ch beauteous flower,
Iris all hues, roses, and jessamine
Reared high their flourished heads."

Soon the valley narrowed, and closer on our left roared the Lidar, foaming
over its boulders in wild haste to find peace and tranquil flow in the
broad bosom of Jhelum.

The road became somewhat hilly, and at one steep zigzag the nerves of Jane
failed her slightly and she dismounted, rightly judging that a false step
on the part of the cream-coloured courser would be followed by a hurried
descent into the Lidar. I explained to her that I would certainly do what
I could for her with a dredge in the Wular when I came down, but she
preferred, she said, not to put me to any inconvenience in the matter. We
were asked to subscribe, a few days later, at Pahlgam to provide the
postman with a new pony, his late lamented "Tattoo" having been startled
by a flash of lightning at that very spot, and having paid for the error
with his life.

A halt was called for lunch under a blue pine, where we quickly discovered
how paltry its shade is in comparison with the generous screen cast by a
chenar; scarcely has the heated traveller picked out a seemingly
umbrageous spot to recline upon when, lo! a flickering shaft of sunlight,
broken into an irritating dazzle by a quivering bunch of pine needles,
strikes him in the eye, and he sets to work to crawl vainly around in
search of a better screen.

Nothing approaches the great circle of solid coolness thrown by a big
chenar. The walnut does its best, and comes in a good second. Pines
(especially blue ones) are, as I remarked before, unsatisfactory.

But if the pine is not all that can be wished as a shade-producer, he is
in all his varieties a beautiful object to look upon. First, I think, in
point of magnificence towers the Himalayan spruce, rearing his gaunt shaft,

"Like the mast of some tall ammiral,"

from the shelving steeps that overhang the torrents, and piercing high
into the blue. In living majesty he shares the honours with the deodar,
but he is merely good to look upon; his timber is useless and in his decay
his fallen and lightning-blasted remains lie rotting on these wild hills,
while the precious trunks of the deodar and the excelsa are laboriously
collected, and floated and dragged to the lower valleys, producing much
good money to Sir Amar Singh and the best of building timber to the
purchaser.

The road towards Pahlgam is a charming woodland walk, where the wild
stra