44 
NARRATIVE. 
valley still more beautiful than Kargil, and with 
much more cultivation and trees. In the afternoon 
there was a muster of all the people from the country 
round. Most of our porters and bags^age animals 
had to be changed here. In front of the rest-house 
at Paskyum is a fine polo-ground, shaded on the 
south side by a row of very tall poplars ; and here we 
saw played the national game of " polo," already men- 
tioned. 
The polo-ground is quite level, about 300 yards 
long and fifty broad. The number of players was 
usually about fifty, all of them mounted on the hardy 
little ponies of the country, and each man armed with 
a very curious looking club, about three feet long. 
Two leaders are selected, who alternately choose men 
for their respective sides ; or men from one district play 
against another district. In the excitement of the 
game it is, of course, necessary to be able at once to 
distinguish to which side each man belongs, and this 
is managed by each side wearing a head-dress of a 
particular colour — thus, one side had red turbans, the 
other side white ones. The musicians, who seem to 
be quite indispensable whilst polo is being played, 
took up their position cross-legged near the centre of 
the ground, and a little to one side; and we, the 
spectators, sat in a verandah in the upper story of the 
rest-house. The musical instruments consisted of half 
a dozen small drums, and as many rude clarionets, 
which produced a lively, but very monotonous, air, not 
unlike a " pibroch and as soon as everything was 
ready and the music began, the leader of the side 
which had the ball rode along at a gallop, followed 
by all the others, and when he arrived near the 
