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The landau was being piled with odds and ends while the last bits of business were being got through. By noon all was ready, and amid the rattle and jingle of many harness bells and the salaams of the domestics, we bowled out of Baramula, and set forward down the valley of the Jhelum.

At the post-office I was told that only a small part of the mail had been brought into Srinagar, the road being "bund" between Baramula and that place, while an unusual number of landslips and bridges have come down in the Jhelum Valley.

Here the river ceases to be navigable, and abandons itself for a short time to irregular and wanton habits, before finally sowing its wild mountain oats, and becoming the staid and sedate Jhelum of the Plains. Unlike some rivers, the Jhelum contains more water in the middle of summer than at other times.

A tonga is a two-wheeled tilted cart drawn by two horses, which are changed every half hour, for as long as the pair are on the way they go at full speed. The road was excellent, and we left the hot suffocating steam of India below us as we ascended along the bank of the Jhelum River.

For three miles the road continued along the valley of the Jhelum, and then turned to the south, and crossed several ranges of hills, each range rising higher than the one before, very hard work it was, the ascents being so steep and long I can't keep my breath going up hill; it is far more fatiguing than any roughness of road.

She told of the River Jhelum, swift and splendid, that flowed beside the way, of the flowers that bloomed in dazzling profusion on every side wild roses such as she had never dreamed of, purple acacias, jessamine yellow and white, maiden-hair ferns that hung in sprays of living green over the rushing waterfalls, and the vivid, scarlet pomegranate blossom that grew like a spreading fire.

Through the haze we could make out Domel, our goal, lying far below, and then the old Sikh fort of Musafferabad. The road was so encumbered with rock-falls that we walked the greater part of it, until we came to the new bridge over the Kishenganga, whose dark red waters rush into the Jhelum about a mile below.

The Jhelum was in flood, but I could not wait, and, in the crossing, a bay stallion was washed down and drowned. Herein was God hard to me not in respect of the beast, of that I had no care but in this snatching. While I was upon the right bank urging the horses into the water, Daoud Shah was upon the left; for Alghias!

Armed to the teeth and thirsting for blood, the hunter and the huntress cast loose their matted dounga and paddled away merrily down the Jhelum to Bandipur, thence to pursue the royal bara singh, and later, if possible, scale the snow-barred slopes of the Tragbal and penetrate the lonely Tilail Valley to assail the red bear and the multitudinous ibex.

Here we left the Jhelum and pursued the course of the Scind which soon contracted into a narrow and rapidly flowing river, its water derived from the snows, being very cold.