s the road to Domel is reported to be quite impassable. They intend to
walk by a short cut over the hills, and get on as best they may, the race
for Astor being a keen one.

We decided to remain here, the weather being still gloomy and unsettled,
and the road being impossible for a lady.

At noon the landau was brought in, minus a step and very dirty, but
otherwise "unwounded from the dreadful close."

Ghari Habibullah is not at all a cheerful spot, as it appears, the centre
of a grey haze, with dense mist low down on the surrounding mountains.
Sabz Ali, too, complains of fever, which is not surprising after the
wetting and exposure of yesterday; and when a native gets "fever" he curls
up and is fit for nothing, and won't try.

The dak bungalow stands on a little plateau overlooking the road and a
swift river, whose tawny waves were loaded with mud washed from the hills
by recent storms. On a slope opposite, the queer, flat-roofed native
village perched, and above it swirled a misty pall which hid all but the
bases of the hills. To this village we strolled, but it was not
interesting; the inhabitants did not seem wildly friendly, and the mud and
dirt and dogs were discouraging. So we roamed along the Domel road till we
came to a high cliff of conglomerate, which had recently been shedding
boulders over the track to an alarming extent; so, deciding that it would
be merely silly to risk getting our heads cracked, we turned back, and,
re-crossing the river, clambered up a steep path above the right bank. Here
we soon found great rents and rifts where falling rocks had come bounding
down the steeps from above, so once more we turned tail, and, giving up
the idea of any more country walks in that region, betook ourselves to the
gloomy and chilly bungalow. The only really delightful things we saw
during our doleful excursion were a lovely clump of big, rose-coloured
primula, drooping from the clefts of a steep rock, and a pair of large and
handsome kingfishers,[1] pursuing their graceful avocations by a roadside
pool--their white breasts, ruddy flanks, and gleaming blue backs giving a
welcome note of colour to the sedate and misty grey of the landscape.

_Tuesday, April_ 4.--Thirty-six hours of Ghari Habibullah give ample time
for the loneliest recluse to pant for the bustle of a livelier world. We
were so bored on Thursday that we determined to push on, _coute que coute_,
on Friday morning, although a note sent back by on