Democratic Sentinel, Volume 12, Number 15, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 May 1888 — THE WONDERFUL TAJ. [ARTICLE]

THE WONDERFUL TAJ.

A. Description of the One Perfectly Beautiful Thing in the World. But this and all the things I have named and all the things I have seen, many of which are of wondrous beauty or of lofty grandeur, and will live in memory while I live —all of these pale and dwindle when brought into comparison with the one perfectly beautiful thing, not of India alone, but of the world. I had read much of this famous structure. I expected much, but had an undefined impression that I was to be disappointed—a vague feeling that my expectations could not be realized. I almost dreaded this when I approached it through the great south gateway, itself a magnificent building of red sandstone, 110 feet square and 140 feet high, pierced by a portal seventy-five feet to the keystone of its pointed arch. The structure is so relieved by inlaid white marble in arabesques, friezes of vines and flowers, and entablatures of quotations from the Koran that it looks light and cheerful. The gateway alone would be a fit mausoleum for a queen. Between this and the tomb is a garden 900 feet square, planted in trees of richest foliage. These so hid the mausoleum that I did not see it until I stood before the great arch portal of the gate. This made a framework showing only the . tomb proper. At first it looked small, for so perfect are its proportions it seemed quite near, and so light and airy as to seem a phantom picture thrown before a blue sky. The picture was so beautiful that I paused for some minutes. A man passed along the pMttform and seemed a mere pigmy, thus showing my eye the distance and causing it to comprehend the perfect proportions of the structure. I soon knew there was to be no disappointment. The “Taj” was even more beautiful than I had anticipated. As I walked forward through the gateway the picture widened until its broad wings and lofty minarets were in full view. As it widened I could almost fancy the dome was lowering. Yew and cypress have made a broad avenue, partially concealing the lower portion of the wings and minarets. In the middle of this avenue was a broad marble walk, with a long pool of pure water confined between marble walls, and a broad fountain bed half-way dcwn. •

I walked slowly along this walk looking at the building before me, dazzling and white in the Indian noonday sun, and still it seemed to be growing lower. But after removing my eyes from it, after passing around the central fountain, this effect disappeared, and as I still approached it grew taller, until standing in front of the great platform on which it is built, I realized the grandeur of the whole. Its whole length from minaret to minaret, and the he'ght to top of dome, all was fully before me. I looked up to the pinnacle nearly 250 feet. I shall not attempt any further description than to say the entire structure is of whiteveined or rather slightly clouded marble, is square, with corners cut off, and is surmounted by one grand dome, with a smaller one at each corner, and four lofty minarets over 130 feet high at the corners of the wings in front, and on each side is a wonderful doorway, sixty odd feet high, being the segment of a Saracenic arched vault. Flanking these doorways are arched window recesses one above another to the level of the arch of the great portal. The whole is inlaid in beautiful figures and arabesques in dark marble, thereby relieving the structure of too glaring appearance. Upon the great dome is a noble vaulted room of polished white marble, the wainscoting beautifully carved in vines and lotus flowers, and above inlaid in costly marbles. • In the center of this vaulted room, immediately under the apex of the dome, is the cenotaph of “Montaz,” called “Taj Mahal,” or “crown of the house. ” It is cut from a great block of snow white alabaster. A part of it is beautifully carved, and the whole made very beautiful by graceful vines and pretty flowers, composed of lapis lazuli, cornelian, blood-stones, jasper, onyx, moss-agates, gold stone, turquoise, and other costly stones, inlaid in tiny bits so as to give the blended hues of the flowers. In one small flower I counted thirty separate pieces. By the side of Montaz is the cenotaph of the Shah Jehan of the same pattern as that of his wife. He built .this wonderful tomb, and buried his wife in it. Afterward he was buried by her side. Around the cenotaph is a guard or fence some six feet high of open lattice work in alabaster, of most delicate workmanship, representing vines and flowers.— Carter H. Harrison's letters from Delhi, India.