This is Asia’s Appian Way. Ruins from every century, left by three races and three religions, are scattered over a large and dismal plain. The remains of ancient Hindu Delhi, of Afghan Delhi, and of Mogul Delhi, cover a dead expanse of seventy square miles. Slowly, during the flow of centuries, the city has changed its site, as a river changes its bed. As far as the eye can reach, dilapidated domes and broken columns reveal themselves in the midst of the dry brushwood. These yellowish hillocks are the ruins of Indra-Partha, the city of Indra, for which the five brothers of Mahabarata fought three thousand years ago. Farther away a granite pillar, covered with Pali characters, proclaims the edicts of the Buddhist King Asoka. Everywhere, like tombs in a cemetery, the _débris_ of Mongolian art, monumental mausoleums and domes surrounded by kiosks are heaped together, all corroded by time and merged into the uniform tint of the sad and dry vegetation that Nature provides. Several tombs are as large as those of Akbar at Secundra and rise up solitary upon the arid steppe. The blue peacocks that are roaming about are the only living things that haunt the place. Generations have swarmed here and of their living past this almost imperceptible residue is all that is left, just as ancient forests have had to exist in order to make a little piece of coal. The Vedic age, the Brahmanical age, the Buddhist age, the first Mussulman dynasties, the Mogul Empire,--each historical period has left here a small deposit.