NATURALIST IN INDIA. 173 



the river, above the city. I -will never forget the morning 

 after our arrival ; it had rained almost uninterruptedly, so 

 that, hitherto, everything had been seen to a disadvantage ; 

 but now the weather settled, and I was awoke at an early 

 hour by the song of the sky-lark, the mellow note of the 

 bulbul* {PycThonotus leucogenys), and the twitter of the chim- 

 ney-swallow. It was a lovely spring morning, and so like 

 home, that I could scarcely persuade myself I was not in 

 some beautiful nook in Old England.' 



The palace or shergur is situate on the left bank below 

 the first log-bridge. It wears a very dungeon-like appearance, 

 which the shining cupola built by the Maharajah Goulab 

 Singh somewhat relieved ; withal, the royal domain might 

 with truth have been considered to be in a very shaky con- 

 dition ; its crumbling walls were the abodes of myriads of 

 jackdaws, and its interior only a shade cleaner than the filthy 

 domains around. According to the usual custom, we paid a 

 series of visits to the shawl-manufactories, with which we 

 were much disappointed, more especially for having always 

 understood that the vast numbers of Cashmere shawls im- 

 ported had been manufactured there, until we inspected every 

 warehouse in the place, when it became clear that the num- 

 bers to be seen in London and Paris could never have been 

 made in the shops of Serinuggur — not even in a century ac- 

 cording to the means then prosecuted. One magnificent 

 shawl was being made for the Empress of the French in 

 Mookh du Shah's manufactory, and, I believe, at the outside 



* The red-Tented bulbul, the nightingale of Eastern poetry, is not found 

 in the Valley. Hooker, in the Himalayan journals, mentions hearing the 

 song of the nightingale in Sikkim, but I can find no record of the iMscinia 

 philomela having been met with by ornithologists on the Himalaya ranges 

 nor British India ; possibly the song of the Oopsychvs saularCs may have 

 been mistaken for that of the other. 



