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"The very frankness of his privileges discouraged his imagination. There was no spice of jeopardy in them; no preludes of intrigue. "To relieve this surfeit, which is the worst of monotonies, eagerly would the prince have joined the revolting troops, detachments of which he could perceive from the walls of the Kutub hastening along the sun-scorched highway to Delhi.
The culmination of the morning's trip was at the Kutub Minar enclosure; the magnificent ruined Mosque of Kuwat-ul-Islam occupies a large portion of the space, and dates from the latter part of the twelfth century. The main entrance was through an arched doorway, the courtyard was surrounded by cloisters formed of pillars purloined from Jain temples and piled one upon another.
The most prominent feature of the landscape is Kutub Minar, rightly named the Tower of Victory. Some have thought it of Hindu origin, but the now accepted opinion is that it was built by the Moguls, after the conquest. It is two hundred and thirty-eight feet high, and has five stories with balconies, each story being decorated with bands of inscriptions.
"Into these, with a sort of clumsy trepidation, he began to pack the almost elusive portions of the gleaming mass of brilliants from the recess. "At the conclusion of fifteen vital minutes the prince had deposited the last of the gems in the receptacles of this curious jacket, and, if the reports of the Hindoo were to be credited, the advancing British were that much nearer the Kutub.
But he was thoroughly weary of the massive pile, and increasingly exasperated at the interdict of Delhi. "Certain salacious possibilities within its walls still made their insidious appeals to him, and he had not forgotten the ceremonious deference accorded him in the household of the Moghul. "At the Kutub he had to contrive his own dissipations and excesses. "There was no need to be clandestine.
The day's experience included luncheon at a "rest house" near Kutub Minar; this term applies to a simple semi-hotel, provided by the Government for the convenience of members of the military and civil service and their families; it is situated in places where there are no hotel facilities, and, when unoccupied, the public may share in the convenience.
"His royal master resided in the Kutub, a palace situated not far from Delhi on the road to Meerut. "This pretentious edifice, which had been established in the thirteenth century and which still presented, in some of its unrepaired portions, curious features of the bizarre architecture of that period, had been the dwelling place of a long line of ancient moghuls.
That the Slave Dynasty which he founded was in one respect at least not unworthy of empire, in spite of the stigma attaching to its worse than servile origin, the Kutub Minar and the splendid mosque of which it forms part are there to show.
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.
"Ere the sky was red, or the dews, in harmony with this unhappy man's dilemma, had been appropriated by the sun from the tiara of dawn, Ram Lal set out for the palace of the Kutub, in which Prince Otondo was compelled to reside for the present for some very convincing reasons provided by the British Government.
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