- E.]

There are four gales to the castle.

One to the north, leading to a rampart having many large cannon. Another westwards, leading to the Bazar, called the Cichery gate, within which is the judgment-seat of the casi, or chief judge in all matters of law; and beside this gate are two or three murderers, or very large pieces of brass cannon, one of which is fifteen feet long and three feet diameter in the bore. Over against the judgment-seat of the casi, is the Cichery, or court of rolls, where the grand vizier sits about three hours every morning, through whose hands pass all matters respecting rents, grants, lands, firmans, debts, &c. Beyond these two gates, you pass a third leading into a fair street, with houses and munition along both sides; and at the end of this street, being a quarter of a mile long, you come to the third gate, which leads to the king's durbar. This gate is always chained, all men alighting here except the king and his children. This gate is called Akbar drowage; close within which many hundred dancing girls and singers attend day and night, to be ever ready when the king or any of his women please to send for them, to sing and dance in the moholls, all of them having stipends from the king according to their respective unworthy worth.

The fourth gate is to the river, called the Dersane, leading to a fair court extending along the river, where the king looks out every morning at sun-rising, which he salutes, and then his nobles resort to their tessilam. Right under the place where he looks out, is a kind of scaffold on which the nobles stand, but the addees and others wait in the court below. Here likewise the king comes every day at noon to see the tamashan, or fighting with elephants, lions, and buffaloes, and killing of deer by leopards. This is the custom every day of the week except Sunday,[260] on which there is no fighting. Tuesdays are peculiarly the days of blood both for fighting beasts and killing men; as on that day the king sits in judgment, and sees it put in execution. Within the third gate, formerly mentioned, you enter a spacious court, with atescannas all arched round, like shops or open stalls, in which the king's captains, according to their several degrees keep their seventh day chockees.[261] A little farther on you enter through a rail into an inner court, into which none are admitted except the king's addees, and men of some quality, under pain of a hearty thwacking from the porter's cudgels, which they lay on load without respect of persons.

[Footnote 260: Probably Friday is here meant, being the Sabbath of the Mahometans. - E.]

[Footnote 261: Mr Finch perpetually forgets that his readers in England were not acquainted with the language of India, and leaves these eastern terms unexplained; in which he has been inconveniently copied by most subsequent travellers in the East.

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