any meal more than that somewhat light breakfast,
washed down by water which was a pure joy to drink.

Alas! There were but two rock cakes apiece! Another half-hour's clamber,
along a pretty rough track, brought us to a point whence we looked down a
long green slope to our destination, Tronkol--a few Gujar huts, indistinct
amidst a clump of very ancient birch-trees, standing out as a sort of
oasis among the bare and boulder-strewn slopes.

The view was superb. To the right, the mountain-side fell steeply to where,
in the depths of the Wangat Nullah, a tiny white thread marked the river
foaming 4000 feet below, and beyond rose a jagged range of spires and
pinnacles, snow lying white at the bases of the dark precipices. "These
are the savage wilds" which bar the route from the Wangat into Tilail and
the Upper Sind.

Over Tronkol, bare uplands, rising wave above wave, shut out the view of
Gangabal and the track over into the Erin Nullah and down to Bandipur.

On our left towered the bastions of Haramok, his snow-crowned head rising
grimly into the clear blue sky.

We pitched our camp at Tronkol about two o'clock, on a green level some
little way beyond the Gujar huts, and just above a stream which picked its
riotous way along a bed of enormous boulders, sheltered to a certain
extent by a fringe of hoary birches.

We had never beheld such great birches as these, many of them, alas! mere
skeletons of former grandeur, whose whitening limbs speak eloquently of a
hundred years of ceaseless struggle with storm and tempest.

I saw no young ones springing up to replace these dying warriors. The
Gujars and their buffaloes probably prevent any youthful green thing from
growing. It seems a pity.

Towards evening we observed baggage ponies approaching, and at the sight
we felt aggrieved; for, in our colossal selfishness, we fancied that
Tronkol was ours, and ours alone. A small tent was pitched, and presently
to our surly eyes appeared a lonely lady, who proceeded solemnly to play
Patience in front of it while her dinner was being got ready.

A visit of ceremony, and an invitation to share our "irishystoo" and
camp-fire, brought Mrs. Locock across, and we made the acquaintance of a
lady well known for her prowess as a shikari throughout Kashmir--

"There hunted 'she' the walrus, the narwal, and the seal.
Ah! 'twas a noble game,
And, like the lightning's flame;
Flew our harpoons of steel"

I cannot resist the q