ook out between the white pillars to see the lawns and
the trees in the old palace gardens, we shall find it difficult to
realise that this place of beauty and peace was ever a scene of fierce
revolt. The rest of the palace is now used partly as a barracks.

When the British, having beaten their way through the narrow streets,
and swept them clear of the foe, arrived here on that fateful day, the
14th September 1857, they found the palace deserted, except for a stray
sentry, holding his position with sublime courage. The rest had
fled,--thousands flying from hundreds,--and well they might, for the
British troops were wrought up by the cruelties of the Sepoys to a
sublime and just fury that made them seem like avenging angels. It is
said in one place that the sternness of the expression of the Sikhs'
faces made the wretched Sepoys fly without a shot being fired. The
palace area is full of beautiful buildings, and we shall see many more
specimens of this kind of Oriental architecture when we visit the
mosques in the town this afternoon.

[Illustration: THE KUTAB MINAR.]

So much is there to see, indeed, that it is not until the next day we
can ride out for a sight beyond the walls.

Pull up your horse and look ahead. Do you see that huge column rising
skyward from the plain? It is called the Kutab Minar and is two hundred
and forty feet high. As we get under it and gaze up at it it seems to
tower into the very sky. It is forty-seven feet across the base and
narrows to the top, it is fluted all the way down, and has frills in
stone around it here and there--truly a curious sight! There are three
hundred and seventy-nine steps to climb to the top; do you want to try
them? If so, I will wait here and hold your horse. You shake your head.
Wise boy!

There are other buildings around, parts of a mosque, and inside is an
iron pillar said to be one of the oldest things in India. The Kutab
Minar is supposed to have been built about the reign of our King John,
though there are some who put it further back; the pillar is
considerably older than that, but it cannot compare in antiquity with
many things we have seen in Egypt. After the Hindu kings came a line of
Moghul or Mohammedan kings who swept the others away; of these the old
king of Delhi, living at the time of the Mutiny, was the last, and it is
supposed that it was at the beginning of the rule of the Moghul kings
that the Kutab Minar was erected.

Notice that brown-fac