somewhat rickety but sufficient unto min's needs; mosques and temples in neighbouring rivalry ; splendid tree-lined avenues leading toward the mountains ; caravans coming and going ; dogs and babies under one's feet in the narrow streets—such is Srinagar with its hundred and thirty thousand souls dominated by the great hill Fakht-i-Suleiman--Solomon's throne—whose crown is half-temple, half-fortification. Around it waving green fields, which are cut by roads straight, smooth, and beautifully shaded. And beyond the fields ever the white guardian mountains. The whole valley is such a spot as would be chosen by the high gods (if they had not invented man) for exclusive garden-parties, with the rabble of lesser gods peeking enviously over the walls. Gods failing, the English will doubtless take and ` ` preserve" it.
Had not the home-fever now laid fast hold upon us, we should have lingered in this fair lotus-land. Our horseback days were past. We were now to roll on the king's highway, four good wheels beneath us. Three days, and sixty miles 'twixt rising and setting of the sun, would let us gain Rawal Pindi, lying over the western range. These are not towering mountains like the Himalayas, but high enough to have cut off Kashmir from the greasy touch of the locomotive, high enough to have given for ages almost a separate history from that of the surrounding countries. Englishmen in Srinagar still speak of "going down into India." Most of those who hot-weathered in the English hotel had already
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