9 2 A Sportswoman in India 



bleak table-land, sixteen thousand feet above the sea, 

 where rain is practically unknown, and where an icy 

 wind takes the skin off any exposed surface. 



Upon their Indian slopes the Himalayas are covered 

 with forests, which spring up wherever there is any 

 depth of soil. Thickets of tree-ferns and bamboos, 

 tracts of tree-rhododendrons which blaze red and pink 

 in the spring, luxuriate beside the deodars in dark 

 and stately masses. The very branches of the trees 

 are grey with lichen, green with moss, and glowing 

 with flowering creepers and orchids. 



In the autumn crops of red and yellow millet and 

 barley run in ribbons of brilliant colour down the 

 hillsides, and are grown on terraces made with much 

 labour upon the slopes of the khud. The Himalayas 

 produce little else, except timber, charcoal, and honey. 

 In the forests round Dalhousie we often met, along 

 the narrow paths, charcoal-burners and wood-cutters ; 

 the hardworking women generally laden with pine- 

 stems and conical baskets of grain. They say that 

 the solitary, rough life has a strange fascination in it, 

 and that a hillman will be a hillman to the end of 

 his days. The chains woven by such a country are 

 not brittle. 



We only stayed a few weeks in Daihousie before 

 preparing for an expedition into Chamba for the 

 purpose of shooting tahr and red bear. 



It was a two days' march to the borders of this 

 native state ; and knowing that we should have to 

 rough it, walking a great part of the way when we 



