Khitmutgars extended, and I fear not always
clean fingers, it is then toasted, brought in hot, and you may eat it
dirt and all. But travellers must not be too particular, and so long as
your food is wholesome, eat and be thankful. But here comes my dinner,
with the chepatties I have just seen prepared, and which sight suggested
the foregoing lines. Chicken for breakfast, chicken for dinner, chicken
yesterday, chicken to-morrow, _toujours_ chicken, sometimes curried,
sometimes roasted, torn asunder and made into soup, stew or cutlets, or
with extended wing forming the elegant spatchcock, it is still chicken;
the greatest and rarest change being that it is occasionally rather
tender. I have had chicken soup and roast fowl for dinner, the chicken
in the soup as stringy as hemp, the fowl as tough as my sandal, and with
so large a liver that I doubted whether the bird had not met with a
violent death. I like fowl's liver, it is my one _bonne bouche_ during
the day, but these startled me, and after straining my teeth on the
carcase, I gladly swallow the soft mouthful. Oh! English readers, you
who have never wandered far from your native shores and who esteem
chickens a luxury to put on your supper table at your festive
gatherings, come to India and surfeit on your dainties, you will see it
calmly collecting its daily food unsuspicious of danger, then comes the
rush and loud clacking as it flies pursued by the ferocious native,
ending with cries of despair and the fluttering and hoarse gurgle of its
death throes, in half an hour Murghi will be placed before you hot and
tempting to the eye but hard as nails to the touch; they are cheap in
this part of the world. I pay one anna (or three halfpence) for a
chicken, or two annas for a full grown fowl.

JULY 22nd.--A little march of three miles to Koopwaddie. I am glad I
came here for one or two reasons. In the first place the walk afforded
me a nearer and finer view of the head of the valley, surmounted by its
high and rugged snow peaks; and secondly, I find I can return from here
to Sopoor in two marches instead of going back over the old road. From
Sopoor I shall boat to Alsoo. The range which at Lalpore was on the
further side of the valley has gradually approached the other hills
until now they are only a quarter of a mile apart, and are connected by
short low spurs which I crossed this morning. My road to-morrow will be
behind the first mentioned range, where another portion