Much of the country population seems to be nomadic, or semi-nomadic, dwelling in tents with which they remove to the higher ground when the Indus becomes inundated, and return again to the valley to cultivate and harvest their crops.  They seem a picturesque people mostly, sometimes strangely incongruous in the matter of apparel, as, for instance, one I saw wearing a white breech-cloth and a hussar coat.  This was the whole extent of his wardrobe, for he had neither shoes, shirt, nor hat.

Water-buffaloes are wading and swimming about in the overflowed jungle, browsing off bulrushes and rank grass.  Youngsters are sometimes seen perched on the buffaloes’ backs, taking care of the herd.

About Mooltan the aspect of the country changes to level, barren plain, and this, as we gradually approach Lahore, gives place to a cultivated country of marvellous richness.  Here one first sees the matchless kunkah roads, traversing the country from town to town, the first glimpse of which is very reassuring to me.

It is July 28th when I at length find myself in Lahore.  The heat is not only well-nigh unbearable, but dangerous.  Prickly heat has seized hold upon me with a promptness that is anything but agreeable; the thermometer in my room at Clarke’s Hotel registers 108 deg. at midnight.  A punkah-wallah is indispensable night and day.

A couple of days are spent in affixing a new set of tires to my wheel and seeing something of the lions of Lahore.  The Shalamar Mango Gardens, a few miles east of the city, and Shah-Jehan’s fort, museum, etc., are the regular things to visit.

In the museum is a rare collection of ancient Asiatic arms, some of which throw a new light on the origin of modern firearms.  Here are revolving muskets that were no doubt used long before the revolving principle was ever applied to arms in the West.  But our narrative must not linger amid the antiquities of Lahore, fascinating as they may, peradventure, be.

CHAPTER XIV.

Through India.

The heat is intense, being at the end of the heated term at the commencement of the earliest monsoons.  It is certainly not less than 130 deg.  Fahr., in the sun, when at 3 p.m.  I mount and shape my course toward Amritza, some thirty-five miles down the Grand Trunk Road.

In such a temperature and beneath such a sun it behooves the discreet Caucasian to dress as carefully for protection against the heat as he would against the frost of an Arctic winter.  The United States army helmet which I have constantly worn since obtaining it at Fort Sydney, Neb., has now to be discarded in favor of a huge pith solar topee an inch thick and but little smaller than an umbrella.  This overshadowing head-dress imparts a cheerful, mushroom-like aspect to my person, and casts a shadow on the smooth whitish surface of the road, as I ride along, that well-nigh obliterates the shadow of the wheel and its rider.