ent in attendance on him, amounted to about 4000
persons, besides 300 elephants and 800 camels." The noble buildings of
Akbarabad or Agra, the capital and residence of Akbar and Shalijehan,
the mightiest and most magnificent of the Mogul emperors, detained the
traveller for a day; and he notices with deserved eulogium the
splendid mausoleum of Shalijehan and his queen, known as the
Taj-Mahal. There is nothing that can be compared with it, and those
who have visited the farthest parts of the globe, have seen nothing
like it.[7] At Allahabad he launched on the broad stream of the
Ganges; and after passing through part of the territory of _Awadh_ or
Oude, the insecurity of life and property in which is strongly
contrasted with the rigid police in the Company's dominions, arrived
in due time at the holy city of Benares, the centre of Hindoo and
Brahminical sanctity.

[7] Many of our readers must have seen the beautiful
ivory model of this far-famed edifice, lately exhibited
in Regent Street, and now, we believe, in the Cambridge
University museum. It is fortunate that so faithful a
miniature transcript of the beauties of the Taj is in
existence, since the original is doomed, as we are
informed, to inevitable ruin at no distant period, from
the ravages of the white ants on the woodwork.

The shrines of Benares, with their swarms of sacred monkeys and
Brahminy bulls, were objects of little interest to our Moslem
wayfarer, who on the contrary recounts with visible satisfaction the
destruction of several of these _But Khanas_, or idol-temples, by the
intolerable bigotry of Aurungzib, and the erection of mosques on their
sites. Among the objects of attraction in the environs of the city, he
particularly notices a famous footprint[8] upon stone, called the
_Kadmsherif_, or holy mark, deposited in a mosque near the serai of
Aurungabad, and said to have been brought from Mekka by Sheik Mohammed
Ali Hazin, whom the translator of his interesting autobiography
(published in 1830 by the Oriental Society) has made known to the
British public, up to the period when the tyranny of Nadir Shah drove
him from Persia. "Here, during his lifetime, he used to go sometimes
on a Thursday, and give alms to the poor in the name of God. He was a
very learned and accomplished man; and his writings, both in prose and
verse, were equal to those of Zahiri and Naziri. When he first came to
India, he resided for some year