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In the afternoon I got a small boat, a miniature of the larger one, propelled by six men with paddles. They took me along very quickly, and I went down the canal which opens into the Jhelum the main thoroughfare of Suenaggur opposite to the palace and the adjoining temple, whose dome is covered with plates of pure gold.

Many years ago I read a delightful poem called The Paradise of Birds I believe it was by Mortimer Collins, but I am not sure. He cannot have known of Kashmir, or he would assuredly have sent the persecuted birds thither, and placed the "Roc's Egg" as janitor, somewhere by the portals of the Jhelum Valley.

Took a last fond glance towards "the valley," and descended by a very steep and difficult path to the river Jhelum, which forms the boundary between the two territories. Here a couple of queerly-shaped, rudely-constructed boats, with two huge oars apiece, one astern and one at the side, formed the traveller's flying bridge.

The pear and cherry blossom has been so lovely in and around Srinagar that we determined to go to the Lolab Valley and see the apple blossom in full flower. We started in some trepidation, for the warm weather lately has melted much snow on the hills, and Jhelum is so full that we were told that our three-decker would be unable to pass under the city bridges of which there are seven.

So we arranged for our land transport of ponies for ourselves, and a dandy for Hesketh, to meet us one march up the river at Nopura, while we ourselves set forward in our boats to Dubgam, three or four miles down the Jhelum, where the Pohru joins it.

Then followed twenty-eight miles, and in delightful contrast the vicinity of great rushing waters made a little heaven of the camp on the banks of the Jhelum.

We had got up before dawn to see the sunrise, but afterwards took things leisurely, as the march is short to Baramula, and our boats were to be in waiting there, and we had made all arrangements for a landau and ekkas to be in readiness to take us down to Rawal Pindi, while the Colonel returned up the Jhelum for more shooting before rejoining his wife at Bandipur.

It subsequently struck the edge of the house and I was all right; had it come down the valley which runs at right angles to the Jhelum just opposite here I should have been blown out. I again noticed that to which my attention has often been directed, viz.: that when in or near the storm clouds, the thunder is of quite a different character to that heard below.

This done, our most excellent and skilful driver piloted his ponies through the narrow strait, and we felt that, at last, our troubles were over, and that we could breathe freely and admire at leisure the snowy peaks of the Kaj-nag beyond the Jhelum, and the rough wooded heights that frowned upon our right.

Above the last bridge the Jhelum broadens out into a stately river, controlled at one side by the banked walk known as the Bund, with the Club House upon it and the line of houseboats beneath. Here the visitors flutter up and down and exchange the gossip, the bridge appointments, the little dinners that sit so incongruously on the pure Orient that is Kashmir. She would not be here.