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The great quadrangle in front of the Khas Mahal is the Anguri Bagh, surrounded on three sides by arcades, probably built by Akbar and intended for his zenana. They were occupied in the Mutiny days by the British officers and their families who were shut up in the Fort.
The elephants trumpeted and piped; the syces, or grooms, came rushing up with eager queries; the villagers bustled about like so many ants aroused by the approach of a hostile foe; my pack of terriers yelped out in chorus; the pony neighed; the Cabool stallion plunged about; my servants came rushing from the shelter of the tent verandah with disordered dress; the ducks rose in a quacking crowd, and circled round and round the tent; and the cry arose of 'Bagh!
This portrait leaves out the temples and villas, ancient and modern, the terraces and pavilions edged with the lotus and overhung with vines and plane trees, the Shalmiar Bagh, or Garden of Delight, and the Mishat Bagh, or Garden of Pleasure, where wine-loving Jehángír and his beautiful consort Núr Jahán, the Light of the World, luxuriated in the summers of long ago.
His Highness reappeared from nowhere in particular as his guests strolled across the terrace, and, after a little polite conversation, we took our leave and set forth for Srinagar. It was a glorious afternoon, and we deeply regretted that time would not permit us to visit the neighbouring Shalimar Bagh, which lay hidden among the trees near by.
The old Mogul style of gardening is a lost art, and one misses in the Ram Bagh the stately rows of cypress, interspersed with flowering trees, the formal flower-beds glowing with colour like a living carpet, which were planted by Babar; but the terraces, the fountain, the water-channels, and the little stone water-shoots cunningly carved so that the water breaks over them with a pleasant gurgling sound which may have recalled to him the murmurings of his native mountain-streams the old well from which the water of the Jumna is lifted into the channels, can still be seen, as well as the pavilions on the river-bank, now modernized with modern bad taste.
To begin with, neither you nor I were present at the Jallianwalla Bagh on that dreadful day dreadful especially for General Dyer for whom you show no sympathy, and therefore cannot know for certain whether the crowd was or was not unarmed. That it was an 'illegal, because a 'prohibited, assembly is evident; for it is absurd to suppose that General Dyer's 4-1/2 hours march, through the city that very morning, during the whole of which he was warning the inhabitants against the danger of any sort of gathering, was not thoroughly well-known.
"And he had enough intuition, and guts enough, to look for it first in the shay! I'm beginning to admire that man!" Aloud he asked the trooper: "What was the wording of the risaldar-major sahib's message?" "'Let Bagh be well groomed and held ready against all contingencies!" said the trooper. "Then take him outside!" ordered Warrington. "Groom him where you won't disturb the other horses!
It was in Lal Bagh, the Ruby Garden of hid treasure, that the Nawab Iq bal-ud-dowler, Lord Chamberlain to the first king of Oudh, hid, according to report, great caskets of silver rupees, with a huge ruby possessed of magic virtues, and left behind him a sheet of detailed directions for finding the treasure, with, alas, a postscript to explain that all the careful directions were quite wrong, being intended to mislead the would-be discoverer.
The Mussul Bagh is a large grove of fine chenars planted in lines so as to form avenues at right angles to each other. There must be several hundred of these noble trees upon the ground, I do not mean fallen but erect and vigorous. The Shaliman Bagh is an extensive and well cultivated pleasure garden with pavilions, tanks, canals and fountains, in true oriental style.
As it was, however, I hardly closed an eye all night, and spent the greater part of it in meandering about the Bauli Bagh, VESTITO DA NOTTE in which operation I rejoice to think that, like the Russians at the burning of Moscow, I at least put the enemy to very considerable inconvenience, even at the expense of my own comfort.
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