The variety of smells--all bad--was
quite remarkable.
We could only go at a walk, as the streets were very narrow and the
inhabitants thereof--particularly the cows--seemed very deaf and difficult
to arouse to a sense of the need for making room, though our good driver
yelled himself hoarse and employed language which I feel sure was highly
flavoured. Our progress was a succession of marvellous escapes for human
toes and bovine shoulders, but our "helmsman steered us through," and we
emerged from the kaleidoscopic labyrinth into the open space before the
Fort of Lahore, whose pinkish brick walls and ponderous bastions rose
above us.
The last thing I would desire would be to usurp in any way the functions
of grave Mr. Murray or well-informed Herr Baedeker, but there are certain
points to which I will draw attention, and which it seems to me very
necessary to keep in mind.
To the ordinary traveller in the Punjab and Northern India no buildings
are more attractive, no ruins more interesting, than those of the Mogul
dynasty, and the rule of the Mogul princes marks the high-water limit of
Indian magnificence. It was but for a short time, too, that the highest
level of grandeur was maintained.
For generations the Moguls had poured in intermittent hordes into Northern
India, but it was only in 1556 that Akbar, by defeating the Pathans at
Panipat, laid India at his feet. Following up his success he overthrew the
Rajputs, and extended his dominion from Afghanistan to Benares.
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