queer wooden huts or châlets began to appear, and the increasing number of
men and beasts upon the road showed the proximity of the city.

Ekkas, white-hooded, with jingling bells hung round the scraggy necks of
their lean ponies; brown men clad in sort of night-shirts composed of
mud-coloured rags; brown dogs, humpy cattle, and children innumerable,
swarmed upon the causeway in ever-increasing density until we drew up at
the custom-house, and the usual jabber took place among Sabz Ali, the
driver, and the officials.

All appeared satisfactory, however, and we were presented with bits of
brown paper scrawled over with hieroglyphics which we took to be passes,
and drove on, leaving the native town apparently on our left and making a
détour through level fields and between rows of poplars, until we swung
round and crossed the river by a fine bridge. Here we first got some idea
of the city of Srinagar, which lay spread around us, bisected by the broad,
but apparently far from sluggish river, which seems here to be about the
width of the Thames at Westminster at high water.

Tier upon tier, the rickety wooden houses crowded either bank, the
prevailing brown being oddly lighted up by the roofs, which were
frequently covered with deep green turf. Here and there the steep and
peculiar dome of a Hindu temple flashed like polished silver in the keen
sunlight, while around and beyond all rose the ring of the everlasting
hills, their peaks clear, yet soft, against a background of cloudless blue.

Close below us stood a remarkably picturesque pile of buildings, of a
mixed style of architecture, yet harmonising well enough as a whole with
its surroundings. Over it flew a great "banner with a strange device," and
we assumed (and rightly) that we looked upon the palace of His Highness