declare the scale of ornamentation that once covered all these crumbled walls and arches. Every inch of the roofless tomb is covered with carved ornament,—inscriptions, traceries, arabesques, and geometrical designs—the most ornamented mausoleum in India.
In the chilly, whitewashed vaults of the rest-house in the shadow of the Kutab, with dusty chicks to exclude any pernicious sunshine, we shivered over the cold, cold tiffin we had brought with us. Not hot bouillion nor hot chocolate could mitigate the death chill of that interior, or our interiors, and we hastened to drive with the wind four miles to the tomb of Tughlak. That massive, fortress-like place, of characteristic Egyptian solidity, was in extreme contrast to the highly ornamented tombs we had been seeing all day. The sloping walls and the entire absence of ornament came as a surprise, but the Pathan emperor has the ideal warrior's tomb. A crumbling wall half screens the ruins of his deserted capital of Tughlakabad, within which Tughlak's fortress is as Egyptian as his suburban tomb.
Some street-dancers pleaded with us at the hotel door, followed around and tapped on our windows, and we relented and moved the tea-table to the terrace, where it was really warmer than in the house. The two women, in cheap cottons and cheap jewelry, posed and whirled to a monotonous measure beaten on a skin drum. One woman gracefully carried a tiny child on her hip, or set it down on the cold flags, where it played contentedly with its fingers. Both dancers wore voluminous accordion-plaited skirts of red cotton, with yellow head-sheets
