power.  ‘What is that?’ said King Anang Pal.—­’It is,’ said the Brahman, ’the serpent Sechnaga, who lies under the earth and stops it, and who at the same time has charge of Change and Revolution.—­’Well, and what then?’ said King Anang Pal.—­’If the serpent were dead there would be no change,’ said the Brahman.—­’Well, and what then?’ said King Anang Pal.—­’If you should cause to be constructed a great nail of iron, I will show you a spot where it shall be driven so as to pierce the head of the serpent.’  It was done; and the nail—­being this column which you now contemplate—­was duly driven.  Then the Brahman departed from the court.  Soon the king’s mind began to work, to question, to doubt, to harass itself with a thousand speculations, until his curiosity was inflamed to such a degree that he ordered the nail to be drawn out.  With great trouble and outlay this was done:  slowly the heavy mass rose, while the anxious king regarded it.  At last the lower end came to his view.  Rama! it was covered with blood.  ‘Down with it again!’ cries the joyful king:  ‘perhaps the serpent is not yet dead, and is escaping even now.’  But, alas! it would not remain stable in any position, pack and shove howsoever they might.  Then the wise Brahman returned.  ‘O king,’ said he, in reply to the monarch’s interrogatories, ’your curiosity has cost you your kingdom:  the serpent has escaped.  Nothing in the world can again give stability to the pillar or to your reign.’  And it was true.  Change still lived, and King Anang Pal, being up, quickly went down.  It is from this pillar that yon same city gets its name.  In the tongue of these people dilha is, being interpreted, ‘tottering;’ and hence Dilhi or Delhi.  It must be confessed, however, that this is not the account which the iron pillar gives of itself, for the inscription there declares it to have been erected as a monument of victory by King Dhara in the year 317, and it is known as the Lath (or pillar) of Dhara.”

[Illustration:  Indigo-factory near Allahabad.]

Next day we took train for Agra, which might be called Shah Jehan’s “other city,” for it was only after building the lovely monument to his queen—­the Taj Mahal—­which has made Agra famous all over the world, that he removed to Delhi, or that part of it known as Shahjehanabad.  Agra, in fact, first attained its grandeur under Akbar, and is still known among the natives as Akbarabad.

“But I am all for Shah Jehan,” I said as, after wandering about the great citadel and palace at the south of the city, we came out on the bank of the Jumna and started along the road which runs by the river to the Taj Mahal.  “A prince in whose reign and under whose direct superintendence was fostered the style of architecture which produced that little Mouti Masjid (Pearl Mosque) which we saw a moment ago—­not to speak of the Jammah Masjid of Delhi which we saw there, or of the Taj which we are now going to see—­must have been a spacious-souled man, with frank and pure elevations of temper within him, like that exquisite white marble superstructure of the Mouti Masjid which rises from a terrace of rose, as if the glow of crude passion had thus lifted itself into the pure white of tried virtue.”