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They prevailed on their countrymen to form a regiment on the model of "master's," Old muskets were purchased, and Sheik Jumma had the glory to see during his reign the 1st, or Jumma's Own, rise to existence. A more ludicrous sight could not, I believe, be witnessed.
The third column, ably guided by Sir T. Metcalf, had also to retire before the massive walls of the Jumma Musjid. Part also of the 4th, under Major Reid, hastening to the support of the Cashmere contingent, was almost overpowered. Major Reid was wounded, and his troops retreated; but the guns mounted on Hindoo Rao's hill poured shrapnel into the enemy.
Conspicuous, on a high table rock rising almost perpendicularly in the heart of the city, is the Jumma Musjid, the great mosque, a superb pile of building, with its domes and minarets. To the left, as viewed from the Ridge, is the great mass of the king's palace a fortress in itself with its lofty walls and towers, and with its own mosques and minarets.
It was worth toiling up its narrow circular staircase to enjoy the view which the summit afforded of the country I had just traversed: the Jumma Musjid at Delhi was discernible in the distance, while immediately below lay the large camp of the Commander-in-Chief, the tents of which were pitched with great regularity, and looked dazzling white in the bright sun.
Excitement therefore was at its highest, when on the 20th of October a pilot came on board at the mouth of the Hooghly, and they learned that the assault had been made on the 14th of September; and that, after desperate fighting extending over a week, the city had been captured, the puppet Emperor made prisoner, and the rebels driven with tremendous loss across the bridge of boats over the Jumma.
Jumma had the happy faculty of never looking rumpled, a trick which I tried hard to learn, but all in vain. He was as black as ebony, yet his features were like those of a Caucasian; in fact, he strikingly resembled an old Chicago friend. Among our porters there were many types of features, and in a curious way many of them resembled people we had known at home.
Haupt has pointed out that in general appearance they are not unlike the great minar called the Kutub at Old Delhi, and a lively imagination might see a resemblance to the vast piers, once the bases of minars, which flank the great entrance archways of some mosques at Ahmedabad, for example those in the Jumma Musjid. Yet there is no necessity to go so far afield.
The finest mosque in Delhi, and one of the finest in the world, is the Jumma Musjid. We happened to visit it just as the priests were calling the faithful to prayer, which they do by ascending to the foot of the minarets and turning toward Mecca and there chanting the call. Numerous worshippers came, and having washed in the pool, went to the Mosque and began their worship on their knees.
It forms part of the moorish kingdom of Ludamar, but the majority of the inhabitants are negroes, who purchase a precarious protection from the moors, in order to avert their depredations. On Mr. Park's arrival at Jarra, he obtained a lodging at the house of Daman Jumma, a Gambia slatee, to whom he had an order from Dr. Laidley for a debt of the value of six slaves.
The fort and palace, together with the adjacent mosque, called Jumma Musjid, are the chief centres of interest and the points we first visited. The two places suffered greatly during the mutiny of 1857, and the old Mogul capital has passed through so many vicissitudes that a little historical setting seems necessary.
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