We left Chakhoti early this morning—­Tuesday—­with the intention of getting right through to Baramula.  The road was of course extremely bad, and the long ascent to Uri very hard upon our willing little nags.  Of course they have had a remarkably easy time of it lately, as we have been limited to very short stages, and they are in excellent hard condition, so that we felt it no great hardship to ask them to do forty-two miles:  albeit to drag a heavy landau containing five people and a good deal of luggage for that distance, with a rise of over 2000 feet, is a heavy demand upon a single pair of horses!

The scenery was very fine as we toiled up the gorge, in which Uri stands on a plateau over the river and guards the pass into Kashmir valley.

The ruins of an ancient fort rose on the near edge of the little plain.  The Jhelum tore through a rocky gorge far below, and a dark semi-circle of mountains stood steeply up, their cloud-hidden summits giving fleeting glimpses of snow and precipice and pine-clad corries as the sun now and again shot through the clinging vapours.

The dak bungalow of Uri, white and clean, was most attractive, and I should imagine the place to be charming in summer, but as yet the short crisp turf is still brown from recent snow, and although hot in the sun, which now began to shine steadily, it was extremely cold in the shade, while lunch (or should I say “tiffin"?) was being got ready.  I strolled over to the post-office to find—­as usual—­another urgent wire from Smithson several days old, beseeching me to secure my pass for Astor at once.  Directly after lunch we set forward, and as the road on leaving Uri takes a long bend of some miles to the right to a point where the Haji Pir River is crossed, and then sweeps back along its right hank to a spot almost opposite the dak bungalow, we thought that a short cut down to the water, which from our height seemed quite insignificant, and thence up to the road on the other side, would be a desirable stroll.  As we walked down the steep path into the nullah a brace of red-legged partridges (chikor) rose in a great fuss, and sailed gaily across the river, whose roaring gained ominously in volume as we drew near.  It soon became plain to us that everything is on a very big scale in this country, and that the clearness of the atmosphere helps to delude the unwary stranger.  The little stream that seemed to require but an occasional stepping-stone to enable us to pass over dry-shod, proved in the first place to be much farther off than we had supposed, and when, after a hot scramble, we found ourselves on the bank, the stepping-stones were no more, but only here and there we saw the shoulders of huge rocks which doggedly threw aside the flying foam of a fair-sized river.  It was obviously impossible to cross except by deep wading, but, being unwilling to own defeat, I yelled to a brown native on the far bank, and made signs that he should come and do beast