Half-an-hour of this kaleidoscopic whirl of gaiety satisfied us.  The sun, in spite of an awning, was a little trying, so we sought the quiet and shade of the Nasim Bagh for lunch and repose.

Returning towards Srinagar about sundown, we stopped to visit the ancient Mosque of Hassanabad, which stands on a narrow inlet or creek of the Dal Lake, shaded by chenars and willows in all their fresh spring green.  A little lawn of softest turf slopes up gently to the ruined mosque, of which a portion of an apse and vaulted dome alone stand sentinel over its fallen greatness.  Around lie the tombs of princes, whose bones have mouldered for eight hundred years under the irises, which wave their green sabres crowned with royal purple in the whispering twilight.

Near by, the mud and timber walls of a ziarat stand, softly brown, supporting a deeply overhanging, grass-grown roof, blazing with scarlet tulips.  Through its very centre, and as though supporting it, pierces the gnarled trunk of a walnut tree, reminding one of Ygdrasil, the Upholder of the Universe.

May 27.—­What an improvement it would be if a house-dounga could be fitted with torpedo netting!  Jane finds herself in the most embarrassing situations, while dressing in the morning, from the unwelcome pertinacity of the merchants who swarm up the river in the early hours from their lairs, and lay themselves alongside the helpless house-boats.

By 10 A.M. we have to repel boarders in all directions.  Mr. Sami Joo is endeavouring to sell boots from the bow, while Guffar Ali is pressing embroidery on our acceptance from the stern.  Ali Jan is in a boat full of carved-wood rubbish on the starboard side, while Samad Shah, Sabhana, and half-a-dozen other robbers line the river bank opposite our port windows and clamour for custom.  A powerful garden-hose of considerable calibre might be useful, but for the present I have given Sabz Ali orders to rig out long poles, which will prevent the enemy from so easily getting to close quarters.

June 17.—­It is quite curious that it should be so difficult to find time to keep up this journal.  Mark Twain, in that best of burlesques, The Innocents Abroad affirms, if I remember rightly, that you could not condemn your worst enemy to greater suffering than to bind him down to keep an accurate diary for a year.

It is the inexorable necessity for writing day by day one’s impressions that becomes so trying; and yet it must be done daily if it is to be done at all, for the only virtue I can attain to in writing is truth; and impressions from memory, like sketches from memory, are of no value from the hand of any but a master.

The time set apart for diary-writing is the hour which properly intervenes between chota hasri and the announcement of my bath; but, somehow, there never seems to be very much time.  Either the early tea is late or bath is early, or a shikar expedition, with a grass slipper in pursuit of flies, takes up the precious moments, and so the business of the day gets all behindhand.