be an anti-climax. There is just one place in the world where it can be seen, and that is in Delhi's Great Mosque. Delhi being India's capital and British territory, the lines between Islam and the Christian 'infidel' are not drawn so tightly as in other Moslem centers. Otherwise no European 'pagan' would ever have the opportunity for witnessing a Mohammedan service.

CHAPTER XVI

IN RAJPUTANA

A band of years has flogged me out - an exile's fate is mine, To sit with mumbling crones and still a heart that cries with youth

But

oh, to walk in Babylon, in Babylon, in Babylon, The happy streets in Babylon, where once the dream was truth. VIOLA TAYLOR

PRECISELY What actuated Jey Singh II, the celebrated Rajput Maharajah and astronomer, to desert the ancient city of Amber and build the gingerbread city of Jeypore back in 1728, will never be known. Amber was founded in the first century of the Christian era and had been a Rajput stronghold since 1037. The town, including the palace, lies on a mountain-side about five miles from Jeypore, at the foot of which is a charming little lake, and dominated by a massive old fort on a hilltop about a thousand feet above the valley. It is a deserted city in the most eloquent sense of the term. This impression is heightened by the fact that the present Maharajah of Jeypore keeps the palace in excellent repair. For a number of years (on request) he has placed an elephant at the disposal of travelers who wish to visit it. The proprietor at either the New Hotel or the Kaiser-i-Hind Hotel will gladly attend to this.

You drive out to the foot of the mountain, preferably early in the morning, where you will be met by the elephant and his keeper and taken up to the palace over a massively paved roadway that has been in use for centuries. The whole mountain-side below the wide verandas is covered with tier on tier of typical native stucco houses lining the usual narrow streets. For the moment there's no evi

dence of destruction and you wonder at the deathlike stillness of the place. As you take in the scene, you fully expect any moment to see people come out of their houses and start walking here and there, to hear dogs bark and the ringing of the temple bells. Putting your binoculars to your eyes, however, you note that the roofs have fallen in, that growing trees have split the walls apart, that the windows are covered with wood-tangle, that the streets which were so plainly defined to the eye are filled with cactus and the débris of collapsed houses, and that the only sign of life is the kites and the crows. It is, indeed, a deserted city that has been sleeping for two hundred years and will never waken. Your first impulse is that you would like to go down and walk through the streets. The 'close-up' that you get from your glasses, however, changes your mind. You're quite willing to complete your sight-seeing right there in the palace. As you return to the plain you notice that the beautiful little lake is a ruin you didn't quite catch it on the way up. It's so wretched it hurts.

Possibly you may arrive at the time of the daily sacrifice of a goat to the Goddess Kali. A genial lady, this Hindu deity. Her breast is garnished with human heads. Around her waist hangs a girdle of human hands. She is always painted bloody red and altogether she is anything but an inviting goddess. It is said that she has never been truly happy since they changed her daily sacrifice from a human being to a goat. It's an ill wind that blows nobody any good, however: the goats for the sacrifices to Kali, throughout India, are all supplied by the natives, to whom the carcass is returned, the temple priest retaining a small piece of meat for himself and the head as an added decoration to Kali's shrine. So, you see, the native gets his butchering done free and Kali's appetite is satisfied. You won't need any blatant announcement of this latter fact on draw