and jeweled thrones testify to their luxurious taste and artistic sentiment, while the massive mausoleums which arise in every direction testify to their pride and their determination that posterity shall not forget their names.  I have told you in a previous chapter about the tomb of Humayun, the son of Baber (the Lion of the Faith), who transmitted to a long line of Moguls the blood of conquerors.  But it is only one of several noble examples of architecture and pretensions, and as evidence of the human sympathies of the man who built it, the tomb of his barber is near by.

About a mile across the plain is another group of still more remarkable sepulchers, about seven or eight miles from Delhi.  They are surrounded by a grove of mighty trees, whose boughs overhang a crumbling wall intended to protect them.  As we passed the portal we found ourselves looking upon a large reservoir, or tank, as they call them here, which long ago was blessed by Nizamu-Din, one of the holiest and most renowned of the Brahmin saints, so that none who swims in it is ever drowned.  A group of wan and hungry-looking priests were standing there to receive us; they live on backsheesh and sleep on the cold marble floors of the tombs.  No dinner bell ever rings for them.  They depend entirely upon charity, and send out their chelas, or disciples, every morning to skirmish for food among the market men and people in the neighborhood.  While we stood talking to them a group of six naked young men standing upon the cornice of a temple attracted our attention by their violent gesticulations, and then, one after another, plunged headlong, fifty or sixty feet, into the waters of the pool.  As they reappeared upon the surface they swam to the marble steps of the pavilion, shook themselves dry like dogs and extended their hands for backsheesh.  It was an entirely new and rather startling form of entertainment, but we learned that it was their way of making a living, and that they are the descendants of the famous men and women who occupy the wonderful tombs, and are permitted to live among them and collect backsheesh from visitors as they did from us.  Several women were hanging around, and half a dozen fierce-looking mullahs, or Mohammedan priests, with their beards dyed a deep scarlet because the prophet had red hair.

The most notable of the tombs, the “Hall of Sixty-four Pillars,” is an exquisite structure of white marble, where rests Azizah Kokal Tash, foster brother of the great Mogul Akbar.  He was buried here in 1623, and around him are the graves of his mother and eight of his brothers and sisters.  Another tomb of singular purity and beauty is that of Muhammud Shah, who was Mogul from 1719 to 1748—­the man whom Nadir Shah, the Persian, conquered and despoiled.  By his side lie two of his wives and several of his children.