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places drops of 500 feet before touching another projection, whence, rebounding, the hapless climber whose foot has failed him, must be hurled down and down, till his shattered fragments find anything but a resting place, in the tossing, raging river.

The Rogi cliff is of very compact gneiss, and, from its continual tendency to scale, very great additional difficulties arose, as ordinary methods of blasting generally brought down any rock but that which was intended. For instance, after boring upwards of eight hundred mines in one cliff, it was hoped that by simultaneously firing them a continuous line of fracture would be produced. Instead of this, all the result was that immense quantities of overhanging rock were brought down from above, while the rock over which the road should have lain scaled off entirely; the cradles were smashed, the stanchion bars twistedserious losses, where every tool and nail has to be carried up by coolies from the plains, a march of many days. The weatherworn rock face, being thus impracticable, it was found necessary to cut it back considerably, and thus reach a mass less liable to scale.

In the Wangtu cliff, on the other hand, the chief difficulty lay in the smooth water-worn granite face, along which, at about 100 feet above the water, the road must be led-scarcely one crevice, projection, or ledge marks the slippery face along which men must crawl. "If a man had the misfortune to slip or make a false step, the chances were very considerably against his ever having another chance. There is really and literally nothing which a man could hope to clutch; nor could assistance be rendered him if he fell. In an instant, the waters of the Sutlej would hurl him along, and he would either be dashed to pieces against a rock or large boulder, or be jammed between a couple of them."

These, then, were some of the dangers and difficulties which had attended the making of that path along which we now wound so safely, though in truth it still looked somewhat "kittle work" as we say in the north, to see the path projecting from the smooth granite face, and carried over wooden supports overhanging the river.

Kittle, uncertain, anxious. Scotch, unreliable.

The opposite cliff has its own sad tale to tell. Another of those terrible accidents when a restive pony backed over the khad, and the strong right arm that strove to hold it up by main force could avail nothing, for in the agony of the moment the rider had fainted, and fallen from her saddle, unconscious of all the misery that in that moment fell on two sunny homes which, by her "going away," were left desolate.

For a considerable distance after crossing the bridge at Wangtu, our rocky path lay so close above the river that its noise was almost deafening. The vast body of melted snows, which at this season come rushing down the gorge, swell the stream to such a size that it goes tearing along in huge, yellow waves, foul and turbid. It was, therefore, with positive delight that we turned up a steep zigzag path which at last brought us to Urni.

Our recollections of this place are, I fancy, considerably tinged by the small discomforts of the moment. The fir-clad hills were round us, and snowy peaks as usual, but my chief impression is of a night spent in the dirty mess of a half-finished bungalow, for as we could find no convenient place to pitch our tents, we put up in half-built rooms, with a fair view of the sky through all the chinks. While we sat at supper by a blazing fire, a silvery hill-fox crept up to have a look at us. We only caught sight of two of these pretty creatures, and both were wary enough to escape, and preserve their valuable fur for their own benefit.

CHAPTER XVI.

VILLAGES ON THE CLIFFS.

Scale of Size-Vegetation of divers Altitudes-A Great Dinner!-Three Mighty Pinnacles-The Mountain Heaven-Villages on Cliffs-Pahari Customs-Polyandry-Goat Caravans-The Snow-line in Europe and Asia-Snow-blindness-Stone capped Ice Pillars-Cheenee-PangiCeltic Brooches-A Study for Murillo Scarcity of Animal Life-The Yak.

NEXT day a beautiful march of twelve miles up the Kunawur valley brought us along the face of tremendous cliffs, with the river far below, and dark masses of wood, running like broad shadows right up to the snows. While looking at such a scene without any especial sense of its vastness, it was curious suddenly to catch some landmark that acted as a scale of measurement. Here, for instance, where at an immeasurable distance below us flowed the troubled yellow waters of the Sutlej, I noticed that they were just edged with a line of cliff. That cliff I knew to be far higher than the highest cliff along our Moray sea-coast of which we think so much.

