begad,
I'll set the gunners to cut a road; and d'ye think now the snow would
bear the mules at night when it was frozen at all?"

We got back to the huts we had left in the morning by 8.30 P.M., and
there was a general demand for something hot. Our servants, luckily, had
been sent back straight, so it was not long before we had something to
eat; that was our first meal since 5.30 A.M., and it was now about 9
P.M. We had marched some sixteen miles through snow, and been on foot
for some fifteen hours, and here we were back in the same place we had
started from. Since midday we had been pretty well wet through, and the
wind and cold had peeled the skin off our faces till it hung in flakes;
still we were lucky in having a roof over our heads, as it had now
started to snow in earnest. After dinner we weren't long before turning
in.

We were up early the next morning, but Stewart and Gough were up still
earlier, and were making sledges and trying experiments with loads. They
came in flushed with success, swearing that they had dragged the whole
ammunition of the guns by themselves across half a mile of snow, and
that they would have the guns over the pass in no time. Unluckily, the
snow was still falling, and as Borradaile had all the available coolie
transport, we were forced to wait till he could send it back. By noon he
sent in a letter by one of the levies, saying he had been unable to
start, as heavy snow was still falling, but would try the next day.

Shah Mirza now came up to me and said that there was a mullah in the
village who had an infallible charm for stopping the snow, and a present
of a few rupees would no doubt set it in motion. I promptly inquired
how it was the mullah was not carrying a load, but was told he was too
old to help in that way, but would be only too delighted to overcome the
elements; so I gave the Mirza to understand that if the mullah would
stop the snow-storm the Sirkar would make him, the mullah, a great man;
in the meantime, I would give him a couple of rupees on account. Shah
Mirza went off joyfully, evidently having implicit faith in the mullah.

Shortly after this, Gough came up, saying that the Kashmir troops in the
post had volunteered to make a road through the snow, and if he could
take fifty of them with four days' rations to Teru, a sufficient track
might be made to Langar, our next camping ground, just this side of the
pass, to enable the guns to be carried there without much