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The advance of the latter, indeed, has probably reached its limit, some twenty leagues outside the extreme south-western corner. The former is still fain to depend largely on Bernier, the Frenchman who visited Kashmir two centuries ago in the train of the Mogul emperor Aurengzebe.

To the east of these, four great mountain ranges run, roughly, along the parallels of latitude the Himalayas to the south, the Kuen-Iun, Thian Shan, and Altai to the north. Between the Himalayas and the Kuen-lun is the great Plateau of Tibet, which runs into a sort of cul-de-sac at its western end in Kashmir.

Whitchurch, who had dressed Baird's wound, was sent to take him to the rear; and it was then that Townshend's party began to retreat and, after fierce fighting, arrived at the fort, where they found that Whitchurch had not arrived. The doctor had with him a handful of sepoys and Kashmir Rifles, and some stretcher bearers, under the command of a native officer.

Marched back to Kunbul, seven miles, and took up my quarters again on board the boat, fifteen or twenty other boats are here, a good many visitors having recently arrived in this part of Kashmir. I remained at Kunbul all day waiting for the completion of a pair of chuplus which I ordered of a shoemaker ten days ago.

We sat on the upper deck and watched the dream like beauty drift slowly by until we emerged beneath a little bridge into the fairy land of the lake which the Mogul Emperors loved so well that they made their noble pleasance gardens on the banks, and thought it little to travel up yearly from far off Delhi over the snowy Pir Panjal with their Queens and courts for the perfect summer of Kashmir.

My pet driver, having been damaged, was very evilly treated by the native craftsman, who bound up its wounds with large screws! The mountains of Kashmir have been a constant joy to us. Varying with every change of light and shade, custom cannot stale their infinite variety; but as yet I had not seen the great monarch of Chilas, Nanga Parbat.

My experiences in many lands in dear distant England; in India and China; in the forests of Manchuria, Kashmir, and Sikkim; in the desert of Gobi and the South African veldt; in the Himalaya mountains; and on many an ocean voyage; and experiences with such varied peoples as the Chinese and Boers, Tibetans and Mahrattas, Rajputs and Kirghiz seemed all summed up in that moment.

Gilgit is a dependency of Kashmir, whose ruling family, being Hindus, strongly object to cow-killing, and therefore the law runs that no cows are to be slaughtered; hence none of us since crossing the bridge at Kohalla had tasted fresh beef.

Another school of Śivaite philosophy flourished in Kashmir from the ninth century onwards and is not yet extinct among Pandits. It bases itself on the Âgamas and includes among them the still extant Śiva-sûtras said to have been discovered as revelation by Vasugupta. He lived about 800 A.D. and abandoned Buddhism for Śivaism.

The British in attaching this corner to Kashmir rather strained established boundaries in their own favor, and will doubtless continue the process till all Yaghistán is absorbed and the great Karakoram range becomes the frontier from the Afghan territory to that of Chinese Tibet. At the town of Gilgit we have a reproduction in little of the valley of Srinagar.