ise and robbery.

CHAPTER XV.

DELHI AND AGRA.

From the police-thana of Rai, where the night is spent, to Delhi, the
character of the road changes to a mixture of clay and rock, altogether
inferior to kunkah. The twenty-one miles are covered, however, by 8.30
a.m., that hour finding me wheeling down the broad suburban road to the
Lahore Gate amid throngs of country people carrying baskets of mangoes,
plantains, pomegranates, and other indigenous products into the markets
of the old Mogul capital. Massive archways, ruined forts and serais,
placid water-tanks, lovely gardens, feathery toddy-palms,
plantain-hedges, and throngs of picturesque people make the approach to
historic Delhi a scene long to be remembered.

Entering the Lahore Gate, suitable accommodation is found at Northbrook
Hotel, a comfortable hostelry under native management near the Moree
Gate, and overlooking from its roof the scenes of the most memorable
events connected with the siege of Delhi in 1857. Letters are found at
the post-office apprising me of a bicycle-camera and paper negatives
awaiting my orders at the American Consulate at Calcutta, and it behooves
me to linger here for a few days until its arrival in reply to a
telegram. No more charming spot could possibly be found to linger in than
the old Mogul capital, with its wondrous wealth of historical
associations, both remotely antique and comparatively modern, its
glorious monuments of imperial Oriental splendor and its reminiscences of
heroic deeds in battle.

A letter of introduction to an English gentleman, brought from Kurnaul,
secures me friends and attention at once; in the cool of the evening we
drive out together in his pony-phaeton along the historic granite ridge
that formed the site of the British camp during the siege. The operations
against the city were conducted mostly from this ridge and the
intervening ground; on the ridge itself is erected a beautiful red
granite monument memorial, bearing the names of prominent officers and
the numbers of men killed, the names of the regiments, etc., engaged in
the siege and assault. Here, also, is Hindoo Rao's house, and ancient
obelisks.

East of the Moree Gate is the world-famed Cashmere Gate--world-famed
in connection with the brilliant exploit of the little forlorn hope that,
on the morning of September 14, 1857, succeeded, in the face of a deadly
fusillade from the, walls and the wicket gates, in carrying bags of
gunpowde