when I came to the Mogul’s, court, I saw many.  They intended to present these animals to the king of Persia.  Both Sir Robert and his lady used me with much respect; especially his lady, who presented me with forty shillings in Persian money; and they seemed joyful at meeting me, promising to bring me into good grace with the king of Persia, as I mean, with God’s help, to return through Persia to Aleppo.

From Lahore, I travelled in twenty days to another goodly city named Agra, through such a beautiful and level country as I had never seen before.  In this way, from the town’s end of Lahore to the skirts of Agra, we had a row of trees on both sides of the road, the most incomparable avenue I ever beheld.  Some ten days journey from Lahore towards Agra, but about ten miles off the road on the left hand, there is a mountain, the inhabitants of which have a singular custom, all the brothers of one family having but one wife among them, so that one women sometimes has six or seven husbands.  The same is related by Strabo concerning the inhabitants of Arabia Felix.  Agra is a very great city, but in every respect much inferior to Lahore.  Here the Mogul used always to keep his court, till within these two years.

From Agra I went in ten days to the Mogul’s court, at a town called Asmere, [Ajimeer,] where I found an English.  Cape merchant with nine more of our countrymen, residing there in the way of trade for our East India Company.  In. my journey from Jerusalem to the court of the Great Mogul, I spent fifteen months and some days, travelling all the way a-foot, having been so great a propatetic, or walker forwards on foot, as I doubt if you ever heard of the like; for the whole way, from Jerusalem to Ajimeer, contains 2700 English miles.  My whole perambulation of the greater Asia is likely to extend almost to 6000 miles, by the time I have returned back through Persia, by Babylon and Nineveh to Cairo in Egypt, and thence down the Nile to Alexandria, when I propose, with God’s blessing, to embark for Christendom.

The reigning Great Mogul is named Selim.[247] He is fifty-three years of age, his birth-day having been celebrated with wonderful magnificence since my arrival.  He was that day weighed in a pair of golden scales, which by great chance I saw that same day, the opposite scale being filled with as much gold as counterpoised his weight, and this is afterwards distributed among the poor.  This custom is observed every year.  His complexion is of an olive colour, something between white and black; being of a seemly stature, but somewhat corpulent.  His dominions are very extensive, being about 4000 English miles in circumference, nearly answerable to the compass of the Turkish territories; or, if the Mogul kingdom be any way inferior in size to that empire, it is more than equally endowed with a fertile soil beyond that of any other country, and in having its territory connected together in one goodly continent, within which no other prince possesses one single foot of land.  The yearly revenue of the Mogul extends to forty millions of crowns, of six shillings each, while that of the Turk does not exceed fifteen millions, as I was credibly informed in Constantinople, nor that of the Sophy five millions, as I learnt at Ispahan.  It is said that the present Great Mogul is not circumcised, in which he differs from all other Mahometan sovereigns.