After Seeing The Fair, We Paddled Across Through A Perfect Water-Meadow
To The Shalimar Gardens, Where We Found The Rajah And His Suite
Just Taking Their Departure.
The vista on entering the gardens was
extremely pretty:
Four waterfalls appear at the same moment, sending
a clear sheet of crystal water over a broad stone slab, and gradually
receding from sight in the wooded distance. A broad canal runs right
through the gardens, bridged at intervals by summer-houses and crossed
by carved and quaintly-fashioned stepping stones. At the extremity
there is a magnificent baradurree of black marble, which looks as if
it had been many centuries in existence, and had originally figured in
some very different situation. The pillars were entire to a length of
seven feet, and were highly polished from the people leaning against
them. Around this, in reservoirs of water, were about two hundred
fountains, all spouting away together, and on one side a sheet of
the most perfectly still water I ever saw. It appeared exactly like
a large looking-glass, and it was impossible to discern where the
artificial bank which inclosed it either began or terminated.
In these gardens it was that Selim, or Jehangeer the son of Akbar,
used to spend so many of his days with the far-famed Noor Jehan in the
beginning of the seventeenth century, and here was the scene of their
reconciliation, as related by Feramorz to Lalla Rookh ere he revealed
himself to her as her future lord, the king of Bucharia.
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