village perched, and above it swirled a misty pall which hid all but the
bases of the hills. To this village we strolled, but it was not
interesting; the inhabitants did not seem wildly friendly, and the mud and
dirt and dogs were discouraging. So we roamed along the Domel road till we
came to a high cliff of conglomerate, which had recently been shedding
boulders over the track to an alarming extent; so, deciding that it would
be merely silly to risk getting our heads cracked, we turned back, and,
re-crossing the river, clambered up a steep path above the right bank. Here
we soon found great rents and rifts where falling rocks had come bounding
down the steeps from above, so once more we turned tail, and, giving up
the idea of any more country walks in that region, betook ourselves to the
gloomy and chilly bungalow. The only really delightful things we saw
during our doleful excursion were a lovely clump of big, rose-coloured
primula, drooping from the clefts of a steep rock, and a pair of large and
handsome kingfishers,[1] pursuing their graceful avocations by a roadside
pool--their white breasts, ruddy flanks, and gleaming blue backs giving a
welcome note of colour to the sedate and misty grey of the landscape.

_Tuesday, April_ 4.--Thirty-six hours of Ghari Habibullah give ample time
for the loneliest recluse to pant for the bustle of a livelier world. We
were so bored on Thursday that we determined to push on, _coûte que coûte_,
on Friday morning, although a note sent back by one of the gunners from
Domel, by a coolie, informed us that the road about a mile short of that
place was completely blocked by a fallen mass of some hundreds of tons.

Our henchman having somewhat recovered of his fever, thanks to a generous
exhibition of quinine, we gave the order to pack and start, hoping to
achieve the twelve miles which separated us from Domel, even though the
last bit had to be done on foot. About two miles from Ghari Habibullah we
came to the Kashmir custom-house, presided over by a polite gentleman,