66 TRAVEL, ADVENTURE, AND SPORT. 



exceedingly gloomy and oppressive ; and on seeing it, 

 I could not help thinking of " the Valley of the Sha- 

 dow of Death." The same idea had struck Lieut. - 

 Colonel Moore, the interpreter to the Commander- 

 in-Chief, whom I met at Kotgarh, a little lower down, 

 along with Captain De Roebeck, one of the Governor- 

 General's aides-de-camp. No description could give 

 an adequate idea of the tattered, dilapidated, sun- 

 burnt, and woe-begone appearance of these two officers 

 as they rode up to Kotgarh after their experience of 

 the snows of Spiti. Colonel Moore's appearance, 

 especially, would have made his fortune on the stage. 

 There was nothing woful, however, in his spirit, and 

 he kept me up half the night laughing at his most 

 humorous accounts of Spiti, its animals and its ponies; 

 but even this genial officer's sense of enjoyment seemed 

 to desert him when he spoke of his experience of the 

 hot Sutlej valley from Gaura to Kotgarh, and he said, 

 emphatically, " It is the Valley of the Shadow of 

 Death." I was struck by this coincidence with my 

 own idea, because it was essential for me to get up 

 into high regions of pure air, and I could not but 

 dread the journey up the Sutlej valley, with its 

 vegetation, its confined atmosphere, its rock-heat, and 

 its gloomy gorges. I had a sort of precognition that 

 some special danger was before me, and was even 

 alarmed by an old man, whose parting benediction to 

 us was, " Take care of the bridges beyond Xachar." 

 This was something like, " Beware the pine-tree's 



