[Footnote 251: This unexplained word probably signifies a corridore, or covered gallery.—E.]
[Footnote 252: Perhaps a divan, or audience hall.—E.]
From this devoncan, or hall of audience, which is pleasantly situated, overlooking the river, passing a small gate to the west, you enter another small court, where is another open stone chounter to sit in, covered with rich semianes, or canopies. From hence you enter a gallery, at the end of which nest the river is a small window, from which the king looks forth at his dersanee, to behold the fights of wild beasts on a meadow beside the river. On the walls of this gallery are the pictures of the late Emperor Akbar, the present sovereign, and all his sons. At the end is a small devoncan, where the king usually sits, and behind it is his bed-chamber, and before it an open paved court, along the right-hand side of which is a small moholl of two stories, each containing eight fair chambers for several women, with galleries and windows looking both to the river and the court. All the doors of these chambers are made to be fastened on the outside, and not within. In the gallery, where the king usually sits, there are many pictures of angels, intermixed with those of banian dews, or devils rather, being of most ugly shapes, with long horns, staring eyes, shaggy hair, great paws and fangs, long tails, and other circumstances of horrible deformity, that I wonder the poor women are not frightened at them.
Returning to the former court, where the adees, or guards, keep watch, you enter by another gate into the new durbar, beyond which are several apartments, and a great square moholl, sufficient to lodge two hundred women in state, all having several apartments. From the same court of guard, passing right on, you enter another small paved court, and thence into another moholl, the stateliest of all, containing sixteen separate suites of large apartments, each having a devoncan, or hall, and several chambers, each lady having her tank, and enjoying a little separate world of pleasures and state to herself, all pleasantly situated, overlooking the river. Before the moholl appropriated to the mother of Sultan Cussero, is a high pole for carrying a light, as before the king, as she brought forth the emperor’s first son and heir.