I expected nothing less than to be promptly hurled down the khud, with Jill after me, by the six enraged burghers of Kulgam.  But no.  They simply sat down together on a rock, and blubbered loud and long; we sat down opposite them on another rock and laughed, and laughed—­tableau!

On Friday I went for a delightful walk through the pine and deodar forests, the ostensible objective being, of course, a bear.  Putting aside all ideas of sport, I gave myself up to the simple joy of mere existence in such a land; noting a handsome iris with broad red lilac blooms, which I had not seen before; listening to the intermittent voice of the cuckoo, and pausing every here and there to gaze over the fair valley, backed by its encircling ranges of sunlit mountains.

The chota shikari is a youth of great activity, both mental and physical.  He almost wept with excitement on observing the mark of a bear’s paw on a dusty bit of path.  He said it was a bear which had left that paw-mark, so I believed him.  Late in the dusk of the afternoon he saw a bear sitting looking out of a cave.  I could only make out a black hole, but he saw its ears move.  I regarded the spot with a powerful telescope, but only saw more hole; still, I cannot doubt the chota shikari.  The burra shikari saw it too, but was of opinion that it was too late to go and bag it.  I think he was right, so we went back to camp without further adventure.

Yesterday we left Kulgam, and followed up a track to a small village which lies at the foot of the track leading over to Gurais and the Tilail country.  Here we camped in a grove of walnuts, which stood by an icy spring.  Jane and I went for a stroll, watched a couple of small woodpeckers hunting the trunk of a young fir within a few feet of us, but retreated hurriedly to camp on the approach of a heavy thunderstorm.  This was but the prelude to a bad break in the weather; all to-day it has rained in torrents, and everything is sopping and soaked.  The little stream which yesterday trickled by the camp is become a young river, and it is a perfect mystery how Sabz Ali manages to cook our food over a fire guarded from the full force of the rain by blankets propped up with sticks, and how, having cooked it, he can bring it, still hot, across the twenty yards of rain-swept space which intervenes between the cook-house and our tent.

Monday, May 15.—­The deluge continued all night, and only at about ten o’clock this forenoon did the heavy curtain of rain break up into ragged swirls of cloud, which, torn by the serrated ridges of the gloomy pines, rolled dense and dark up the gorges, resonant now with the roar of full-fed torrents.