KASHMIR VALLEYS 253 



sojournings in my canvas house, or under the doonga's 

 straw roof, I had forgotten them and their noisome 

 interior. Their bareness and insufficiency were now 

 borne in upon me with all the freshness of new 

 acquaintance dirty, ragged, ceiling cloths, stained 

 walls, the plaster peeling off in great flakes, scraps 

 of cotton carpets, serving no purpose save the 

 tripping up of the unwary, chairs with fragmentary 

 legs, tables of unplaned wood, draped with cotton 

 cloths of another decade, a bed with furnishings 

 that filled the imagination with awesome phantoms, 

 iron washstands and cracked crockery, a glass 

 minus its quicksilver, and a window dark with dust 

 for these luxuries, plus three daily meals of more 

 than ordinary deadliness, does the wanderer in India pay 

 prices that at home would procure if not luxuries, at 

 least comfort and cleanliness. 



Oh, ye managers of country inns and ye manager- 

 esses of seaside hotels away in England, why not leave 

 the country of over-competition, where you are crowded 

 out by sheer weight of numbers, and in a new land 

 introduce another system and a more consoling cookery 

 which shall be composed of other compounds than 

 curries and custards? 



Having elected to rest a few hours among the pine 

 trees at Murree, my dak tonga proceeded without me. 

 I finished my journey in another, a public vehicle, a 

 private one not being procurable at such short notice 

 in mid-season. By half -past four we were rattling off 

 again, worn out by the rough-and-tumble method of 

 jolting over three hundred miles of road. For some 

 time I realised nothing but my discomfort, first thrown 

 backwards and forwards till my head and neck held 



