"The Emperor’s palace is a good half league in circuit. The walls are of fine cut stone, with battlements, and at every tenth battlement there is a tower. The fosses are full of water and are lined with cut stone. The principal gate has nothing magnificent about it, nor has the first court, where the nobles are permitted to enter on their elephants... A little farther on, over the same gate is the place where the drums, trumpets, and hautboys are kept [the Naggar-Khana], which are heard some moments before the Emperor ascends his throne of justice, to give notice to the Omrahs, and again when the Emperor is about to rise. When entering this third court you face the Divan where the Emperor gives audience. It is a grand hall elevated some four feet above the ground floor, and open on three sides. Thirty-two marble columns sustain as many arches, and these columns are about four feet square, with their pedestals and some mouldings [the Chihal Situn, hall of forty pillars]. When Shahjahan commenced the building of this hall he intended that it should be enriched throughout by wonderful works in mosaic, like those in the chapel of the Grand Duke In Italy; but having made a trial upon two or three pillars to the height of two or three feet, he considered that it would be impossible to find enough stones for so considerable a design, and that moreover it would cost an enormous sum of money; this compelled him to stop the work, and content himself with a representation of different flowers."