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I had been absent from my regiment during the whole of 1856, doing duty at the Murree Convalescent Depot, and rejoined in March of the following year. Nothing occurred for the next two months to break the monotony of life in an Indian cantonment.
There are twenty-five of them, distributed along a weary winding road which extends without an apparent variation of gradient from Kohala to the Murree cemetery. The rise from the river level to Murree is 5000 feet, and this, in a heavy landau over a road often deep in red mud, is a heavy strain on equine endurance and human patience.
There are said to be two at Simla, not counting the woman who blows the bellows at Syree dak-bungalow on the Old Road; Mussoorie has a house haunted of a very lively Thing; a White Lady is supposed to do night-watchman round a house in Lahore; Dalhousie says that one of her houses "repeats" on autumn evenings all the incidents of a horrible horse-and-precipice accident; Murree has a merry ghost, and, now that she has been swept by cholera, will have room for a sorrowful one; there are Officers Quarters in Mian Mir whose doors open without reason, and whose furniture is guaranteed to creak, not with the heat of June but with the weight of Invisibles who come to lounge in the chair; Peshawur possesses houses that none will willingly rent; and there is something not fever wrong with a big bungalow in Allahabad.
The Murree route, which was closed to us by snow, should have been clear a month earlier, and spring here seems not yet to have begun. April 5. We crept shivering to our beds last night, to be awakened at 6 A.M. by an earthquake! I had just realised what the untoward commotion meant when I heard Jane from under her "resai" ask, "What is the matter is it an earthquake?"
Better go and pack my kit now. Who relieves me here do you know?" Raines turned over a sheaf of telegrams. "McEuan," said he, "from Murree." Scott chuckled. "He thought he was going to be cool all summer. He'll be very sick about this. Well, no good talking. 'Night." Two hours later, Scott, with a clear conscience, laid himself down to rest on a string cot in a bare room.
Marched to Dargwal, twelve miles, up hill all the way, but the road is broad and smooth, so that the march was quickly and easily accomplished. M and his wife did not come in till the middle of the day as they could not get coolies in time to start early. There is a good furnished bungalow here, our other fellow travellers have gone on to Murree, so we have the house to ourselves. SEPTEMBER 12th.
It has been no easy matter for me to pilot this party outside the range of camel caravans and soldiers on their way from the Punjab Valley toward RAWAL PINDI.... The rattle of our tongas might be heard at any moment and then our little caravan, disguised as Buddhists, might spend some time in the GUARDHOUSE at Murree.... We will not regret the shade and comparative coolness of that pleasant Summer Resort, but none of us are longing for any more confinement.... The road from Murree down the valley was gullied by the terrific rain we have been wading through.... I have never seen a blacker night nor a heavier rain than we have just come through... We were constantly in fear of the falling of those gigantic boulders that overhung our path behind the swishing trees that clung along the precipice.... The zigzag road that runs down this slope is like a spiral stair in crookedness and bumps.... We could catch a glimpse now and again of a light from the little bungalows that clung to the mountain sides.... But we dare not arouse the dwellers for many obvious reasons.... Finally we did encounter an abandoned inn or hut where we camped for the night.... Next morning in a fierce and searching sun we rambled into a village set upon a wonderful defile in the heart of the mountains, where we ate our frugal meal.... At night we reached the Jhelum coursing gracefully over rocky beds and through picturesque gorges that rise into the azure and serene skies of the Himalayan heavens.... It was a delightful place to camp for the night.... At nine the next morning we had reached the little hamlet strung along the river bank and known as Tongua.... Here the girls made a number of purchases and we replenished our commissary for the march before us into mystic dominions of the LAMA...."
Dendrocopus auriceps nests earlier in the year than do most hill-birds, so that by the time the majority of the European visitors arrive in the hills, the young woodpeckers have left their nest, which is a hole excavated by the parents in a tree, a rhododendron by preference. The former is particularly abundant at Murree.
Browne's victory over the garrison of Masjid. The 17th Regiment had spent the summer in the Murree Hills, where it had been carefully trained for the work that lay before it.
There are said to be two at Simla, not counting the woman who blows the bellows at Syree dâk-bungalow on the Old Road; Mussoorie has a house haunted of a very lively Thing; a White Lady is supposed to do night-watchman round a house in Lahore; Dalhousie says that one of her houses "repeats" on autumn evenings all the incidents of a horrible horse-and-precipice accident; Murree has a merry ghost, and, now that she has been swept by cholera, will have room for a sorrowful one; there are Officers' Quarters in Mian Mir whose doors open without reason, and whose furniture is guaranteed to creak, not with the heat of June but with the weight of Invisibles who come to lounge in the chairs; Peshawur possesses houses that none will willingly rent; and there is something not fever wrong with a big bungalow in Allahabad.
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