Rensselaer Republican, Volume 27, Number 19, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 January 1895 — ANCIENT DELHI. [ARTICLE]

ANCIENT DELHI.

Its Past G-lory and Present Attractions. Wonders of Indian Architecture—Deserted City of Amber-Dr. Tulmaje'i Sermon for the PreM. Continuing his series of round the world sermons through the press, Rev. Dr. Talmage, last Sunday, chose for his subject An Ind ia, ” the text being- A naos iii, 10, “Who store up violence and robbery in their palaces.” Before the first historian impressed his first word in clay or cut his first word on marble or wrote his flr»t word on papyrus Delhi stood in India, a contemporary of Babylon and Nineveh. We know that Delhi existed longer before Christ’s time than we live after His = time. Delhi is built of the ruins of seven cities, which ruins cover forty miles with wrecked temples, broken fortresses, split tombs, tumble down palaces and the debris of centuries. There are a hundred things you ought to see in this citv of Delhi, but three things you must see. The first thing I wanted to see was the Cashmere gate, for that was the point at which the most wonderful deed of.daring which the World has. ever seen was done. That was the turning point of the mutiny of 1857. The city of Delhi has a crenulated wall on three sides—a wall five and a half miles long—and the fourth side of the city is defended by the River Jumna. In addition to these two defenses of wall and water there were 40,000 sepoys all armed. Twelve hundred British soldiers were to take that city. Nicholson, the immortal general, commanded them, and you must visit his grave before you leave Delhi. He fell leading his troops. He commanded them even after being mortally wounded. You will read this inscription on his tomb: “John Nicholson, who led the assault of Delhi, but fell in the hour of victory mortally wounded and died 23 September, 1857, aged thirty-five years.” With what guns and men General Nicholson could muster he had laid siege to this walled city filled with devils. What fearful odds! Twelve hundred British troops uncovered by any military works to take a city surrounded by firm and high mason* TV, on the top of which were 114 guns and defended by 40,000 foaming sepoys. A larger percentage of troops fell there than in any great battle I happen to know of. The Crimean percentage of the fallen was 17-48, but the percentage of Delhi was 37.9. This city has ten gates but the most famous is the one before which we now stand, and it is called Cashmere gate. Write the words in red ink, because of the carnage. Write them in letters of light, for the illustrious deeds. W rite Them in letters of black, for the bereft and the dead. Will the wotld ever forget i that Cashmere gate? Lieut's. Salkeld and Home and Sergts. Burgess, Carmichael and Smith offered to take bags of powder to the foot of that gate and,set them on fire, blowing open the gate, although they must die in doing it. There they go just after sunrise, each one carrying asackeontaining twenty-four pounds of powder and doing this under the fire of the enemy Lieut. Home was j the first to jump into the ditch,

which still remains before the gate. I As they go one by one falls under the shot and shell. J* One of the mortally wounded as he falls hands his sack of powder and a box of luci- . fer matches to another, telling him j to fire the sack, when with an explosion that shook the earth for twenty miles around, part of the Cashmere gate was blown into fragments, and the bodies of some of these heroes were so scattered they were never gathered for funeral or grave or mpnument. The British army rushed in through the broken gate, and although six days of bard lighting wgre necessary before the city was in cbmnlete possession, the crisis was past. The Cashmere gate opoti, the capture of Delhi and all it contained of palaces and mosques find treasures was possible. Another thing you must see if you go to Delhi, though you leave many things unseen, is the palace of the moguls. It is an inclosure 1,000 yards by 500. You enter through a vaulted hall nearly 400 feet long. Floors of Florentine mosaicand walls once emeralded and sapphired and carbuncled and diamonded. I said to the guide. “Show us where once stood the peacock throne.’’ “Here it* was,” he responded All the thrones of the earth put together would not equal that for costiless and brilliance. It had steps of silver, and the seat and arms were of solid gold. It cost about slsQ4>Oo,’ 009. It stodd between two peacocks, the feathersjind plumes of which, were fashioned out of colored stones. Above the throne was a life size parrot cut out of one emerald. Above all was a canopy resting on twelve columns of the canopy fringed with pearls. Seated here, the emperor on public occasions, wore a crown containing among other things the Kohinoqr diamond, and the entire blaze of coronet cost $lO,350,000. But the peacocks that stood beside the throne have flown away, | taking all the display with them, I and those white marble floors were 1 reddened with slaughter, and those bathrooms ran with blood, and that

