KASHMIR VALLEYS 89 



coolies struggling up with a small supply of grain to 

 the inhabitants of Sonamerg. In this solitude I found 

 the visible signs of the telegraph, viz., the poles and 

 wires, a great comfort. Very unlike the even regularity 

 of the companies of message conductors so familiar on 

 our roads and railways at home, these clambered about 

 the hillside emulating the accomplishments of the 

 giddy mountain goat, sometimes invisible while taking 

 a short cut across the mountain tops, then reappearing 

 passing through forest or over the great boulders of 

 some huge moraine. I regretted their absence when out 

 of sight, welcomed them back when they returned to 

 my narrow path. It must have appeared a wellnigh 

 impossible feat when it was first proposed to join the 

 far-away British outpost of Gilgit with Leh and 

 Srinagar, the awful winter tempests working deadly 

 havoc on hillside and open merg ; but the task has been 

 accomplished with that kind of determination which 

 seems to work blindly and inevitably whenever mind 

 comes in contact with more natural obstacles, and in the 

 loneliest marches I hardly felt cut off from the protect ; on 

 of the " Sirkar " when so close at hand was the medium 

 of quick communication with the headquarters of that 

 "raj," which, by its far-reaching power, permitted 

 lonely wanderings through a country, for centuries the 

 scene of wild disturbances and constant warfare. 



My journey up was not to be accomplished without 

 some excitements, for when within six miles of Sonamerg 

 I found myself entering a region of deep-lying snows, a 

 broken bridge over the Sind showed a thickness of 

 nearly twelve feet, and had but recently been destroyed. 

 It preluded the first of my difficulties, for a great sheet 

 of snow many feet deep was lying right across the path, 



