athing easier. We no longer have a singing in
the ears, or palpitations or headache as on the great heights, and the
cold has been left behind. Even in the early morning the air is warm,
and soon come days when we look back with regret to the cool freshness
up in Tibet. One of my dogs, a great shaggy Tibetan, suffered severely
from the increasing heat, and one fine day he turned right about and
went back to Tibet.

[Illustration: PLATE XII. SIMLA.]

The first town that we come to is called Simla (Plate XII.). It is not
large, having barely 15,000 inhabitants, but it is one of the most
beautiful towns in the world, and one of the most powerful, for in its
cedar groves stands a palace, and in the palace an Imperial throne. The
Emperor is the King of England, whose power over India is entrusted to a
Viceroy. In summer enervating heat prevails over the lowlands of India,
and all Europeans who are not absolutely tied to their posts move up to
the hills. The Viceroy and his staff, the government officials, the
chief officers of the army, civil servants and military men all fly with
their wives up to Simla, where the leaders of society live as gaily as
in London. During this season the number of inhabitants rises to 30,000.

The houses of Simla are built like swallows' nests on steep slopes. The
streets, or rather roads, lie terraced one above another. The whole town
is built on hills surrounded by dizzy precipices. Round about stand
forests dark and dense; but between the cedars are seen far off to the
southwest the plains of the Punjab and the winding course of the Sutlej,
and to the north the masses of the Himalayas with their eternal
snowfields. It is delightful to go up to Simla from the sultriness of
India, and perhaps still more delightful to come down to Simla from the
piercing cold of Tibet.

DELHI AND AGRA

From Simla we go down by train through hundreds of tunnels and round the
sharpest curves, over countless bridges and along dizzy precipices, to
the lowlands of the Punjab. It is exceedingly hot, and we long for a
little breeze from Tibet's snowy mountains.

Time flies by till we reach Delhi, situated on the Jumna, one of the
affluents of the Ganges. Delhi was the capital of the empire of the
Great Moguls,[11] and in the seventeenth century it was the most
magnificent city in the world.

[Illustration: MAP OF INDIA, SHOWING JOURNEY FROM NUSHKI TO LEH (pp.
82-88), AND THE JOURNEY FROM TIBET THROUGH SIMLA,