KASHMIR AND THE HIMALAYAS IN MID-WINTER. 257 



to a band which is playing a march in short, quick 

 measure ; and yet to overstep these footmarks resulted 

 invariably in plunging two feet sometimes more 

 into the snow. A deep ravine had to be passed, and 

 then higher wound the pathway up the mountain-side 

 until we seemed at length in the very heart of a likely- 

 looking hunting country, and came, rather to my sur- 

 prise, upon a house of the usual type, inhabited, as 

 Kassim stated, by a Pathan. These houses have the 

 walls frequently partly built of stones and rudely 

 plastered with mud ; the flat roof consists of beams and 

 planks covered thickly with earth, and over that a 

 coating of hard mud, in which a small opening allows 

 the smoke to escape. All round the snow was over 

 three feet in depth, and the track we had been follow- 

 ing led up to the door. I concluded that my own tent 

 would be pitched upon the roof, which consisted of a 

 large expanse of brown mud, and the only place free 

 from snow, and that the men, who at the last village 

 had all been anxious to sleep in the native houses, 

 would make themselves warm and comfortable within 

 the low, but rather large structure. Not so, how- 

 ever. Warm enough it was within, even to suffoca- 

 tion, and bitterly cold without. But the Pathan hap- 

 pened to have a wife with him, and therefore no one 

 could enter, so the tents were all pitched upon the 

 roof, while I calculated how many persons would 

 be injured or what the sensation would be like if 

 it should give way and precipitate us into the house 

 below upon the top of the solitary couple within. 