And I knew too that in every crevice of that rock there grew tropical plants, such as belong to the plains of India, while as the eye slowly travelled upward, it noted one belt after another of changing vegetation; and I knew that though I could distinguish nothing save a general mass of greenery, each changing shade of colour marked the plants of divers altitudes, passing from the cactuses and acacias of the tropics, to the oak and rhododendrons of cooler levels, thence to the cedar forest, higher

still to the neoza pine, and finally to a fringe of birch, of juniper, and green pasture land, reaching to the very verge of the snows, where the smooth sheets of dazzling whiteness are only broken by the green shadows of glaciers, lying between huge masses of bare, black rock. On those grassy slopes above the birch grow cowslips and polyanthus, sweet as those of our own green meadows, and with them beds of strawberries, and other wellknown favourites. Thus at one glance the eye ranged from the torrid to the arctic zone, but it was only by some such mental effort that it seemed possible to realise the colossal scale of all around. Sometimes too we noticed some little atoms of dark foliage, dotting the face of the precipice, like flies on a castle wall. On nearer approach, these generally proved to be fine old cedars, whose gnarled and twisted roots had taken a mighty hold of some crevice, though their great weather-beaten trunks, and bare, contorted arms, told what awful battles they had fought with storm and tempest.

Thus, sometimes winding along the face of stupendous precipices, (where one false step would have hurled us from the safe path into the immeasurable depths of an almost fathomless ravine,) and sometimes through the cedar forest, we reached the road bungalow at Rogi. On its balcony, to our dismay, we detected. two topee-wallahs, or wearers of hats, as white men are called. A very few minutes, however, sufficed to prove them both Scots, and nearly akin to friends whom we had just left in the far north; so it did not take us long to fraternise. To these were presently added two others, officers of the Rifles, and as we all agreed to make common cause, this halt in the wilds proved a very pleasant gathering.

We did our best to make our meeting suggestive of home, by producing all the Scotch dishes at our command. At dinner a famous bowl of hotch-potch (thanks to the admirable preserved tins), and at breakfast Findon haddies and genuine porridge. There was always some amusement at these amalgamated dinners, in seeing what each housekeeper had produced. One would provide Liebig's soup, cod's roe, and minaul pheasant; another a

A GREAT DINNER-PARTY.

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dish of white-bait and roast mutton; a third a genuine lobster salad (the lettuce sent perhaps for miles by a coolie, from some oasis in the mountain desert), and a chicore stew; perhaps some bear-steaks also, and a pâté de foie gras, also potatoes, perhaps curry-rice inevitably-or the young curly tops of common bracken stewed with butter, which we then considered fully equal to asparagus. I cannot say that on repeating the experiment in Scotland, they seemed quite as good! We also found that young nettles made capital spinach; watercresses we gathered in the brooks, and green peas we had imported from England! Several other vegetables grow wild, including gooseberries and rhubarb; but these make too heavy a demand on limited stores of sugar. We were especially charmed at finding loads of excellent mushrooms on some of the grassy slopes, and when our gathering exceeded our daily consumption, we had a grand brew of ketchup -the real unadulterated article, with no fear of fried liver, and blacking, or other foreign ingredients!

As I before said, the supply of game is most uncertain, and the only meat that can be purchased from the natives is the wearisome toujours mutton; even that being sometimes difficult to procure, while, as I have already observed, the absence of Mohammedanism makes itself quickly felt in the commissariat, inasmuch as the Hindoos consider poultry too unclean, and beef too holy, for human food.

Therefore for all variety of diet, travellers chiefly depend on the inestimable tins of preserved meats of all sorts, the value of which is so well understood by all Anglo-Indians, that one lady was heard to remark, that doubtless nothing else was ever used at Her Majesty's table! Just imagine the luxury of opening a tin of fresh lobster, or perhaps salmon-possiblý a little "tender" as the cockneys say,-and with the addition of excellent lettuce and cucumbers from the Road Sahib's garden, making a salad that would rejoice the veriest gourmet in the kingdom! I dwell at some length on all this good fare, for I am telling you of a great social gathering-a sort of Lord Mayor's feast. Our daily bread was of course very much simpler, having for its main feature a pot