to five feet in height, and a light orange colour; sometimes
tiny blue flowers starred the grass, thousands of
gentians and forget-me-nots clustering together, or
quantities of pink saxifrage mixed with the handsome
wild rhubarb leaves, and the feathery asparagus. Tall
eremurus and hawthorns scented the air, countless
little birds twittered and trilled, tiny lizards with grey
skins darted and glanced over the sunny stones. Five
or six miles further on, the steep path joined the main
track again. I found my coolie had met a friend who
was carrying on his head—strange baggage on a lone
hillside—two great brass church candlesticks. “ Where
was he going?” I asked. “ To Gilgit.” He expected
much bad weather in the pass, but the Padre Sahib
(priest) must go up to make his “ tomasha ” for the
“ officer sahibs at the fort.” “ Make tomasha ” ; such is
one man’s religion to another! But in spite of the
expression, the respect for the man who to do his
“ p u jah ” crossed the mountains under such hard
conditions was very evident.
The road twisted and turned; often it was blocked
by gigantic boulders fallen from the cliffs above over
which we had to clamber. The sun was intensely hot,
and I was glad enough to find some tiny rills, freed by
the warmth from their ice binding, and to drink their
sparkling water, as brisk to the taste and with the snap
of artificially aerated water. The higher one rose the
sharper was the air; one’s invisible wings bore one
up, it was all but possible to fly! Gradually the snow,
which had been lying in small patches, became deeper. I
had climbed over four thousand feet, and we were nine
thousand feet above the level of the sea. With so much
snow a t such a comparatively low level we knew that
further progress would be very difficult over a thirteen
thousand feet pass, and so, unwilling as I was, I
decided to turn back. After resting I had little wish
to h a lt; the fine air, acting like champagne, had made
me feel as if I had brought myself out in a new and
very improved edition since the terrible time at the
Garhi rest-house on our way in. Fed by the breeze it
was a genuine “ hawakhanah” (“ eating the a ir ”__
taking the air, as we should say) on that clear, far-off
height, The ten miles of road to be retraced filled me
with no misgiving, in such an atmosphere there being
no adequate reason for not “ walking for ever.” If men
could negotiate perpendicular hillsides with fifty to
sixty pounds on their backs there was no fear of twenty
or twenty-five miles on a fairly good road with so much
of absorbing interest on every hand. Nanga Parbat,
“ mountain of the gods,” as the natives call it (Dyomir),
could not be seen from my resting-place, but there were
many lesser monarchs who kinged it in the absence of
that mighty chieftain of Hindu Kush, highest among
them being Haramuk, with his triple diadem of snow
jewelled by the gorgeous sun, with diamonds whose
facets were frost-draped rocks. Far below, the blue
waters of the Wular sparkled in the mid-day glare,
hemmed in south by range behind range of blue mist-
draped mountains. Blue and white, those were the
colours of the valley repeated again and again in the sky,
the hills, the forest flowers; only the coolie and I were
khaki-hued smears in the pure scheme of colour, dust
images in a gorgeous setting!
The homeward march proved comparatively short,
for I took the coolies’ path, although as a mode of progression
sliding over slippery grass and rocky boulders
D