the seventh and last gate reached the ruined
_Ambarkhana_ or Elephant-stable on the hill top. It is a picture of
great desolation which meets the eye. The fragment of a wall or plinth,
covered with rank creepers, an archway of which the stones are sagging into
final disruption, and many a tumulus of coarse brown grass are all that
remain of the wide buildings which once surrounded the _Ambarkhana_.
The latter, gray and time-scarred, still rears on high its double row of
arched vaults; but Vandalism, in the guise of the local shepherd and
grass-cutter, has claimed it as her own and has bricked up in the rudest
fashion, for the shelter of goats and kine, the pointed stone arches which
were once its pride.

Another noteworthy feature of the summit of the hill is a collection of
stone cisterns of varying ages, still containing water. The smaller open
cisterns, in which the water is thick and covered with slime, are of
Musalman origin, but there are one or two in other parts of the hill which
clearly date from Buddhist ages and are coeval with the rock-cells. The
most important and interesting of all are four large reservoirs, supported
on massive pillars and hewn out of the side of the hill, which date from
about 1100 A.D., and were in all probability built by the Yadav dynasty of
Deogiri. One of them known as Ganga and Jamna is full of clear cool water
which, the people say, is excellent for drinking. Here again the hand of
the vandal has not been idle; for such names as Gopal, Ramchandra, etc.,
are scrawled in English characters over the face of the chief reservoir--
the holiday work no doubt of school-boys from Junnar. The presence of
these four reservoirs, coupled with other disappearing clues, proves that
between the Buddhist era and the date of the Musulman conquest, the hill
must have been fortified and held by Hindu chieftains, probably the
Yadavas already mentioned. The purely Musulman remains include the
_Ambarkhana_, a prayer-wall or _Idga_, the skeleton of a mosque, with a
delicate flying arch, and a domed tomb. In front of the prayer wall still
stands the stone pulpit from which the _moulvis_ of the fortress preached
and intoned the daily prayers; but neither the prayer-wall nor the mosque
have withstood the attacks of time as bravely as the tomb. For here scarce
a stone has become displaced, and the four pointed arches which rise
upwards to the circular dome are as unblemished as on the day when the
builder gaz