the earth with showers of rosy petals. And the ruddy sunlight shone warm on roses and trees, and played in broken gleams on the feathery undergrowth of ferns and reeds, glancing on the velvety black and gold mosses till they, too, sparkled like jewels. And far above all, the glittering ice-peaks seemed to reach up into heaven, and their brightness so dazzled our sight that as we gazed they seemed to lose themselves in the glowing light.

But our path lay down the hill, and from the valley far beneath us, quiet grey mists were silently stealing upwards. Soon we had left the sunlight, and the shadow of the great pine-forest encompassed us. Still we descended, and slowly the mists were creeping upwards, and a chill breath seemed to go before them, as though giving warning of their approach, and hushing all nature to silence. Even my brownies shivered as we entered that cloud. As they carried me down, it felt as though they were bearing me on into the Valley of the Shadow of Death. On every side white spirits seemed to float, impalpable, and grave, and solemn. As I stretched out my hands it seemed as though I could well-nigh grasp some tangible form, but the pale shrouded ghosts passed on unheeding, with slow, measured, noiseless pace.

Even the trees seemed floating by, as if I were at rest and they in motion. The rugged half-burnt stems seemed transformed to earth-dwarfs and frost-demons-those strange shadowy beings who dwell in these dark forests. On every side the tall cedars reached out giant arms. They seemed doubly giants now-pale diaphanous blue ghosts, like the shadowy, moonlit heroes of weird German or Gaelic legends; mighty sentinels, keeping watch in solemn silence -an oppressive silence; a stillness so intense that you could not but feel it. Fain would I have broken the spell by speaking some human words, but I could find none, for the language of the hillmen was to me an unknown tongue; and the brownies, too, were hushed, like every living thing.

Soon the chill mist gave place to heavy drops of rain, and ere we had time to seek a sheltering rock a very deluge was upon us. No English rain, gentle and summery-not even an English storm-but a rain pouring as though the floodgates of heaven

were opened wide and their work must be done quickly. Soon from every crag the waters were rushing down, leaping in sudden torrents; and the path seemed gliding from beneath our feet, while streams rushed past us, as though along their natural channel. Then overhead the heavens gathered blackness. The red lightning streamed and flashed on every side, till to our blinded eyes it seemed to glance down the black tree-stems at our very feet. When the storm had in some measure abated, we returned to Narkunda soaked and crestfallen. It was mortifying to see the calm sunshine in the afternoon, as if the morning's work had been all a dream. As usual, however, it was only a case of reculer pour mieux sauter, and at night again the whirling tempest raved and shook the house, and the tall pines rocked in the howling blast, while all manner of plaintive night-voices mingled with the roaring of mountain torrents, swollen by the rains.

"The thousand sparkling rills

That from a thousand fountains burst

And fill with music all the hills."

Henceforth each day's march was just the same story with variations. Nowhere were we more struck by the grandeur of storm effects than in the black pine-forests of Hatto and Mahasso. Beautiful as these had been in sunlight, the intense, misty darkness now overhanging them gave a weird solemnity to the scene, which lent to it an inexpressible charm. Every day we were overtaken by terrific thunderstorms, which crashed around us with deafening grandeur; then lingering echoes reverberated from one dark mountain to another, and ere they died away the next vivid flash of lightning seemed playing all around us. In truth it was very glorious, and we felt only exhilaration at the majesty of the

scene.

Still there is no denying that our perceptions of the sublime were apt to be somewhat damped by the drenching rains that invariably followed, and that, when at length on a day of calmest sunshine, we once more found ourselves at Simla

"a wondrous token

Of Heaven's kind care, with necks unbroken"

SIMLA IN THE RAINS.

473

-we were forced to admit that its luxuries were very charming, and that a cheery welcome home was no bad termination to our delightful three months in the wilds.

I fear we must have bored our friends a good deal with the attempt to make them realise the scenes in which we had found such enjoyment, for of course all verbal descriptions must be full of sameness, while nature is always varied; and we may use up all the superlatives expressive of beauty without conveying the ghost of an idea of what the reality was. At best our bored hearer can but evolve some fancy picture from out his "inner consciousness." In the present instance, however, there was as much to hear as to tell. Simla small-talk for three months-births, marriages, and oh! how many deaths!

Then we got our map of the Himalayas to trace our route, and felt what pigmies we were when we found that the whole ground of our three months' wanderings lay between the H and the I of HIMALAYA

MOUNTAINS and that the mountain region covered a tract well-nigh as wide as it was long!

For a whole month longer the rains continued, sometimes pouring and clattering, till you would have fancied the house must be washed away-a perfect deluge. There was no whole day, however, of which some hours, or at least some small portion, was not beautiful, all the more so by contrast; but even then the whole world seemed shrouded in dense grey mist, veiling the hills, and trees, and sky.

We were, indeed, true children of the mist, for often from dawn till night it encompassed us on every side, sweeping into the house in dull leaden clouds, so thick that often we could scarcely see the other end of the verandah, or even the tall Indian oaks close round the house, or the tops of those growing on the khad below, whose masses of dark foliage appeared one moment only to vanish the next, like spectres in a dream. Even the ferns, which fringed the dripping branches, looked black, as the light mist played in and out amongst them.

Perhaps after several consecutive days of this dull, grey cloudworld, some invisible hand seemed to draw aside the thick curtain for a moment, and show you a glimpse of what might well seem a spirit-land-a few glittering peaks of snow, distant upwards of a hundred miles. You never saw the whole range; only a little mysterious peep, perhaps just flushed with rosy light. No foreground-no middle-distance-nothing but one little rift in the grey cloud-curtain. Before you had half drunk in this vision of delight, it was gone. Perhaps a few moments later you might catch a glimpse of the valley far below you,―of deep khads richly wooded, or terraced fields of many colours, dotted with tiny villages, or perhaps only a sweeping drapery of emerald green pasture, like smoothest velvet, or it might be a group of dark oaks and rhododendrons, with blackest foliage. But only one thing at a time, and all else utterly blotted out in cold grey mist, as if a great picture had all been sponged clean out, save some little pet bit in the middle. There was, however, almost always an hour before sunrise when the whole snowy range stood clear from end to end-in clear cold outline. Then soon after dawn, the mist rose.

With the rains came an increase of insect life; nothing very serious however. A considerable number of those lovely little silver fish-insects, which riddle muslin and destroy paper with their sharp invisible teeth. And a vast number of flying creatures, a sort of ant, I believe, which dropped countless wings all over the table every night. In fact, but for their wings, we should hardly have noticed their presence.

But our bath-rooms were the favourite haunts of horrible creatures. Some people found scorpions, and occasionally the mother scorpion carried several babies on her back! when the whole family were exterminated at one fell swoop. Our discoveries were limited to creatures with lean bodies, and a hundred long, hair-like legs; not the true centipede, but doubtless some near relation. And as to spiders!!! There is a picture by Gustave Doré showing "The spare attic" in some fairy tale, where every corner of the room is haunted by huge, hairy, horrible black