NATURALIST IN INDIA. 161 



the bow and stern of tlie flat-bottomed boat, we managed to 

 gain the opposite side without much difficulty. The course 

 of the Jhelum in this district forms nearly a triangle ; pro- 

 ceeding westwards in the first instance to Mazufurabad, it 

 then suddenly nearly doubles on itself, and runs in a southerly 

 direction. Our route lay across the triangle thus formed in a 

 north-eastern course. The Jhelum divides the British from the 

 territory of the Cashmere ruler, whose little mud forts are seen 

 at almost every little village on the way. The farmers were 

 loud in their complaints of the tyranny of the Maharajah 

 Goulab Singh, and kept continually extolling the rule of the 

 English on the other side of the river ; but when we advised 

 them to go across and squat on the opposite hiU-sides, they 

 said they could not endure to leave the old huts and homes of 

 their fathers. At one of the hamlets on the way I was asked to 

 give my advice with reference to a broken arm, and was struck 

 with the good native surgery, as far as apparatus went, which 

 consisted of a hollow piece of ash-:bark, lined with fine moss, 

 and placed one on each side of the limb. It had been put on 

 fresh from the tree, and became hard after having been fitted 

 to the inequalities of the arm. A more effectual splint could 

 not have been adjusted. We passed a night at the little fort 

 of Dunna and on the following morning, in pelting rain, pur- 

 sued our course down ravines and over ridges. By the side 

 of a little graveyard we observed a cypress very like that of 

 Europe ; the fir, spruce, oaks, poplar, ash, elm, etc., covered 

 sheltered portions of the ridges and along the lower parts of 

 the valleys. We saw a barking-deer, and in a Kttle ash- 

 wood I shot the beautiful orange-coloured bullfinch {Pyr- 

 rhula awantiaca), which, untU then, had been quite unknown 

 to naturalists. The male is brilliant orange, and very different 

 from the red-headed bullfinch mentioned with the birds of 



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