certainly eight hundred years old, but are not in their original positions, having been rearranged by the Mahomedans.
Iron Pillar (p. 96). — In the court of the mosque Is that most interesting object, the Iron Pillar, nearly twenty-four feet long, and a marvellous piece of forging, weighing about six tons ; such a piece of work would not have been possible in Europe in the days in which it was made, or indeed until many centuries after, for the age of this pillar may be as much as sixteen centuries. It has often been doubted whether the material is really iron, and not a mixture of metals, for one would have thought that it would long ago have rusted away, but analysis has shown it to be composed of pure malleable iron. It is not a natural phenomenon, as the ornamented top will show ; a dent made by a cannon-ball, fired at it, so tradition says, by Ghulam Kadir, shows that the workmanship is good, for the blow was only sufficient to crack the pillar.
Great Arches (p. 97). — The central arch, behind the Iron Pillar, was restored by the orders of Lord Mayo, Viceroy of India from 1869 to 1872, in which year he fell by an assassin's hand in the Andaman Islands, the penal settlement of India, to which offenders are transported across
