a narrow bridle path, and as it winds along precipitous spurs many hundred feet above the stream, it required such a steady hill pony as that kindly lent to me by Major E. J. Medley, of the 17th Bengal Lancers, then Commanding the Force in Gilgit, to ride with any feeling of comfort.
From Nomal and upwards the river has cut its way through a succession of deep gorges, lined often with almost perpendicular cliffs. The path is carried in long zigzags over the projecting cross-ridges, and more than once traverses their face by means of galleries built out from the rock. At Chalt, the end point of my second day's march, I reached the limit of Gilgit territory. Here the valley widens considerably and takes a sharp turn eastwards. As a reminiscence of an earlier state of things the place is garrisoned with a company
-
of Kashmir Imperial Service troops. Their commandant, an aged Subandar from the Garhwal district, came to call on me soon after I had arrived at the comfortable bungalow of the Military Works Department. In the course of our long conversation he gave me graphic accounts of what Gilgit meant to the Kashmir troops twenty and thirty years ago ; of the hardships which the want of commissariat arrangements caused both to the soldiers and the inhabitants. From the description of these sufferings it was pleasant to turn to other aspects of soldiering in the old. Dogra service, e.g., the quaint Sanskrit words of command concocted under Maharaja Ranbir Singh, and still in use not so many years ago.
On the 17th I intended to make a double march, pushing on straight to the centre of the Hunza valley, where baggage animals were to be left behind and coolies taken for the rest of the journey to the Taghdumbash Pamir. After leaving Chalt the road crosses to the left bank of the river by a fine suspension bridge, hung like the rest of the more important bridges on the route from Kashmir, from ropes made of telegraph-wire. This mode of construction, first tried in these parts by Colonel Aylmer, of the Royal Engineers, has proved
IIIFカラー高解像度
