THE JOURNEY INTO KASHMIR 119 



chits or recommendations, more than half of which 

 had doubtless carefully been written by some public 

 scribe in the bazaars. 



We got through with it somehow partly with 

 the help of Major W., the kindly secretary of the 

 Kashmir Game Association, and partly by the sim- 

 ple process of elimination from those hordes of good, 

 bad, and indifferent men. If you could have seen 

 our room at the hotel on the last day, when not 

 only dozens of disappointed shikaris besieged us, 

 but tailors, shoemakers, grocers, and peddlers of all 

 descriptions turned up to deliver their wares and 

 receive payment, with a policeman stationed at our 

 door to prevent riot and bloodshed, you would have 

 had an insight into the labors of a sportsman's pre- 

 parations, of which this was the culmination. 



At length, on the evening of May n, everything 

 was in final readiness for a start. From the hotel our 

 supplies, guns, and baggage had been transferred to 

 two doongas lying beside the bank of one of the 

 beautiful shaded canals with which Srinagar is in- 

 tersected ; and after taking a glad leave of the horde 

 of merchants, coolies, and disappointed shikaris 

 clamoring up to the last minute for custom or em- 

 ployment, we headed toward the Sind Valley, the 

 road into Baltistan. 



In order to explain briefly the route which we had 



