At the gate of the thriving town of Shahpoor, a few miles distant, they were met by the Governor of the fort, an officer of the Beejapoor Government, and pressed to stay to dinner and such entertainment as he could provide in the evening; and they consented, and an excellent house was placed at their disposal. The town lay at the north-east corner of the great mass of hills which ZÓra had seen from the pass by which they had entered the valley of Sugger; and the curious fort, surmounting enormous bare masses of granite rock, stood out with wonderful effect against the sky. Groups of soldiers appeared on the bastions; the Royal flag of Beejapoor waved from the citadel, which contained the excellent house of the Killadar, or commander, and it was evident the place held a numerous garrison. Shahpoor had been originally built by the Bahmuny Kings of Gulburgah, and contains many of their inscriptions; and being a natural position of great strength, in fact, impregnable, it served at once as a frontier fort and to keep the Beydur population in check. There was a nautch in the evening, at which our friends excused themselves on account of their religious duties; and the long wide streets of the town being level and well kept, ZÓra and her grandfather had no difficulty in following their hitherto practised vocation; and, as before, the invocations were sung, and the wallet, now a consecrated one, carried from one end of the town to the other.

The day following, they all went on together to Gogi, where the mausoleum of the earlier Beejapoor Kings was situated. They found it a thriving place, full of weavers, and the station of a large body of cavalry, on account of the excellent forage with which the neighbourhood abounded; and though by far the greater part were absent, there were enough to form an imposing force, which received the holy men as they arrived. Very interesting to them was the cemetery of the great Kings, and the college attached to it, which was in daily use.[2] It consists of one large interior, with chapels at the junction of the sides of the octagon; and the architecture of this, as well as the gateway and front of the building, is, perhaps, the finest specimen of florid Gothic in the Dekhan, built entirely of black basalt, exquisitely ornamented and finished. One by one the graves of the Kings behind were shown to them by the attendant priests, and these, with the tombs of their wives and some dependants, occupy a considerable area enclosed by a wall. When they came to that of Ibrahim Adil Shah, under whom our old friend had served, he kneeled down beside it and began to sob and beat his breast. ZÓra tried to soothe him, for not, even as yet, knowing his history, she feared he had been taken suddenly ill, and would fain have run for medicine; but he put his hand on her arm, and said—

"I have not forgotten what you said to me when I called for vengeance upon Osman Beg. Here lies one who did me injury more than thou knowest, ZÓra; at the remembrance of which all my worst passions rise into active being. And yet I thank Thee, O hearer of prayer," he continued, reverently raising his turban, "that Thou enablest me to say here I do forgive thee, O King and Royal master, and pray thou mayest have been accepted through His grace for all the good works thou didst to thousands. Peace be with thee, and the blessings of the Most High!"

"What was he to thee, Abba?" asked ZÓra, in wonder. "The attendant tells me that there have been many Kings since he died."

"What he was to me, child, thou wilt know hereafter, perhaps soon now; but no matter! In the great King Ibrahim I had a friend who loved me. Since him there have been two Kings, and the present one, whom I may be spared to see, bears his name. And yet, O once beloved master, my heart is even now with thee in the grave, where I must follow thee; and I bless Thee, O my Lord, that I have learned to forgive even through my child."

On the western side of the cemetery was the embankment of an irrigation lake of some considerable area, and the rain having fallen plentifully, it was full of water. Then they went and sat by it, and the soft south-west wind brought the tiny waves to their feet, and sighed in the noble trees which shaded the cemetery and the college. They had brought a slight refection with them, and ate it together, while the old Dervish discoursed on the mysteries of holiness, or told many a tale of the past, when he, in King Ibrahim's suite, had halted for the day and performed ceremonies at the tombs of his ancestors, while the ground for the college was being measured and the architect explained the work he proposed to undertake. They attended the afternoon prayer in the college, which was filled to overflowing with the people and soldiers from the town; and our old friend addressed them in one of his loving, persuasive sermons, in which, perhaps from the unlooked-for occurrences of the day, he was even more eloquent than ever.

The Fatehas at the Kings' tombs could not be made ready that day, and as their companions had no objection, but, indeed, the contrary, they remained and formed a little procession to the cemetery, spending a day of quiet peace, such as ZÓra thoroughly enjoyed. She used to say long afterwards, when she was an old woman, that her second day at Gogi was one of the happiest of her life, because one of the most thoughtful and impressive; and how sweet it had been to her to find her beloved grandfather's mind softening to an habitual cheerfulness and submission. "Truly," as he said constantly to her, "truly, child, I feel as if the Lord were leading me in this Turreequt, and that, too, by means of thee, O beloved! from the first."

