the road was being made. I am not tired, though my left heel is
blistered, which is fair considering I have not walked half a mile for
more than a month. The road is excellent and the scenery fine, the Khuds
being sometimes deep, but nothing like the eastern Himalayas. The forest
too is quite different, fir trees predominating here. Saw many beautiful
birds, and regretted I had not brought my gun. In the evening a
thunderstorm came on with a cold wind from the north, so I made a good
fire with a few fir logs. In the middle of the night the storm became
very violent, and large hailstones fell.


JULY 5th.--Got away at sunrise, the rain having quite cleared off, and
marched on to Doonga Gullee, up a hill to an elevation of 9,000 feet,
and then down again to about 7,000; then up a final steep to Doonga
Gullee, 8,000 feet above the sea. The Khuds much grander very deep and
precipitous, sometimes falling one or two thousand feet from the edge of
the road almost perpendicularly. But the hills are too close together to
allow the valleys to be termed magnificent. Reached Doonga Gullee at 10
a.m. The length of last march, eleven miles--the road, a good military
one, has been cut in the face of the mountain. Put up at the Dâk
Bungalow, and dined with the officers of the working party; among them
Heath, of the 88th, and Leggatt and Lyons, of the 77th, whom I knew. A
number of tents are pitched here for the working parties from the 19th
and 77th Regiments (road making). I was carried part of the march in my
dandy--a piece of carpet gathered at each end and hooked to a pole,--the
pole being carried on the shoulders of two men. I swung below it just
off the ground, and could often look down a vast depth between my knees.
My first pickled tongue, cooked the day before yesterday was fly-blown
at breakfast this morning. This may seem a trifling note, but it is
ominous I fear for the whole of my salted stores.