when Mr. Barrett and I gained our first view of the famous mountain-girt vale. As we stood on a snowy hill-top and looked out over the plain, nearly as large as the state of Connecticut, a cold wind made us shiver. There was no sunlight, and no verdure; no forested mountains or prosperous villages could be made out; the whole plain, far below us, was dull brown, save where it was broken by the slaty streaks of rivers and the leaden expanse of Wular Lake. Ominous, low-lying clouds hid the sun, the sky, and the mountains ; and the plain, snow-flecked on the edges, was as bare as an Illinois prairie in December. We turned away in disappointment, and began to descend toward the village of Baramula on the Jhelum River.
As we came down the hillside to the lower slopes, from which the snow had disappeared, half a dozen natives sprang up from the dead brown grass, where they had been squatting on their heels, each by himself. Evidently they had been lying in wait ; and now from all sides they converged upon us with alarming eagerness. I thought of two occasions when the pursuit of geographic knowledge had led to my arrest as a spy in Turkey, and of the disagreeable enforced ride of two days under guard to the provincial capital the first time. I remembered a fierce Russian colonel who had tried to arrest me in Transcaspia, simply because, as the guest of a civilian official, I had dared to travel on a military railroad where foreigners are not allowed. I recalled the company of nondescript Afghan soldiers who had been called out to prevent me from entering their country. Forgetting that we were under the British flag, I said to myself, "There come the police. How have they found out so
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