mountain rose bare and steep, fringed with a few straggling bushes, and
here and there a clinging patch of rose-coloured primula. Part of the
conglomerate cliff had come down and obliterated the road, but a party of
coolies was busily at work, and, after about an hour's delay, we
triumphantly bumped our way past.

The road now led steadily upward, leaving an ever-increasing slope (or
khud) between it and the river, until it attained a height of over a
thousand feet, when, turning to the left, it swung over the watershed, and
began to descend into the valley of the Kishenganga. Through the haze we
could make out Domel, our goal, lying far below, and then the old Sikh
fort of Musafferabad.

The road was so encumbered with rock-falls that we walked the greater part
of it, until we came to the new bridge over the Kishenganga, whose dark
red waters rush into the Jhelum about a mile below.

Here was Musafferabad, the whole place a confused jumble of wheeled
traffic caught up by the big landslip in front. Passing, amid the chatter
and clamour of men and beasts, through the medley of bullock-carts and
ekkas that crowded every available space, we hauled the carriage through
the bed of a watercourse whose bridge was broken. Up over the prostrate
trunk of a fallen tree we regained the road, to find ourselves in front of
the big landslip of which we had been warned. It consisted of some
thousands of tons of dark red mud and loose boulders, and it blocked the
road for fully a couple of hundred yards.

A large and energetic swarm of coolies was busily engaged in "tidying up."
This was apparently to be achieved by means of shovels, each little shovel
worked by two men--one to shovel, and the other to assist in raising it