| their comrades. Having found that everything had been satisfactorily arranged, and that they themselves and all their equipment were, as far as could be seen, in proper working trim, I packed them off in ekkas to Kashmir, and they drove away from the regimental lines with broad grins on their jolly round faces, hugely delighted with themselves. Meanwhile, I had to go round by Murree to pick up my own kit. I had been travelling in the train and in the tonga by road to Abbottabad all the night, and now, before evening, I had a forty-mile ride into Murree. But it was a delightful trip amid the most lovely scenery, as the road passed along near the crest of a pine-clad ridge, with long vistas over the plains of the Punjab on the one side, and here and there on the other side glimpses through the beautiful deodars of the snowy ranges of Kashmir, and once of the distant Nanga Parbat —the Naked Mountain—standing out over twenty-six thousand feet above sea-level, a true monarch of the mountains. One day I spent in Murree, and then finally started on my journey, catching up my little Gurkhas on the following day at the then terminus of the cart-road, five marches from Murree. It was necessary to push my party along as rapidly as possible, so I mounted the Gurkhas on ponies and made them do double marches. A Gurkha is not at home on the back of a pony. He is made for climbing hills, and not for riding. And these little men were not at all happy at first, but they, at any rate, found it better than walking twenty-five miles a day in the hothouse atmosphere of the Jhelum valley in July. While they marched up this valley and then crossed the Wular Lake in boats to the entrance of the Sind valley, down which I had come two years before on my way from Peking, I went to see the British Resident, Colonel Parry Nisbet, from whom, on this as on many another occasion, I received not only that help which I might expect officially, but also that thoughtful consideration which was more like what a father | | | | |
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