ah, bring me to Phillour, a Mohammedan town of several thousand
inhabitants. The fort of Phillour is a conspicuous object on the left of
the road; it was formerly an important depot of military supplies, and in
the time of Sikh independence was regarded by them as the key to the
Punjab. Since the mutiny it has dwindled in importance as a military
stronghold, but is held by a detachment of native infantry.

A mile or so from Phillour is a splendid girder railway bridge crossing
the River Sutlej. The overflow of the river extends for miles, converting
the depressions into lakes and the dry ditches into sloughs and creeks.
Resting under the shade of a peepul-tree, I while away a passing hour
watching native fishermen endeavoring to beguile the finny denizens of
the overflow into their custody. Their tactics are to stir up the water
and make it muddy for a space around, so that the fish cannot see them;
they then toss a flat disk of wood so that it falls with an audible
splash a few yards away. This manoeuvre is intended to deceive the fish
into thinking something eatable has fallen into the water. Woe betide the
guileless fish, however, whose innocent, confiding nature is thus imposed
upon, for "swish" goes a circular drop-net over the spot, from the meshes
of which the luckless captive tries in vain to struggle.

The River Sutlej has its source in the holy lake of Manas Saro-vara, in
Thibet's most mountainous regions, and for several hundred miles its
course leads through mighty canons, grand and rugged as the canons of the
Colorado and the Gunnison. It is on the upper reaches of the Sutlej that
the celebrated swing bridges called karorus are in operation. A karorus
consists of a bagar-grass or yak-hair rope, stretched from bank to bank,
across which passengers are pulled, suspended in a swinging chair or
basket. The karorus is also largely patronized by the swarms of monkeys
inhabitating the foot-hill jungles of the Himalayas; nothing could well
be more congenial to these festive animals than the Blondin-like
performance of crossing over some deep, roaring gorge along the swaying
rope of a karorus.

Like other rivers of the level Punjab plains, the Sutlej has at various
times meandered from its legitimate channel; eight miles south of its
present bed the large and flourishing city of Ludhiana once stood on its
bank. Ludhiana and its dak bungalow, provides refreshments and a three
hours' siesta beneath the cooling and se