red stone banded with white marble, surmounted by kiosques, and
ornamented with mosaics in onyx and agate. But I stayed not to look
at these, nor at the long sweep of the enclosure, crenellated and
pavilioned. Hastening through the gate, and moving down a noble alley
paved with freestone, surrounded on both sides with trees, rare plants
and flowers, and having a basin running down its length studded with
water-jets, I quickly found myself in front of that bewilderment of
incrustations upon white marble which constitutes the visitor's first
impression of this loveliest of Love's memorials.

I will not describe the Taj. This is not self-denial: the Taj cannot
_be_ described. One can, it is true, inform one's friends that the red
stone platform upon which the white marble mausoleum stands runs some
nine hundred and sixty feet east and west by three hundred and twenty
north and south; that the dome is two hundred and seventy feet high;
that the incrustations with which the whole superstructure is covered
without and within are of rock-crystal, chalcedony, turquoise,
lapis-lazuli, agate, carnaline, garnet, oynx, sapphire, coral, Pannah
diamonds, jasper, and conglomerates, brought respectively from
Malwa, Asia Minor, Thibet, Ceylon, Temen, Broach, Bundelcund, Persia,
Colombo, Arabia, Pannah, the Panjab, and Jessalmir; that there are,
besides the mausoleum, two exquisite mosques occupying angles of the
enclosure, the one built because it is the Moslem custom to have
a house of prayer near the tomb, the other because the architect's
passion for symmetry demanded another to answer to the first, whence
it is called _Jawab_ ("the answer"); that out of a great convention of
all the architects of the East one Isa (Jesus) Mohammed was chosen to
build this monument, and that its erection employed twenty thousand
men from 1630 to 1647, at a total cost of twelve millions of dollars;
and, finally, that the remains of the beautiful queen variously known