quickly that we are geographers ? Do they think that we have come to spy out the land ? "
Meanwhile they had reached us. One brandished an official-looking document suggesting a warrant; a second waved a photograph; a third held a drawing like the plan of a ship; and the others carried open letters. They all thrust their papers into our unwilling hands, and in the broken English now spoken by many natives of Kashmir, shouted in rivalry: -
" Master ! Master ! read this ! " — " This my boat ; very best boat." — " Master, you looking my boat. Twenty rupee."— " I got best boat. I am six men." — " Come, master, see my boat ! "
In spite of protests they escorted us to the village; helped us through the mud, which was six inches deep; led us between the two-story houses of wood, covered with pyramidal thatched roofs green with grass; and brought us to the collection of house-boats on the muddy river. We thought of the jolting of the two-story, two-wheeled carts in which we had been traveling, and of what would await us at our destination, Srinagar, the capital of Kashmir, either a poor and expensive hotel, or its alternative, a wet camp with no proper servants. As speedily as dignity would allow, we yielded to our captors, engaging Subhana Benares, the boatman who claimed to be six men, together with his father, four brothers, a sister, two wives of some of the family, a modest house-boat with four small rooms roofed with reed-matting, a smaller kitchen-boat where the natives were to live and cook, and a rowboat, — for all of which, including people and boats, we were to pay thirty-five rupees (eleven
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