CASHMERE. 325 



a canal ran from the Dal lake. There he was to engage 

 boats, and await our arrival. 



15th October. We got away with earliest dawn 

 again heard the bara sing again were they seen, and a 

 shot all but obtained as they crossed the ridge as before. 

 The guide was now sent down to drive the other ravine, 

 and we kept along the ridge, and stopped in ambush a 

 long time without seeing anything. Then, giving up, we 

 resumed our downward course, and I had stopped to don 

 another pair of grass sandals, when Mooktoo, looking 

 down into the ravine, signalled game. On joining him, 

 we saw a fine stag standing gazing at the guide who on 

 the same level was trying to turn him up to us. But 

 the provoking animal, as though quite up to the dodge 

 and danger, preferred facing the guide and the stones he 

 hurled to breasting the hill, and diving down took back 

 up the bed of the river. This was the last episode of 

 the chase of the bara sing. 



A steep and slippery descent, not accomplished without 

 some half-dozen tumbles, landed us in the bed of a ravine 

 which crossed that we had been hunting at right- angles, 

 and with its brawling torrent debouched on the open 

 cultivated undulations lying over the Dal lake. A path 

 leading through two villages, as usual shaded by fine 

 chunars, brought us to the Shalimah Bagh, a monument 

 of former magnificence and luxury, now neglected and 

 desolate. Some patchwork repairs have been made this 

 year to its buildings by the Maharajah, only enough to 

 check ruin and decay here and there, to which every- 

 thing here seems rapidly hastening. Following the now 

 empty aqueduct, we reached the canal, and found two 

 boats awaiting us, into one of which I stepped, and 

 gladly extended myself on the soft namba spread for me. 

 The passage from the Shalimah Bagh to my former bun- 



