A NOBLE QUEEN.
BOOK I.
CHAPTER I.
THE CATARACT OF THE KRISHNA.
Queen Elizabeth reigned in England. In the Dekhan, King Boorhan Nizam Shah ruled over Ahmednugger, and King Ibrahim Adil Shah II. over the kingdom of Beejapoor. They were rivals.
It was a fiery day in the end of the month of May 159–, when a small party of horsemen, evidently weary from long travel, were passing over the plains which lie north of the Krishna river. They carefully avoided village and road tracks, and kept a steady course eastward across the cultivated and uncultivated ground which seemed well known to them. There were no hedges, as the fields are unenclosed, except near the villages; and there were no trees, except distant clumps here and there, which marked the site of a village or hamlet, or perchance a lonely Mussulman shrine or Hindoo temple.
Nothing could be more dreary or desolate in appearance than the landscape; every green thing had long ago been burnt up; the soil was for the most part black and cracked; and the fields, which had been or were being ploughed, were broken into large clods, over which the tired horses strained with difficulty.
Beyond the river Krishna, which lay at a few miles' distance to the right hand, was a small cluster of hills, and directly before them a continuation of the range, which seemed to be broken in the middle by a gap; but the hills themselves were continually distorted by the hot wind and mirage, which had effect on everything about them.
