on our way to Ladakh or Little Tibet, two hundred miles eastward across the main range of the Himalayas, we first spent a delightful spring day in floating slowly ten miles westward down the Jhelum, and in being towed still more slowly seven miles northward up the tributary Sind to the head of navigation at Gunderbal. There we dismissed the house-boat; and then, for two short stages, shaggy little ponies, secured as a right from the villagers by means of a pass from the British Resident at Srinagar, carried us eastward up through the lovely scenery of the Sind valley — among spreading walnut trees (often used as haystacks), among mossy rocks, dashing brooks, and straw-thatched houses. On April 6, at an elevation of about 7000 feet, we encountered snow too deep for horses, and were obliged for nine days to walk and have the loads carried by coolies. When the first detachment of men was being procured at Gund, a great uproar in the muddy courtyard called us out from our smoky, windowless room to the second-story balcony, among the cows which had ambitiously mounted the broad flight of stone steps. In their usual fashion, the chief men of the village were delaying matters because snow was falling and the road might be bad. Our headman, a remarkably trustworthy and energetic Mohammedan from Ladakh or Little Tibet, had knocked down one village official into the mud, and had beaten another with a stick. Nobody seemed resentful, and nobody stopped talking. Apparently, they looked upon violence as the logical result of their obstructiveness; but not enjoying it, they speedily gathered the necessary band of thirty-five coolies. The latter did not want to go. Who would, if he had to carry a
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