"Taj-Mahal is erected on a base of red sand-stone nine hundred and sixty-four feet long and three hundred and twenty-nine feet wide, one side of which is washed by the river Jumna, and on each of the four corners is a tower of red sand-stone covered by a white marble kiosk. Two mosques take up the east and west sides. From this ground rises a fine terrace of white marble, three hundred and thirteen feet square, in the center of which is the beautiful main building itself. At each angle is an airy marble spire of exquisite style, surmounted by a noble cupola resting on eight pillars. They are about one hundred and fifty feet high, and a spiral stairway leads to the very top. The ground-plan of Taj-Mahal forms a regular octangle. The four sides on which the entrances are located are each about one hundred and thirty feet long, and turn to the four cardinal points of the compass. The roof is seventy feet above the base. Over each corner is a gorgeous spire, and over the center towers a marble dome measuring seventy feet in diameter, and rising to a height of one hundred and twenty feet. It is covered by a gilt vault in the shape of a half-moon about two hundred and sixty feet above the floor. All this is of the finest Jaypoor marble, carefully polished, and still retaining its pure color. "Notwithstanding the colossal size of Taj-Mahal, every part of it, from the foundation to the dome, is adorned with artistically executed designs, and the whole is as carefully wrought as the finest ebony ornament. Thus the entire Koran is inscribed on it. Even to-day the burial vault of the beautiful queen is filled with the fragrance of roses, jasmines and sandal-wood. The graves of the empress and emperor constitute sarcophagi of the purest marble, covered with elegant inlays of agate, carnelians, lapis lazuli and other precious stones, and surrounded by a six-foot-high gallery in the open net-work of which lilies, roses and other flowers of gems are inlaid. The dome in Taj-Mahal produces an echo which is more pleasant, pure and lasting than any other. A single musical sound produced by the human voice seems to flow or soar up there like a prolonged, pleasant modulation, which dies away so slowly that one seems to hear it after it is silent, just as one seems to see a lark after following it with the eyes after it has disappeared. Twenty thousand workmen were engaged for twenty-two years in erecting this mausoleum."