respectable twenty-seven in twenty-fonr hours, and I
felt myself entitled to a day off,” so it was arranged
that I should start early, the track being shadeless
almost the entire way, and after reaching Ganderbal,
eight miles distant, rest, or rather attend to writing,
mending, and such like uninteresting details that are
more or less necessary after a sojourn in the wilds.
Before six I had had my early cup of tea and w? s ready to
be off, passing out of sight of the pretty little Manasbal
as I reached the edge of the cup-like ridge that divides
it from the adjoining lands. The ground was starred
with soft little pink and ¡white dianthus, and great was
the pride of a handsome native woman when I permitted
her two toddling bairns to assist me in making
up a bunch of them. Then we walked together some
way, she carrying the babies, alternately teasing them
with fine large mulberries which she held to their
expectant lips and then quickly withdrew as they
eagerly essayed to snatch them. I t was a pretty scene,
and I regretted when they strayed behind in a pretty,
deeply-shaded village.
I was obliged to push on across the steamy
rice fields, where the men were working at the
first kushaba knee-deep in the slimy water-covered
ooze: This kushaba is a curious process peculiar to the
culture of rice, a grain that involves an enormous
amount of labour from the time it is sown in April till,
ripe and golden, it is cut and garnered in September.
First the soil is prepared by being made very dry or
very wet, according to the method preferred by the
cultivator. That generally adopted is the dry, and when
the ground has been ploughed it is then moistened for
the Sowing. As a rule the seed is scattered directly on