rightly guessed to be
Nedou's Hotel. Below, on a spur, was the little church, and to the right,
in the hollow, the club-house faced the level polo-ground.

A winding stream, which we subsequently found to be perfectly ubiquitous,
and an insatiable devourer of errant golf-balls, ran deviously through the
valley, which seemed to be rather over a mile long, and almost equally
wide.

The Smithsons rode away vaguely in search of a camping-ground; while we,
having found out where our hut was, turned back and climbed a knoll behind
the bazaar, and found ourselves in front of our future home, a very plain
and roughly-built rectangular wooden hut, containing a small square room
opening upon a verandah, and having a bedroom and bathroom on each side.

Such was our palace, and we were well satisfied with it.

The cook-house and servants' quarters were in a hut close by, and I could
summon my retainers or chide them for undue chatter from my bedroom
window--a serviceable short cut for the dinner, too, in wet and stormy
weather!

Life at Gulmarg is extremely apt to degenerate into the "trivial round" of
the golf links varied by polo, or polo varied by golf, with occasional
gymkhanas and picnics. There are, doubtless, many delightful excursions to
be made, but upon the whole it seems difficult to break far beyond the
"Circular Road," a fairly level and well-kept bridle-path, which for eight
beautiful miles winds through the pine forest, giving marvellous glimpses
of snowy peaks and sunlit valleys.

The "Circular Road" is always fine, whether seen after rain, when, far
below in the Ferozepore Nullah, the

"Swimming vapour slopes athwart the glen,
Puts forth an arm, and creeps from pine to pine,"

or when in the evening sunlight the whole broad Valley of Kashmir lies
glowing at our feet, ringed afar by the ethereal mountains whose pale
snows stand faint in the golden light, until beneath the yellowing sky the
clouds turn rosy, and from their midst Haramok and Kolahoi raise their
proud heads towards the earliest star.

The expedition to the top of Apharwat is, in my opinion, hardly worth
making, but then I was not very lucky in the weather. Major Cardew, R.F.A.,
and I arranged to do the climb together, and duly started one excessively
damp and foggy morning towards the middle of July.

Taking our ponies, we scrambled up a rough path through the forest to
Killanmarg, a boulder-strewn slope, some half a mile wide, which li