On the 1st of March we reached the celebrated fort of Rotas, considered to be one of the great bulwarks between Tartary and India. As we wound through the dismal defiles, and might be ruminating on the various expeditions which had traversed this very road, the fort burst upon our view like the scene of a magic lantern. It had been hidden from us by towering precipices. We approached its ponderous walls by a straggling path which time had chiselled in the rock, and soon reached its lofty gateway. The black hoary aspect of the fort, and the arid sterility of the surrounding rocks, inspired us with no favourable idea of the neighbourhood, which has been the resort of many a desperate band. We had omitted to provide ourselves with Runjeet Sing’s order for admission into this fortress; but we proceeded to the gateway, as a matter of course, and after a parley the doors were thrown open. The official permission arrived from Lahore on the following day. ~Fortress.~ We soon found ourselves among friends, and listened to the tales of the veterans without any fear of witnessing the scenes of their ancestors. The Afghan officers of the Mogul empire under the Emperor Humaioon dethroned that monarch, and fortified themselves in Rotas, in the year 1531. Shere Shah was its founder. Twelve years, and some millions of rupees, are said to have been wasted in its construction; yet it was betrayed, and fell. Humaioon returned from his wanderings with the auxiliaries of Iran, and recovered the kingdom of his forefathers. He commanded that the fort of Rotas should be levelled; but so massy are its walls, and so strong is the whole edifice, that his Ameers and Oomrahs ventured to ask his majesty, whether he came to recover his throne or destroy a single fort, since the one undertaking would require as much energy as the other. Humaioon contented himself with levelling a palace and a gateway as the monument of his conquest, and prudently marched to Delhi. We examined its walls and outworks, its gateways and bastions: and the people pointed out to us the orifices for pouring oil on the besiegers. We viewed with admiration the elaborate loopholes for the matchlock, the deep wells cut in the live rock, and the bomb-proof magazines of the fortification. From one of the towers we had a commanding view of the plain, in which we could distinguish a spacious caravansary, the work of the generous and tolerant Akbar. He here eclipsed his father Humaioon as much as he did in all the acts of his protracted reign. The son raised an edifice to shelter the weary traveller in his pilgrimage; the parent, full of wrath, wasted a greater sum in the demolition of a palace. These caravansaries have been erected at every stage as far west as the Indus; and the traveller cannot pass them without a pleasurable feeling at the enlightened design of their founder. The Emperor Akbar was a philanthropist. ~Nature and formation of rocks.~