then they do among the Enemies. They have abundance of Artillery, and some considerable great Pieces, and such as whereof it may be said, the invention of them is as ancient as that of ours. They also make Gun-Powder, but it is not fully so good as what is made in Europe. Their Armies do not march above five Cos [ten miles] a day, and when they encamp they take up so great a quantity of ground, that they exceed the compass of our greatest Cities."
In the Itinerario of Father Sebastian Manrique, the Augustinian missionary, published at Rome in 1649, we read that in 1640 the city of Agra stretched for six miles along the Jumna, and had a population of six hundred thousand, excluding strangers, who crowded thither. He mentions the Jesuit mission and church, and afterwards journeying to Lahore, where the emperor was then residing, he describes an interview with the prime minister, Asaf Khan, Nur Jahan's brother, to whom he was presented by a Portuguese Jesuit, Father da Castro. Asaf Khan dwelt in a splendid palace adorned with pictures, some of which illustrated the life of Saint John the Baptist. At a banquet at which the emperor himself was present, Father Sebastian was amazed at the sumptuous fare and also at the presence of ladies of rank unveiled. This was in 1641, and Asaf Khan died the same year, leaving an immense fortune, in spite of the quarter of a million sterling that his palace at Lahore cost him. But, as Roe remarked, he, like all the court, was "greedy of gifts." Manrique learned from Father da Castro that the architect of the famous Taj
