It was a stiff pull.  The sun was now peering triumphantly over the hills on the far side of the valley, and the path was (an extraordinary thing in Kashmir) excessively dusty.  Up and on we panted, Jane partly supported by having the bight of the shikari’s puggaree round her waist while he towed her by the ends.

There was no relaxation of the steep gradient, no water, and no shade, and the height to be surmounted was 4000 feet.

If the longest lane has a turning, so the highest hill has a top, and we came at last to the blissful point where the path deigned to assume an approach to the horizontal, and led us to the most delightful spring in Kashmir!  The water, ice-cold and clear, gushes out of a crevice in the rock, and with the joy of wandering Israelites we threw ourselves on the ground, basked in the glorious mountain air, and shouted for the tiffin basket.

Only the faithful “Yellow Bag” was forthcoming, the tiffin coolie being still “hull down,” and from its varied contents we extracted the only edibles, apricots and rock cakes.

Never have we enjoyed any meal more than that somewhat light breakfast, washed down by water which was a pure joy to drink.

Alas!  There were but two rock cakes apiece!  Another half-hour’s clamber, along a pretty rough track, brought us to a point whence we looked down a long green slope to our destination, Tronkol—­a few Gujar huts, indistinct amidst a clump of very ancient birch-trees, standing out as a sort of oasis among the bare and boulder-strewn slopes.

The view was superb.  To the right, the mountain-side fell steeply to where, in the depths of the Wangat Nullah, a tiny white thread marked the river foaming 4000 feet below, and beyond rose a jagged range of spires and pinnacles, snow lying white at the bases of the dark precipices.  “These are the savage wilds” which bar the route from the Wangat into Tilail and the Upper Sind.

Over Tronkol, bare uplands, rising wave above wave, shut out the view of Gangabal and the track over into the Erin Nullah and down to Bandipur.

On our left towered the bastions of Haramok, his snow-crowned head rising grimly into the clear blue sky.

We pitched our camp at Tronkol about two o’clock, on a green level some little way beyond the Gujar huts, and just above a stream which picked its riotous way along a bed of enormous boulders, sheltered to a certain extent by a fringe of hoary birches.

We had never beheld such great birches as these, many of them, alas! mere skeletons of former grandeur, whose whitening limbs speak eloquently of a hundred years of ceaseless struggle with storm and tempest.

I saw no young ones springing up to replace these dying warriors.  The Gujars and their buffaloes probably prevent any youthful green thing from growing.  It seems a pity.

Towards evening we observed baggage ponies approaching, and at the sight we felt aggrieved; for, in our colossal selfishness, we fancied that Tronkol was ours, and ours alone.  A small tent was pitched, and presently to our surly eyes appeared a lonely lady, who proceeded solemnly to play Patience in front of it while her dinner was being got ready.