16 RIFLE AND SPEAR WITH THE RAJPOOTS. 



started for Murree directly they returned, taking Santan 

 with us on the tonga, and sending my ayah and two ekka 

 loads of lug-sage by the lower and direct road to Kashmir. 

 We intend to sleep to-night at Murree, the chief hill station 

 of the Punjab. 



The road from Rawal Pindi at first runs nearly straight 

 across a fairly flat country, and looks as if it were going 

 right through the bis mountain, 7,500 feet high, on which 

 Murree is situated. After about an hour's drive, however, 

 we reach the lower spurs of the hills, and from Trit, where 

 there is a dak bungalow, the real ascent commences. 



These dak bungalows are an excellent institution kept 

 up by the .State, imperial or native, for the use of travellers, 

 and you find them about fifteen to twenty miles apart on all 

 the more important roads. The majority have only a bare 

 bedstead, table and chair, but a few are more comfortably 

 furnished. You bring your own bedding, as indeed you do 

 in the train, and everywhere else in India. For food you 

 can nearly always rely upon a fowl being caught, killed and 

 cooked for you. This, the staple dish of a "Sahib" in 

 India, goes by the name of " sudden death." 



