NATURALIST IN INDIA. 253 



and after the poor -woman had been placed on straw and made 

 as comfortahle as the hut would allow, I took her husband 

 aside, and by the aid of a Sikh sepoy of my guard, interro- 

 gated him respecting the circumstances. The husband's story' 

 was that she had been in love with a soldier at Noushera, 

 and in consequence he had reproved her, and was on the way 

 to take up his residence at another village, when she pre- 

 ceded him and his child for the alleged purpose of preparing 

 their dinner before their arrival at Uri, and that his attention 

 was directed to the occurrence by the appearance of her 

 bundle and slippers on the edge of the precipice. He told 

 the story with such sang froid, and looked altogether so much 

 the villain, that I had great misgivings as to his telling me 

 the truth. My servants, after making further iuquiries, were 

 of the same opinion, and that he had pushed her over the cHff 

 and placed the shoes and bundle in the above situation in 

 order to make it appear that the act was her own doing. The 

 poor woman recovered so far by the following morning as to 

 be able to recognise her infant, but I had no time to wait, and 

 when I passed Uri a week afterwards I heard that she died 

 on the day after my departure. When the circumstances of 

 the case were mentioned to the chief official at Uri Fort he 

 shrugged his shoulders, and in true Indian pathos exclaimed, 

 "What can I do, she was his wife?" — as much as to say that 

 matrimonial differences of whatever description were beyond 

 his jurisdiction. Pilgrims on their way to the caves of Umer- 

 nath passed us in parties constantly, and a number of these 

 nomads encamped under a mulberry-tree close to our bivouac 

 at Uri. They informed us that they had been wandering all 

 over India for the last four years, visiting sacred shrines, and 

 had come direct from Ajmeer, in the centre of Hindostan, to 

 pay their respects to their gods in the gypsum cave of Umer- 



