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WINTER INDIA

sunset that the humid atmosphere promised. The old chuprassy welcomed us to the Jasmine Tower, and gave us wicker stools that we might comfortably watch the white bubbles beyond the green foreground flame to rose-red and then fade away, effaced in the gray mists that rolled up the river, presage of the deluge rain that followed. The keeper brought torches and led us down to the labyrinth of dark chambers and vaults that underlie the zenana and the Grape Garden. Six thousand people found refuge in the fort during the Mutiny, and then all this underground world was explored, with its oubliettes and long passages reaching to the moats and the water-gate. The rooms we saw were the prisons for zenana offenders, and by dumb show and much mixed language we were informed that it was Akbar's wives who suffered most often here by torture and the rope, the sack, and the drop down the echoing well. No screams could be heard in the sunny Grape Garden, nor in the beautiful audience-hall; and, after Akbar's career of domestic tyranny, it was fitting that his son, Jahangir, should be ruled by his Persian wife, Nur Jahan, and that Shah Jahan, the grandson, should worship in life, and after her death, Mumtaz-i-Mahal.