m.

It was unexpectedly chilly at night, and Twining and I were glad to roll
ourselves up in as many rugs and "resais" as we could persuade the ladies
to leave to us.

[1] A big deal case which we unpacked at Srinagar proved to contain a
"life-sized" work-table. The package holding our camp beds and bedding,
having a humbler aspect, had been sent to Bombay and cost as a world
of worry and expense to recover!

CHAPTER III

KARACHI TO ABBOTABAD

This morning we awoke to find ourselves rattling and shaking our way
through the Sind Desert--an interminable waste of sand, barren and
thirsty-looking, covered with a patchy scrub of yellowish and grey-purple
bushes.

I can well imagine how hatefully hot it can be here, but to-day it has
been merely pleasantly warm.

Jane and I were deeply interested in the novel scenes we passed through,
which, while new and strange to us, were yet made familiar by what we had
read and heard. The quiet-eyed cattle, with their queer humps, were just
what we expected to see in the dusty landscape. The chattering crowds in
the wayside stations, their bright-coloured garments flaunting in the
white sunlight--the fruit-sellers, the water-carriers, were all as though
they had stepped out of the pages of _Kim_--that most excellent of Indian
stories.

And so all day we rattled and shook through the Sind Desert in the hot
sunlight till the dust lay thick upon us, and our eyes grew tired of
watching the flying landscape.

In the afternoon we reached Samasata junction, where the Twinings parted
company with us, being bound for Faridkot.

Sorry were we to lose such charming companions, especially as now indeed
we become as Babes in the Wood, knowing nothing of the land, its customs,
or its language!

Henceforward, Sabz Ali shall be our sheet-anchor, and I think he will not
fail us. His English is truly remarkable, so much so that I regret to say
I have more than once supposed him to be talking Hindustani when he was
discoursing in my own mother-tongue. But he certainly is extraordinarily
sharp in taking up what I and the "Mem-sahib" say.

He presented to me to-day a remarkable letter, of which the following is
an exact copy. I presume it is a sort of statement as to his general
duties:--

"_To the_ MAGER SAHIB.

"Sir,--I beg to say that General 'Oon Sahib send me to you. He
order me that the arrangement of Mager Sahib do.

"To give pice to porter kuli this