il the white
gleam of Walter's tent showed clear on its perch atop of a flat-roofed
native hut.

Crossing the stream which tumbled down the valley, by a somewhat "wobbly"
bridge, and picking our way through the mixen which forms the approach to
every well-appointed hut, we arrived upon the roof which supported the
tent. This we achieved without any undue trouble, the building, like most
"gujar" homes, being constructed on the side of a hill sufficiently steep
to obviate the necessity for any back wall--the rear of the roof
springing directly from the hillside. A Gujar village, owing to this
peculiarity of construction, always looks oddly like a deposit of great
half-open oysters clinging to the face of the hill.

After a welcome lunch, the ladies both pronounced decidedly against
remaining in or near the highly-scented precincts of the village. The
argument that there was no flat ground excepting roofs to be seen was
overruled; so Walter and I climbed a neighbouring ridge, and selected a
site on the crest.

It was not, certainly, a very good site for a camp, as it was so narrow
that the unwary might easily step over the edge on either side, and
toboggan gracefully either back on top of the aforesaid roof, or forward
into a very rocky-bedded stream which employed its superfluous energy in
tossing some frayed and battered logs from boulder to boulder, and which
would have rejoiced greatly in doing the same to a fallen nestling from
the eyry above.

Neither was the ridge level, and our tents were pitched at such an angle
that the slumberer whose grasp of the bed-head relaxed

"In the mist and shadow of sleep"

was brought to wakefulness by finding his toes gently sliding out into the
nipping and eager air of night.

The holding-ground for the tent-pegs was not all that could be desired,
and visions of our tents spreading their wings in the gale and vanishing
into space haunted us.

No--it was not an ideal camping-ground, and Jane, whose rosy dreams of
camping in Kashmir had pictured her little white canvas home set up in a
flowery mead by the side of a purling brook, gazed upon the rugged slopes
which rose around--the cold snow gleaming through the shaggy
pine-trees--with a shiver and a distinct air of disapproval.

It grew more than chilly too, as the sun dipped early behind the ridge
that rose jealous between us and the western light, and an icy breeze from
the snow came stealing down the gorge and whisperin