114 MAJOR W. HODSON. 



Londoners having to go and pay a fourpenny- and 

 a sixpenny-bit each per diem for the pleasure of 

 living in the town. Then the tax on all shawls, 

 goods, and fabrics is about seventy-five per cent, 

 including custom duty, and this the one solitary 

 staple of the valley. . . . What a garden it might 

 be made ! Not an acre to which the finest water 

 might not be conveyed without expense worth nam- 

 ing, and a climate where all produce comes to per- 

 fection, from wheat and barley to grapes and silk." 



On the 20th they went northwards towards 

 Ladakh, whence they passed on through Iskardo, 

 across the Indus, to Gilgit — "a terra incognita 

 to which, I believe, only one European now living 

 has penetrated." " Sir Henry Lawrence," he adds, 

 " is not well, and certainly not up to this trip, but 

 he has made up his mind to go. I do not gain 

 strength as fast as I could wish, but I fancy, when 

 once thoroughly unstrung, it takes a long time to 

 recover the wonted tone." 



By the end of July our travellers were encamped 

 at Kargil, only a few marches from Leh, the chief 

 town in the Tibetan province of Ladakh. " As far 

 as the pass," he writes to Mr F. A. Foster, "dividing 

 Kashmir from Tibet, all was lovely, rich woods and 

 green sloping lawns, covered with a profusion of our 

 English garden - flowers, intersjDersed with mighty 

 peaks and savage rocks. You cross the ridge and 

 all is changed — glaciers and vast masses of mountain 

 alone meet the eye, and as you descend the valley 

 of the Drap river, day after day you have but a 

 wall of mountains on your right hand and on your 

 left, and a torrent rushing along by your side to 

 join the Indus. . . . We are among the Bhots here,. 



