halt before the shrine dedicated to Shivaji's family goddess. The dark
inner shrine must have once been a Buddhist cave, carved out of the wall of
rock; and to it later generations added the outer hall, with its carved
pillars of teakwood, which hangs over the very edge of a precipitous
descent. Repairs to the shrine are at present in progress; and on the day
of our visit two bullocks were tethered in the outer chamber, the materials
of the stone-mason were lying here and there among the carved pillars, and
a painfully modern stone wall is rising in face of the austere threshold of
the inner sanctuary. The lintel of the shrine is surmounted with inferior
coloured pictures of Hindu deities, and two printed and tolerably faithful
portraits of the great Maratha chieftain. "Thence," in the words of the
poet, "we turned and slowly clomb the last hard footstep of that iron
crag," and traversing the seventh and last gate reached the ruined
_Ambarkhana_ or Elephant-stable on the hill top. It is a picture of
great desolation which meets the eye. The fragment of a wall or plinth,
covered with rank creepers, an archway of which the stones are sagging into
final disruption, and many a tumulus of coarse brown grass are all that
remain of the wide buildings which once surrounded the _Ambarkhana_.
The latter, gray and time-scarred, still rears on high its double row of
arched vaults; but Vandalism, in the guise of the local shepherd and
grass-cutter, has claimed it as her own and has bricked up in the rudest
fashion, for the shelter of goats and kine, the pointed stone arches which
were once its pride.

Another noteworthy feature of the summit of the hill is a collection of
stone cisterns of varying ages, still containing water. The smaller open
cisterns, in which the water is thick and covered with slime, are of
Musalman origin, but there are one or two in other parts of the hill which
clearly date from Buddhist ages and are coeval with the rock-cells. The
most important and interesting of all are four large reservoirs, supported