in Lahore in 1639. The weather and ill-treatment
of various kinds have removed a great deal of the exquisite enamel
colours from the tiles, but enough remains to indicate how rich and
magnificent the effect must have been originally. A part of the south
facade which has fallen in shows how the builders employed earthen
pots to lessen the weight of the concrete filling, a practice followed
in the ancient dome construction of Egypt and Rome.

The Ram Bagh

Among a number of more or less ruined garden-houses on this bank
of the river, there is one, a little beyond the Chini-ka-Rauza, of
especial interest, on account of the tradition which associates it
with the Emperor Babar. It is called the Ram Bagh, and is believed to
have been one of the "elegant and regularly planned pleasure-grounds"
which Babar laid out and planted with fruit trees and flowers, as he
has described in his memoirs.

No doubt this was the scene of many imperial picnics; not the drunken
revels of Babar's Kabul days--for just before the great battle with
the Rajputs in 1527 he smashed all his gold and silver drinking-cups
and took a vow of total abstinence, which he kept faithfully--but
the more sane and temperate pleasures which music, poetry, and his
intense delight in the beauties of nature could furnish. Here is a
charming picture he has given of another garden he laid out in the
Istalif district of Kabul:--

"On the outside of the garden are large and beautiful spreading
plane-trees, under the shade of which there are agreeable spots,
finely sheltered. A perennial stream, large enough to turn a mill,
runs through the garden, and on its banks are planted plane and other
trees. Formerly this stream flowed in a winding and crooked course,
but I ordered its course to be altered according to a plan which
added greatly to the beauty of the place. Lower down ... on the lower
skirts of the hills is a fountain, named Kwajeh-seh-yaran (Kwajeh three
friends), around which are three species of trees; above the fountain
are many beautiful plane trees, which yield a pleasant shade. On the
two sides of the fountain, on small eminences at the bottom of the
hills, there are a number of oak trees. Except on these two spots,
where there are groves of oak, there is not an oak to be met with on
the hills of the west of Kabul. In front of this fountain, towards the
plain, there are many spots covered with the flowering arghwan tree,
and, besides these arghwan pl