Sunday morning saw us again battling with a perfect coruscation of landslips; so “jumpy” was it in many places that we sat with the carriage doors ajar, in hopes that a timely dart out might enable us to evade a falling rock.  At Mile 46 we were held up for an hour until a ramp was made over a bad slide, and the carriage and ekkas were unloaded and got across.  The landau looked for all the world like a great dead beetle surrounded by ants, as, man-handled by a swarm of coolies, it was hauled, step by step, over the improvised track.  A landau is not at all a suitable or convenient carriage for this sort of work, and had we guessed what was before us we should most certainly have employed the handier tonga.

The road to-day, cut as it was out of the steep flank of the mountain, was magnificent, but, in its present condition, nerve-shattering.  Fallen boulders and innumerable mud-slides constantly forced us to get out and walk, while the sturdy little horses tugged the carriage through places where the near wheels were frequently within a few inches of the broken edge of the road, while far below Jhelum roared hungrily as he foamed by the foot of a sheer precipice.

Reaching Chakhoti about four o’clock, we decided to remain there for the night, as it was growing late and the weather looked gloomy and threatening.  Although we had only achieved a short stage of twenty-one miles, there was no suitable place for a night’s halt until Uri, distant some thirteen miles and all uphill.

About half a mile above Chakhoti there is a rope bridge over the Jhelum, and after tea we set forth to inspect it.

The river is here about 150 yards wide and extremely swift, and I confess the means of crossing it, although practised with perfect confidence by the natives, did not appeal to me.

From two great uprights, formed from solid tree-trunks, three strong ropes were stretched—­the upper two parallel, and the third, about four feet lower, was equidistant from each.

These three ropes were kept in their relative positions by wooden stretchers—­something like great merrythoughts, lashed at intervals of a few yards—­

  “And up and down the people go,”

stepping delicately upon the lower rope, and holding on to the upper ones with their hands.  The uncomfortable part seemed to the unpractised European to be where the graceful sweep of the long ropes brought the traveller to within a painfully close distance of the hurrying, hungry water, before he began to slither circumspectly up the farther slope!

We stood for some little time watching the natives going to and fro, passing one another with perfect ease by means of a dexterous squirm, and carrying loads on their backs, or live fowls under their arms, with the utmost unconcern.