in a park outside the walls of Agra in connection
with a palace provided for her special residence. This marriage
was brought about through the influence of the governor of the
Portuguese colony at Goa, 200 miles south of Bombay, and illustrates
the liberality of Shah Jehan in religious matters. He not only
tolerated, but invited Catholic missionaries to come into his
empire and preach their doctrines, and although we know very
little of the experience of the Sultana Miriam, and her life
must have been rather lonely and isolated, yet the king did not
require her to remain in the harem with his other wives, but
gave her an independent establishment a considerable distance
from the city, where she was attended by ladies of her own race
and religion. Her palace has disappeared, but the church she
built is still standing, and her tomb is preserved. By successive
changes they have passed under the control of the Church of England
and her grounds are now occupied by an orphanage under the
superintendence of a Mr. Moore, who has 360 young Hindus under
his care. The fathers and mothers of most of them died during
the famine and he is teaching them useful trades. We stopped
to talk to some of the children as we drove about the place,
but did not get much information. The boys giggled and ran away
and the workmen were surprisingly ignorant of their own affairs,
which, I have discovered, is a habit Hindus cultivate when they
meet strangers.

Akbar the Great is buried in a coffin of solid gold in a mausoleum
of exquisite beauty about six miles from Agra on the road to
Delhi. It is another architectural wonder. Many critics consider
it almost equal to Taj Mahal. It is reached by a lovely drive
along a splendid road that runs like a green aisle through a
grove of noble old trees whose boughs are inhabited by myriads
of parrots and monkeys. The mausoleum is quite different from
any other that we have seen, being a sort of pyramid of four open
platforms, standing on columns. These are of red sandstone and
the fourth, where rests the tomb of the great Mogul, of marble.
The lower stories are frescoed and decorated elaborately in blue
and gold. The fourth or highest platform is a beautiful little
cloister of the purest white. No description in words could possibly
do it justice or convey anything like an accurate idea of its
beauty. Imagine, if you can, a platform eighty feet from the
ground reached by beautiful stairways and inclosed