KASHMIR VALLEYS 245 



CHAPTER XX 



We flash across the level, 



We thunder thro' the bridges, 

 We bicker down the cuttings, 



We sway along the ridges. 

 A rush of streaming hedges, 



Of jostling lights and shadows, 

 Of hurtling, hurrying stations, 



Of racing woods and meadows. 



Henley. 



Of joltings and jarrings Wild ponies and fair ways A gentle- 

 man in khaki discusses the empire with one of the holy 

 arm y The seamy side of an Indian summer Homeward 

 bound. 



THE last hours of my stay in the Happy Valley had 

 arrived, and long before the sun rose to wake the 

 inhabitants to another gorgeous day, I should be on my 

 way, the first stage of a weary, toilsome journey that, 

 with but few hours' rest here and there on my passage 

 through India, I was to accomplish without break from 

 Srinagar to London during the hottest time of the year, 

 and under the torturing conditions of an unbroken 

 monsoon. With such an early start before me it seemed 

 an unnecessary torment of the flesh to go to bed at all, 

 but the consideration of those two hundred miles to 



