256 TRAVELS IN THE EIGHTIES. 



customs, when, in reality, he desires nothing of the 

 kind. The three tents a large Cabul tent, a ser- 

 vants' tent, and a tente d'abri by Edgington were put 

 up under the shelter of a large banyan-like tree, on a 

 spot which happened to be bare of snow, while on 

 three sides north, east, and west the gigantic peaks, 

 all snow-white, which surrounded us, showed their 

 smallest details almost as plainly as at mid- day, under 

 the radiance of a full moon, each of the scattered 

 pines and the thicker forest slopes standing out so 

 blackly against the snow that one could easily 

 imagine larasingh, ibex, and all the other species of 

 game moving about beneath them. 



The people belonging to one of the farmhouses at 

 the entrance to the Wangat valley (which is wrongly 

 marked Kanknai in the map) had lately sighted deer 

 high up among the snows, and in that direction the 

 shikari thought it would be best to go. Deeper and 

 deeper grew the snow, through which there was a 

 narrow track made by some coolies carrying loads. 

 Now, the footsteps of a coolie in the snow, or, for that 

 matter, anywhere, are exceedingly short ones, as we 

 experienced to our pain in returning along the high 

 road after heavy snowfalls ; each following coolie steps 

 precisely in the other's footmarks, which results in a 

 chain of hard, round, sunken pits just too far asunder 

 for one to take two in one's stride, and yet so near to 

 each other that the process of following such a path 

 day after day and hour after hour is intensely fatigu- 

 ing, as when a long-legged volunteer has to keep step 



