that strong music. We sat on the upper deck and watched the dream
- like beauty drift slowly by until we emerged beneath a little
bridge into the fairy land of the lake which the Mogul Emperors
loved so well that they made their noble pleasance gardens on the
banks, and thought it little to travel up yearly from far - off
Delhi over the snowy Pir Panjal with their Queens and courts for
the perfect summer of Kashmir.

We moored by a low bank under a great wood of chenar trees, and
saw the little table in the wilderness set in the greenest shade
with our chairs beside it, and my pipe laid reverently upon it by
Kahdra.

Across the glittering water lay on one side the Shalimar Garden
known to all readers of "Lalla Ruhk" - a paradise of roses; and
beyond it again the lovelier gardens of Nour-Mahal, the Light of
the Palace, that imperial woman who ruled India under the weak
Emperor's name - she whose name he set thus upon his coins:

"By order of King Jehangir. Gold has a hundred splendours added
to it by receiving the name of Nour-Jahan the Queen."

Has any woman ever had a more royal homage than this most royal
lady - known first as Mihr-u- nissa - Sun of Women, and later,
Nour-Mahal, Light of the Palace, and latest, Nour-Jahan- Begam,
Queen, Light of the World?

Here in these gardens she had lived - had seen the snow mountains
change from the silver of dawn to the illimitable rose of sunset.
The life, the colour beat insistently upon my brain. They built a