hot weather. There were formerly many of the kind round about Agra,
constructed by the Mogul Emperors or their nobles. Besides these
resorts of ease and pleasure, there are gloomy dungeons which tell
of misbehaving slaves and indiscreet sultanas, who were hurried down
to meet their fate at the hands of the executioner, the silent Jumna
receiving their lifeless bodies.

The Anguri Bagh.

The great quadrangle in front of the Khas Mahal is the Anguri Bagh,
surrounded on three sides by arcades, probably built by Akbar and
intended for his zenana. They were occupied in the Mutiny days by
the British officers and their families who were shut up in the Fort.

The Anguri Bagh is a very typical specimen of the old Mogul gardens,
laid out in geometrical flower-beds, with four terraced walks
radiating from the central platform and fountain. A stone trellis
formerly enclosed the flower-beds, and probably supported the vines
which gave the garden its name.

Among the many improvements lately made by Lord Curzon in the Fort is
the clearance of the wire-netting fernhouses and bedraggled shrubs
which formerly disfigured the quadrangle. If it cannot be kept up
in the old Mogul style, it is certainly better to leave the garden
uncultivated.

SHISH MAHAL.--On the north side of the Anguri Bagh, close to
the zanana, a passage leads to the _Shish Mahal_, or "palace of
glass." This was the bath of the zanana. The marble slabs of the
floor have been torn up, and the decoration with a kind of glass
mosaic seems to have suffered from clumsy attempts at renovation. A
passage from the Shish Mahal leads to the old water gate.

THE "SOMNATH" GATES.--Before entering the Jahangiri Mahal, on the
opposite side of the Anguri Bagh, we will pause at a corner of the
zanana courtyard, where a small apartment contains an interesting
relic of the Afghan expedition of 1842--the so-called "Somnath"
gates, taken from the tomb of Mahmud of Ghazni in the capture of that
city by the British. They were the subject of a most extraordinary
archaeological blunder by the Governor-General, Lord Ellenborough,
who, in a grandiloquent proclamation, identifying them with the
gates of carved sandalwood which Mahmud according to tradition,
had taken from the celebrated Hindu temple of Somnath in 1025,
announced to the people of India that "the insult of eight hundred
years had been avenged." The gates were conveyed on a triumphal car
through the towns of northern In