If there is a Paradise on the face of the earth,
It is this, Oh! it is this, Oh! it is this.

I think of the garden and palace of Delhi Fort as the loveliest spot in
India. Not the most beautiful, not the most impressive; but the
loveliest. The Taj Mahal has a greater beauty; the ruined city of
Fatehpur-Sikri has a greater dignity; but for the perfection of domestic
regality in design and material and workmanship, this marble home and
mosque and accompanying garden and terrace could not be excelled. After
the Halls of Audience we come to the seraglio and accompanying
buildings, where everything is perfect and nothing is on the grand
scale. The Pearl Mosque could hardly be smaller; and it is as pure and
fresh as a lotus. There is a series of apartments all in white marble
(with inlayings of gold and the most delicately pierced marble gratings)
through which a stream of water used to run (and it ran again at the
Coronation Durbar in 1911, when the Royal Baths were again made to
"function") that must be one of the most magical of the works of man.
Every inch is charming and distinguished. All these rooms are built
along the high wall which in the time of Shah Jahan and his many lady
loves was washed by the Jumna. But to-day the river has receded and a
broad strip of grass intervenes.




A DAY'S HAWKING


One of my best Indian days was that on which Colonel Sir Umar Hayat Khan
took us out a-hawking. Sir Umar is himself something of a hawk--an