24 TO SIRINUGGUR. 



storm, and in the rainy season which lasts about two 

 months, is there any vapour to impede the vision, which 

 roams over snowy peaks of various chains of mountains 

 far on the other side of Cashmere. 



The beauties of this scenery, in its magnificence and 

 colossal proportions, its illimitable extent and brilliancy of 

 colouring, is far beyond any description. All around you 

 nature exhibits herself in her most attractive forms, pre- 

 senting almost every variety of shape and colour, moun- 

 tain and valley, rock and dell, forests of noble pines and 

 individual giants waving their monstrous arms overhead 

 as you pursue your path, with foaming torrents dashing 

 at the bottom of the precipices below you, gushing rills of 

 purest water trickling from the hills on whose slopes you 

 move, and from the path to the torrent below you stretch 

 undulating grassy slopes, here steep, there gently inclining, 

 occasionally intercepted by a rough ravine through which 

 tumbles a torrent, and the whole surface gay with many 

 flowers which the while perfume the air the ' tout en- 

 semble ' is such as to send the observant traveller, however 

 much his limbs may be taxed, exhilarated and rejoicing 

 on his way. It is a new existence to any one coming 

 from the depressing monotony of the interminable plains 

 of the Punjab. 



I had a long time to wait at Dupchin before any of my 

 followers arrived ; so I took a snooze under a pine tree 

 adjoining a fine stream, at which I had slaked my thirst. 

 The whole of my effects did not arrive until about five 

 o'clock. There was no village, no house here, it being 

 simply used as a camp ground, for which it offered some 

 facilities a level surface, wood and water in abundance 

 food we had brought with us. 



The night was bitterly cold, but my servants managed 

 tolerably, four or five sleeping in my smaller tent, as many 



