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This white marble building, with the soaring domes and the tall slender minarets standing guard around it, is the famous mausoleum of Arjmand Banu, the favorite wife of the Mogul emperor Shah Jehan. You see less than half of the beautiful structure at this moment; that larger dome rises over the center of the whole, just above the tombs of the dead queen and her fierce lord and master. All that elaborate ornament which you see around the big doorway at the left and above these windows and along the edge of the roof and around that dome is colored mosaic, made by insetting and fitting together countless specially shaped fragment of cornelian, agate, jade, garnets, onyx -- every sort of semi-precious stone. Somebody said once of the Pathan monarchs of Sha Jehan's line, that they built like giants and finished like goldsmiths; here is one of the famous examples of their work. The actual facts before your eyes are as marvelous as the things we read of in the old tales of the "Arabian Nights."

You see the heavy low walls of the distant Fort up there at the edge of the city, beyond the bend in the river? Shah Jehan built that, too, almost three centuries ago. Those bubbly white domes are on a famous mosque -- the artist-warrior was a devout Mohammedan. With all his power and riches he came to a sad end, for his own son deposed him and kept him for seven long years as prisoner over there in Agra. His only pleasure left was looking off down here to the gleaming white walls and dome of this resting place of the wife of his youth.

(See Lane-Pool's "Story of Mediaeval India," Scidmore's "Winter India," Steevens' "In India," Arnold's "India Revisited," etc.)

From Notes of Travel, No. 11, copyright, 1904, by Underwood & Underwood.


N.W. from the Taj Mahal up the Jumna river to Agra, India.

Vue Nord Quest prise du Taj Mahal en amont de la rivierè Jumna vers Agra, Inde.

N.W. von Taj Mahal den Jumna Fluss hinauf bis Agra, Indien.

Vista del Taj Mahal al Noroeste hacia arriba por el tio Jumna, hasta Agra, India.

N.V. från Taj Mahal uppåt Jumna-floden till Agra, Indien.

на северо-зацадъ отъ тал-магалъ вверхъ по река жумны ло Aгрa, индiя.

Transcription Notes:
last sentence missing--needs Cyrillic transcription.