i Eden has had its flowers wither and ! its ! The third thing you must see 1 or never admit that you have been 1 in India is the mosque called Jumma j Musud. It is the grandest mosque I ever saw except St. Sophia at Constantinople, but it surpasses , that in some respects, for St. , Sophia was originally a Christian i church and changed into a .t£osque,_ i while this of Delhi was originally ■ built for the Moslems. The erection of this building required 5,000 laborers for six years —It is on a plateau of rock, has four towers rising far into the heavens, three great wateways inviting the world to i come in and honor the memory of the prophet of many wives, fifteen domes, with spires gold tipped and six minarets. What a 1 built up immensity of white marble 1 and red sandstone! We descended 1 the forty marble steps by which we ’ ascended and took another look at this wonder of the world. As I . thought what a brain the architect > tnust have had who first built that I mosque in his own imagination, and . as I thought what an opulent ruler I that must have been who gave the order for such vastness and symmetry, I was reminded of that which perfectly explained all. The architect who planned this was the same ■ man who planned the Taj—namely, j Austin de Bordeau—and the King who ordered the mosque constructed was the King who ordered the. Taj—namely, Shah Jehan. As this grand mogul ordered built the most splendid palace for the dead when he built the Taj at Agra, he here ordered built the most splendid palace of worship for the living at Delhi. Two /Hundred and eighty years ago Aus- ■ tin de Bordeau and Shah Jehan quit this life, but their work lives and , bids fair to stand until the continents crack open and hemispheres go down and this planet showers i other worlds with its ashes. i As that night we took the railroad | train from the Delhi station and 1 rolled out through thecity now living 1 i oyer the vaster cities buried under this ancient capital, cities under ; cities, and our traveling servant had ■ unrolled our bed, which consisted of ■ a rug and two blankets and a pil- I j low r and as we were worn out with i the sightseeing of the day and were roughly tossed on that uneven Indian ; railway. I soon fell into a troubled sleep, in which I saw and heard in a I confused way the scenes and sounds I of the mutiny of 1857 which at Delhi ■ we had been recounting, and now the rattle.of the train seemed to turn into the rattle of musketry, and now the light at the top of the car deluded me with the idea of a burning* city, and then the loud thump of the railroad brake was in dream mistaken for a booming battery, and the voices at the different stations made me think I heard the loud cheer of the British at the taking of the Cashmere gate, and as we rolled over bridges the. battles before Delhi seemed going on, and as we went through dark tunnels I seemed to see the tomb of Humayun in which the king of Delhi was hidden, and in my dreams I saw Lieutenant Renny of the artillery throwing shells which were handed him, their fuses burning, and Campbell and Reid and Hope Grant covered with blood, and Nicholson falling while rallying on the wall his wavering troops. But the morning began to look through the window of our jolting rail car, and the sunlight poured in on my pillow, and in my dreams I saw the bright colors of the English flag hoisted over Delhi, where the j green banner of the Moslem ha’d ' waved, and the voices of the wounded I and dying seemed to be exchanged for the voices that welcomed soldiers home again. And as the morning light got brighter and brighter, and in my dream I mistook the bells at a station for a church bell hanging in a minaret where a Mohammedan priest had mumbled his call to prayer, I seemed to hear a chant, whether by human or angelic vqjce.s in my dream I could not tell, but it was a chant about “peace and good will to man.” Halt here at what you have never seen before —a depopulated city, the city of Amber, India. The strange fact is that a ruler abandoned his palace at Amber and . moved to Jaipur, and all the inhabitants of the city followed. Except | here and there a house in Amber oc- ! cupied by a hermit, the city is as silent a population as Pompeii or Herculnaeum. But those cities were emptied by volcanic disaster, while this city of Amber was vacated because Prince Joy Singh was told by I a Hindoo priest that no city should I be inhabited more than 1,000 years, 1 and so the ruler 170 years ago, moved out himself, and all his people moved with him. You pass through the awfully quiet streets, all the feet that trod them in the days of their activity having gone on the long journey, and the voices of business and gayety that sounded amid these abodes having long ago uttered their last syllable. You pass by a lake covering 500 acres where the rajahs used to sail in their pleasure boats, but alligators now have full possession, and you come to the abandoned palace, which igJtn enchantment. No more picturesque place was ever chosen for the residence of a monarch. The fortress above looks down upon this palace, and the palace looks down upon a lake. This monarchist abode may have had attractions when it was the home of royalty; which have vanished, but antiquity and the silence of many years and opportunity to tread where once you would not have been permitted to tread may bo an addition quite equal to the subtraction. But what a solemn and stupendous

thing is an abandoned city! While many of the people of earth have ret roof for their heads, here is a whoio city of roofs rejected. The sand c* the desert was sufficient "excuse fo.i the disappearance of Heliopolis, and the waters of the Mediterranean sea for the engulfment of Tyre, and the lava of Mount Vesuvius for the obliteration of Herculaneum, but for the sake of nothing but a superstitious whim the city of Amber is abandoned forever. Oh wonderons India! The city of Amber is only one of the marvels which compel the uplifted hand of surprise from the day you enterlnia until you leave it. Its flora is so flamboyant, its fauna so monstrous and savage, its ruins so suggestive, its idolatry so horrible, its degradation so sickening, its mineralogy so brilliant, its splendors so uplifting, its architecture so old, so grand, so educational,so multipotent that India wjll not be fully comprehended until science has made its last experiment, and exploration has ended its last journey, and the library of the world’s literature has closed its last door, and Christianity has made its last achievement, and the clock of time has struck its last hour.