r acquaintance. One recognizes in the word
"minaret" the diminutive of "minar," the latter being to the former
as a tower to a turret. This minar of Koutab's--it was erected by the
Mussulman general Koutab-Oudeen-Eibeg in the year 1200 to commemorate
his success over the Rajput emperor Pirthi-Raj--is two hundred and
twenty feet high, and the cunning architect who designed it managed to
greatly intensify its suggestion of loftiness by its peculiar shape.
Instead of erecting a shaft with unbroken lines, he placed five
truncated cones one upon another in such a way that the impression
of their successively lessening diameters should be lengthened by the
four balconies which result from the projection of each lower cone
beyond the narrower base of the cone placed on it--thus borrowing, as
it were, the perspective effects of five shafts and concentrating them
upon one. The lower portion, too, shows the near color of red--it is
built of the universal red sandstone with which the traveler becomes
so familiar--while the upper part reveals the farther color of white
from its marble casing. Each cone, finally, is carved into reeds, like
a bundle of buttresses supporting a weight enormous not by reason of
massiveness, but of pure height.

The group of ruins about the Koutab Minar was also very fascinating
to me. The Gate of Aladdin, a veritable fairy portal, with its
bewildering wealth of arabesques and flowing traceries in white marble
inlaid upon red stone; the Tomb of Altamsh; the Mosque of Koutab,--all
these, lying in a singular oasis of trees and greenery that forms a
unique spot in the arid and stony ruin-plain of Delhi, drew me with
great power. I declared to Bhima Gandharva that it was not often in a
lifetime that we could get so many centuries together to talk with at
once, and wrought upon him to spend several days with me, unattended
by servants, in this tranquil society of the dead ages, which still
live by sheer force of the beautiful that was in them.

"Very pretty," said my companion, "but not by force of the beautiful
alone. Do you see that iron pillar?" We were walking in the court of
the Mosque of Koutab, and Bhima pointed, as he spoke, to a plain iron
shaft about a foot in diameter rising in the centre of the enclosed
space to a height of something over twenty feet. "Its base is sunken
deeper in the ground than the upper part is high. It is in truth a
gigantic nail, which, according to popular tradition, was co