ithout
tenants and allowing them to crumble and decay.

Abandoned cities and citadels are not unusual in India. I have
already told you of one near Jeypore where even a larger population
were compelled to desert their homes and business houses for
similar reasons--the lack of a sufficient water supply, and there
are several others in different parts of India. Some of them
are in a fair state of preservation, others are almost razed
to the ground, and their walls have been used as quarries for
building stone in the erection of other cities. But nowhere can
be found so grand, so costly and so extensive a group of empty
and useless palaces as at Fattehpur-Sikri.

The origin of the town, according to tradition, is quite interesting.
When Akbar was returning from one of his military campaigns he
camped at the foot of the hill and learned that a wise and holy
Brahmin named Shekh Selim Chishli, who resided in a cave among
the rocks, exercised powerful influence among the Hindu deities.
Akbar was a Mohammedan, but of liberal mind, and had not the
slightest compunction about consulting with a clergyman of another
denomination. This was the more natural because his favorite
wife was a Hindu princess, daughter of the Maharaja of Jeypore,
and she was extremely anxious to have a child. She had given
birth to twins some years previous, but to her deep grief and
that of the emperor, they had died in infancy.

The holy man on the hill at Fattehpur was believed to have tremendous
influence with those deities who control the coming of babies
into this great world; hence the emperor and his sultana visited
Shekh Selim in his rock retreat to solicit his interposition
for the birth of a son. Now, the hermit had a son only 6 months
old, who, the evening after the visit of the emperor, noticed
that his father's face wore a dejected expression. Having never
learned the use of his tongue, being but a few months old, this
precocious child naturally caused great astonishment when, by a
miracle, he sat up in his cradle and in language that an adult
would use inquired the cause of anxiety. The old man answered:

"It is written in the stars, oh, my son, that the emperor will
never have an heir unless some other man will sacrifice for him
the life of his own heir, and surely in this wicked and selfish
world no one is capable of such generosity and patriotism."

"If you will permit me, oh, my father," answered the baby, "I
will die in order th