fashion, in other words to stroll, in Indian file, like geese
across a common, along the line of least resistance, instead of spreading
out and searching all the thickest jungle.

Much yelling serves both to cheer the sahib, and frighten away any bear
which might otherwise haply frighten them.

I cannot say I regret the time I have spent looking for bear. The scenery
has always been fine--sometimes magnificent, and there has always been a
certain cheering hope, which sustained me as I lay hour after hour in the
Malingam Nullah, or sat expectant amid ever varying and always beautiful
glades and passes, watching the bird life, and storing up scenes and
memories which I know I shall never forget.

Alas! we have but a very few days yet before us in Kashmir, and it is
lamentable, for now the climate is simply perfect, the air clear and clean,
and without the haze of summer; the first crispness of coming autumn
making itself felt most distinctly in the early hours of morning ere

"Nor dim nor red, like God's own head,
The glorious sun uprist;"

and each dawn saw us up and out to watch these sunrises, whose splendour
cannot be expressed on paper. This morning it was more than usually
wonderful, the whole flank of Nanga Parbat and his lesser peaks, turning
from clear lemon to softest rose, stood radiant above the purple shades of
the great range which lies around Gurais. In the middle distance, rising
above the level yellow of the plain, still dim and shadowy below the
morning light, rolled wave upon wave of the blue hills which hold in their
embrace the fruitful Lolab. At our feet the deodars, still dark with the
shadow of night, crept up the dewy slope upon whose top we stood. Then
suddenly

"The sanguine sunrise, with his meteor eyes,"

flamed over the eastern ridges, and in a flood of glory the soft shadows
and pallid lights of the dawn became merged in the brilliance of a Kashmir
autumn day.

Our march yesterday from Rainawari to Kitardaji was charming. I had no
idea that this Machipura country, which is not much visited by summer
sojourners in Kashmir, was so fine. The district lies along the lower
shoulders and foothills of the Kaj-nag, and, while lacking the savage
grandeur of the Lidar or Upper Sind, yet possesses the charm of infinite
variety and, in this early autumn, a climate in which it is a pure joy to
live. On leaving Rainawari we followed up a river valley for some distance,
and then wound throu