Black Bears 247 



up a tall lump of rags, like a dejected fowl roosting. 

 Doubtfully S. addressed it. "Chokidar?" It un- 

 wound, arose, and was. It lit us fires in two rooms, 

 and we slept like stones. 



The next morning, going to the tonga office, we 

 booked all our effects to follow by bullock-cart to 

 Pindi station, nearly two hundred miles. Our own 

 luggage, strapped on the sides of a tonga^ we packed 

 in. Many and profound were the salaams from 

 Cooky, Lalla, Armudneera, Beastie, and Sweeper as 

 we drove off. 



That day we drove eighty miles, and slept at Domel. 

 As a rule, people take three days to drive out of and 

 into Kashmir, but it is such a dull way of spending 

 time that we resolved to do it in two. It was 

 extremely tiring, owing to the jolting of the tonga. 

 We changed ponies every six miles. What always 

 struck me was that one tumbled out of the tonga 

 to stretch one's legs, only to find that, far from 

 walking, one's keen desire was to sit down at once 

 from sheer weariness. 



We got up at six o'clock the next morning, and 

 drove for three hours before breakfast to Kohala ; 

 after which thirty miles entirely uphill brought 

 us to Murree ; and then a last forty miles took 

 us down to Pindi. Leaving Murree, the Illimitable 

 Plains lay idealised in the evening light, c< their 

 baked, brown expanse transfigured into the likeness 

 of a sunset sea rolling infinitely in waves of misty 

 gold." 



