KASHMIR. 217 



eating the two halfs of it as illustrations of the equal 

 length of the two distances. "\Vhen I afterwards 

 reproached this man for the difficulty into which he 

 had led us, he answered, with true Ivashmirian effron- 

 tery, that he had said nothing of the kind ; that it 

 was a Drasicallah, a fellow from Dras, who, he alleged, 

 had passed at the time, that had said so. But no one 

 objected to our going on, and all the bigarries showed 

 a remarkable alacrity in starting. "What in earth 

 their motive was I cannot say positively. Perhaps 

 they really wished to get on to Dras that day, from 

 fear of being cut off from their homes by a fall of 

 snow ; but it is more probable that they were afraid 

 of going there, and proposed to give me the slip 

 among the mountains ; for about this time the envoy 

 of the Yarkand ruler was expected to be coming up 

 the Dras Valley, on his return from a visit to Con- 

 stantinople, and immense numbers of Kashmir coolies 

 were being impressed in order to take his European 

 purchases up to Leh. At all events there must have 

 been some secret motive for their hurrying me into 

 the injurious task of undertaking in one day what 

 ought properly to have been a three days' journey. 

 I was ignorant of the fact when among those moun- 

 tains ; but find now, that in 1822 Moorcroft went 

 over the same road, and he took three days to it, 

 though it was July, and he started from above 

 Sankii, and on the third day did not reach Dras, 

 but only the hamlet opposite it, which I reached in 



