dens of God,” combined all their wealth of beauty beneath its shadow, and then away as far as the eye could reach on every side!
The writer visited the Kootub, on the last occasion, in 1864, in company with Bishop Thomson. The Bishop's description may be found in his “Oriental Missions,” Vol. I, p. 65. He justly calls the Minar “the grandest column of the world.” It is so. Except the tower of Babel, probably nothing ever erected by human hands has produced the same effect, as one stands awe-struck at its base and gazes up upon its majestic form towering to the skies.
It has not been without its tragic incidents. General Sleeman, writing in 1844, tells us that five years previously, “while the Emperor was on a visit to the tomb of Kootub-ad-deen, an insane man got into his private apartment. The servants were ordered to turn him out. On passing the Minar he ran in, ascended to the top, stood a few moments on the verge, laughing at those who were running after him, and made a spring that enabled him to reach the bottom without touching the sides. An eye-witness told me that he kept his erect position till about half-way down, when he turned over, and continued to turn till he got to the bottom, where his fall made a report like a gun. He was, of course, dashed to pieces.”
Close to the Kootub stands the famous Iron Pillar—the palladium of Hindoo dominion—and which, there is evidence for believing, has stood there for fifteen hundred years.
The Iron Pillar is a solid shaft of mixed metal resembling bronze, upward of sixteen inches in diameter and about sixty feet in length. The greater part of it is under-ground, and that which is above is less than thirty feet high. The ground about it has marks of exca- vation, said to have been carried down to twenty-six feet without reaching the foundation on which the pillar rests, and without loosening it in any degree. The pillar contains about eighty cubic feet of metal, and would probably weigh upward of seventeen tons.
The Iron Pillar, standing nearly in the middle of a grand square,
