Page 153 - Early English Adventurers in the Middle East_Neat

AN IMPERIAL DESPOT IN DRESS AND UNDRESS 153

under the leadership of Sultan Purwaz, one of his elder
sons. Prince Khurrum’s expedition derived all the import­
ance which attaches to an effort to retrieve a failure, and
Jehangir was determined that it should have the fullest
advantage that could be derived from his presence in a
commanding position directly overlooking the theatre of
war. His courtiers were probably far from sharing his
zeal for the maintenance of the imperial prestige. The
route lay through a wild and inhospitable region, in which
supplies were difficult to obtain, and the absence of any­
thing in the nature of roads made the transport of the
immense force included in the imperial camp a matter of
the utmost difficulty. Mandu itself was little more than a
heap of ruins. Its highest recommendation was that it
was a strong position, but its fortifications, however useful
they might be for the purposes of a post of observation
such as Jehangir contemplated, ofEered no suitable shelter
for the great train of nobles and Court functionaries, to
say nothing of the horde of camp followers who ministered
to the multifarious needs of the imperial camp.
Roe was so fortunate as to be able to establish him­
self in a deserted mosque which he found on the outskirts
of the ruined city. As there was in close proximity to
this a stream of pure water, he was fairly comfortable, but
the hardships of the journey had told upon his constitu­
tion, and he was laid low for some time after his arrival with
an attack of fever. It was for him a time of great depres­
sion. “ Death and I have been house fellows,” he wrote
to a friend at home at this period, and somewhat later he
stated that he was “ full of India, even to fastidiousness.”
His ill-health was aggravated, there can be no doubt, by
the disappointments which he had sustained in the prosecu-

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