points which
have done service for centuries and are still accepted. We have the
Gauls of Galatia, Galatz, Galicia, Gallia proper and Gaeldoch (or
Caledonia), forming a continuous chain of Gallic settlements from the
Himaliya to the Ultima Thule. And now the circuit is complete. The
current sets back from the West. The slogan, heard so tellingly at
Lucknow, is swelling up the glaciers of the Asiatic fatherland to save
it from the Scythians! Monkbarns lived too soon.

The Mohammedans of Baltistan, on the opposite (or northern) side of
Kashmir, again surprise us by speaking a Tartar tongue. We are not told
that they are Scotch, endowed though they undoubtedly are with some of
the canny and thrifty characteristics of the dwellers ayont the Tweed.
They are inveterate tradesmen, and carry their small wares, including
hill-ponies, all through the mountains. Let us drop in upon them, if
such an expression be applicable to a climb of the most tremendous
description. It takes us up the steps of the steepest and loftiest slope
of the amphitheatre which forms the maharajah's dominions. First,
however, we begin by a gentle and pleasant descent down the Jhelam to
Lake Wular. Then begins the trouble. We turn northward, and find
ourselves at the end of the first stage four thousand feet above the
valley, on the brink of an artificial sheet of water surrounded by dense
evergreen woods. Next day we rise 2000 feet higher, and redescend 6500
feet to the banks of the Kischanganga, the chief affluent of the Jhelam,
running mostly parallel to the course of the latter stream. Then we
undulate--if so soft a term be applicable to a route so sharply,
abruptly and irregularly serrate--along the spurs which border the
river, now in the forest and now on a bleak plateau where careful
irrigation avails to grow nothing less hardy than millet, peas and
buckwheat. In crossing to the valley, or rather trench, of the upper
Indus, we have the choice of two passes, one 13,060 and the other 13,500
feet above tide. Having selected the least of these two evils, we swoop
nearly six thousand feet down upon the village of Astor and a new
language, the Dard. The temptation to stop and study either is small. If
we are insatiate of climbing or find the heat at Astor--only 7853 feet
above the sea--oppressive, we have the ice-cone of Nanga Parbat, 26,629
feet high, within ten miles to the west. We are within unpleasantly easy
reach of the western and north-western fr