Fourteen Thousand Feet High 185 



with but one entrance, and ending in a sleeping-place 

 thickly padded with dry grass. 



Here often from ten to fifteen marmots pass the 

 winter, all lying closely packed together, until the 

 spring. On awaking, hungry with their long fast, 

 they remove the hay with which they stuff up the 

 doors of their burrows, and begin again their watchful, 

 active lives. In the early summer a pair will have 

 from four to six young ones. We were rather anxious 

 to shoot one, but had nothing with us except a bullet 

 which would have blown a burra chuar into fragments. 

 So the little sentinels sat up and whistled unmolested. 



Into Lidderwat was a long and steep descent of 

 several miles ; at last we were right down in the 

 Lidder Valley, and selecting for our camping- 

 ground by the river the spot which the Resident and 

 his retinue had evidently occupied only four nights 

 before. Why they always left all their tent-pegs 

 behind we wondered ; but they came in most usefully 

 as firewood, collected in bundles by the servants from 

 each camp. 



We found Captain Molyneux, 1 2th Bengal Cavalry, 

 hard at work painting on the banks of the river. Not 

 long before he had been awarded the Viceroy's gold 

 medal at the Simla Exhibition for the second time, 

 and he was now collecting more material for some 

 large oils. 



S. and I encamped three nights at Lidderwat, riding 

 one day with Captain Molyneux up to the head of 

 the valley, as far as it is possible to march, right on 



