keeper's frequent cry from Delhi roofs, and watched obedient flocks circle and wheel at the will of invisible owners.
After five miles of temples, tombs, and graves we had had our fill of mortuary constructions, and, to the consternation of the bearer, refused to descend for Safdar Jang's tomb. "What, memsahib! Not see Safdar Jang? Everybody must see. Very nice tomb. Three-story place, that tomb. Gentries always go see that tomb." But we were obdurate. Safdar Jang was only the unlucky vizier of an inconspicuous Somebody Shah, and Fergusson had said that the mausoleum would "not bear close inspection."
All this time we were conscious of a slender, dark lance lifted against the sky-line. It was what we had come so far to see—the Kutab minar, one of the seven great sights of India, and certainly the most beautiful tower in the world. It grew as we advanced, until each angle, balcony, and band of lettering on its three red sandstone sections declared itself, and the flat, white marble sections at the summit were merged in inconspicuous perspective. This remarkable Kutab is emphatically such a departure from all the round or square towers ever seen that one has no wish to consider how it might have looked if constructed of one material throughout, or if the bands of ornament, the balconies, and the honeycomb work had been omitted. It is so richly decorated, it is itself so decorative, that at moments it seems as if it were only the fancy of a season, a mere World's Fair fantasy in staff or stucco, instead of a
