Man likes to think that he is on the way to heaven upon
such easy terms; but gets angry at the notion that others won't join
him, because they may consider him an imbecile for thinking that he
is so. The Muhammadan generals and historians are sometimes almost as
concise as Caesar himself in describing very conscientiously a battle
of this kind; instead of 'I came, I saw, I conquered', it is 'Ten
thousand Musalmans on that day tasted of the blessed fruit of
paradise, after sending fifty thousand unbelievers to the flames of
hell'.
On the 10th we came on twelve miles to Kumbhir, over a plain of poor
soil, much impregnated with salt, and with some works in which salt
is made, with solar evaporation. The earth is dug up, water is
filtered through it, and drawn off into small square beds, where it
is evaporated by exposure to the solar heat. The gate of this fort
leading out to the road we came is called, modestly enough, after
Kumbhir, a place only ten miles distant; that leading to Mathura,
three or four stages distant, is called the Mathura gate. At Delhi,
the gates of the city walls are called ostentatiously after distant
places--the _Kashmir_, the _Kabul_, the _Constantinople_ gates.
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