hidden in a wealth of fruit trees, the vast green canopies
of the walnuts and the brimij (Celtis australis) producing
a charming coolness. Some six miles beyond
my starting-point the road crossed the Sind, here a
wide-spreading, brawling mountain torrent, the whole
valley widened, the mountains standing back on either
side. I t was a “ world of roses.” Maybe people a t home
think they know what this means. I am sorry for
them; they are mistaken. I have seen wild and garden
roses in many places, as I thought, in vast quantities,
but a land clothed in roses I did not know. They were
in millions, the mingling of hues—white, blush pink,
deepest blood red—producing a mosaic of colour
amazing in richness, in variety. The grey rocks were
hidden under the clinging bushes, the air was full of
their perfume, they were as much the universal garb
of the earth as grass and daisies in less-favoured
regions. At intervals a heavier perfume told of the
presence of bushes of the great yellow jessamine, with
its bunches of handsome, luscious flowers. Impossible
to hurry, it was difficult to keep to a progressive pace,
when every instant the eye was arrested by some fresh
object of interest.
Fifteen miies under such conditions did not seem a
long walk, and it was only with a pleasant sense of
enjoyment of the quiet restfulness that I reached the
pretty camping-ground at Kangan, under a group of
walnuts whose branches were plentifully decorated
with mistletoe, a parasite that I found exceedingly
thriving all up this valley. A long afternoon
of reading and writing I spent in a shady nook
above the streams, seated in a willow stump that
stretched out over the water. The spot was wonderfully
remote and solitary, an ideal resting-place, for some
Hindu ascetic seeking knowledge apart from the world,
but desiring a cell where “ beauty did abound.”
The night was almost as light as the day, so
brilliant was the moon, and foaming stream and wooded
glade were flooded with a soft, illuminating radiance
that touched all things with .fairy wand and added a
new charm to what had even, in the more prosaic daylight,
seemed all too fascinating. The start in the early
dawn while on this expedition was a daily fresh delight,
the dew sparkled in the light of the rising sun, a fresh
breeze acted like a tonic, bracing one up for the
walk, and all nature’s colours bore an added brilliance.
The march out from Kangan was especially delightful.
Gently rising and falling, the path was sometimes on
a level with the stream, sometimes high above it,
crossing from bank to bank as the mountains closed
in on one side or the other, leaving no space for even
a goat track; everywhere the sweetness of newly-
opened flowers, everywhere the brilliance of early spring
foliage. In places the Sind, swollen by recent rains,
became a mighty mountain torrent, carrying great trees
with it in its strong current. At one point it had
completely carried away both bank and path, leaving
no choice, for the rocks rose precipitously from the
waters, to passing through the tide, but retracing one’s
steps for several miles. That is always an undesirable
proceeding when the day’s route is already sufficiently
long, and I was gazing rather sadly at the waste of
waters with but small desire to repeat my wading
experiments, when by came an old man with a laden
pony, strange knight errant, but his lack of appropriate
exterior was no bar to his efficiency.
G