hospital. Small but comfortable bungalows have been built for the European officers on the terraced slopes overlooking the valley, and in their midst there has quite recently risen even a substantial club with an excellent though necessarily select library. It is only some eleven years since the new era set in for Gilgit, and yet it is already difficult to trace the conditions which preceded it. The fort, built of rubble with a wooden framework, after the usual Sikh fashion, alone reminds one of the days when Gilgit was the prey of an ill-paid and badly disciplined soldiery, when years of unabated exactions had laid great parts of the cultivable land waste and driven the now peaceful Dards into violent rebellions.
I had originally intended to stop only one day at Gilgit in order to give my men a much-needed rest and to effect some repairs in the equipment. But difficulty arose about getting fresh transport for the march to Hunza, and my stay was of necessity extended to three days. Ample work and the amiable attention of my hosts scarcely allowed me to notice the delay. Though all Government transport was occupied in out-lying camps, and the local ponies were grazing far away in distant nullahs, Captain E. A. R. Howell, the energetic Commissariat Officer, provided by the third day a train of excellent animals to which I could safely trust my baggage up to Hunza. Little defects in my outfit which the experience of the previous marches had brought to light were easily made good in the interval, since every member of the " station " offered kind help. While the Commissariat Stores supplied what was needed in the way of followers' warm clothing, foodstuffs, &c., Mrs. W., the only lady left in the " station," kindly offered threads of her own fair hair for use in the photo-theodolite. How often had I occasion to feel grateful thereafter for this much-needed reserve store when handling that delicate instrument with half-benumbed fingers on windswept mountain-tops !
IIIFカラー高解像度