The country from Gogi to Gulburgah is uninteresting, but very fertile and well cultivated, and for some portion of their first march many of the Royal cavalry and townspeople escorted them; for the fame of our old friend had gone before him, and all were desirous of paying him honour and receiving his blessing. Crossing the Bheema river by the ferry at Ferozabad, ZÓra saw the palace fort of the famous King Feroze Shah, situated on a high bank of the river above one of its long deep reaches. But it is now only a ruin, and was even then in poor condition; and towards the close of the following day the minarets and domes of the holy city of Gulburgah were in sight, and it was quickly reached.

Nothing could persuade our old friend that it should be treated like an ordinary town. His heart was full of reverence and thankfulness at having reached the end of his pilgrimage in safety and honour, and his new friend was equally reverential. So within a mile of the entrance gate they dismounted from their litters and performed a prostration ceremony by the wayside, and walked on together, ZÓra, as was her wont, dressed in her pilgrim's dress, leading her grandfather. Near the gate the old man had his sheet spread for alms, and it was not till the time for evening prayer was nigh that he arose and, guided by one of the MushÁekh's servants, followed his friend to the final place of destination, which was in a suburb which belonged to the spiritual Prince of the place, the descendant of the Geesoo DurÁz family, who reigned. The noise and bustle of the crowded Bazar was therefore avoided.

ZÓra, whose ideas of a city were of the most limited practical nature, and to whom Sugger, Shahpoor, and Gogi had appeared immense, was fairly confounded when, in company with her new friend, they ascended to the terrace of the house which had been assigned to them by the Prince. Before them were the fine mausoleums and domes of the original Geesoo DurÁz, and the cemeteries attached to them, the Prince's palace and pretty gardens, with their fine rows of cyprus trees. In the middle distance the massive group of the mausoleums of the Bahmuny Kings, standing apart on an elevated piece of ground, and forming a picturesque group, with the still populous city lying at their feet; while to the left was the strong fort, with its regular fortifications, and beyond a considerable artificial lake, which the King Feroze, the merry Monarch of Dekhan history, had had constructed for his aquatic amusements.

Gulburgah was, however, an ancient city, for when Zuffir Khan, the Viceroy of the then Emperor of Dehly, Mahomed Toghluk, founded the Bahmuny dynasty in A.D. 1347, the old Hindoo city was selected by him as his capital in the Dekhan, and continued to be so until, in 1435, nearly a century afterwards, a new city was built at Beeder, which was finally adopted as the seat of the Royal Government. During a hundred years of prosperity, however, under the early portion of the dynasty, Gulburgah had become a rich and thriving city. It was the mart for local produce and importations from the coast. Merchants of Arabia and Persia, nay, of Turkey and the Levant, resided there, and the courts of the early Bahmunies were magnificent and wealthy. Thus the city was ornamented with many public buildings, caravanseras, and mosques, almshouses, hospitals, and the like, and the fort constructed there was by far the strongest and most regular in the Dekhan; and within it the great mosque, which was to have been the exact counterpart of that at Cordova, in Spain, was begun, and roofed in; but never completed.

All these principal edifices are still extant, but much decayed and ruined. King Feroze's once superb palaces in the fort are masses of shapeless ruins; but the mosque is as it was left by the masons and architect, and could be finished were there anyone to undertake it, and the fort is perfect. The mosques and other buildings in the city are tolerably preserved; but the mausoleums of the once haughty Kings are deserted, except by grazing cattle and goats, which shelter there from the noon-day heat; and no one lives who bestows a lamp and its oil to light at night the interior of these noble edifices.

At the period of the visit of our friends, the city belonged to the kingdom of Beeder, which, after the extinction of the Bahmunies, remained in possession of the capital. Gulburgah was one of the chief cities of the kingdom, and was garrisoned by a large body of its troops to guard the frontier of the Bheema river against the armies of Beejapoor. If not, therefore, equal to its former prosperity, the city was yet in good condition, and the religious and other edifices were in perfect preservation and in constant use.

Nearly three hundred years have elapsed since the time we write of, and Time, the spoiler, has been busy. The city has dwindled to a provincial town; the buildings are extant, but many of them in decay. The tombs of the Kings, so solidly built, are, perhaps, with the fine old fort, the least changed of all, and the lake below the palace of King Feroze sparkles as brightly as ever in the sun. The only building and premises as perfect now as they were three hundred years ago are the mausoleums of the Geesoo DurÁz family, for their possessions have been continued to them, and they live in their old prosperity and religious honour, and the attendance of pilgrims at their shrine is as large now as perhaps it ever was—as devout and as full of faith. But Gulburgah has a new honour never dreamed of, truly, in the dim past. It is now a station of the railway line from Bombay, and from it diverges one branch to Madras and one to Hyderabad—the old capital of the Golconda kingdom.