“Of a steep wilderness, whose airy sides
  With thicket overgrown, grotesque and wild,
  Access denied; and overhead up grew
  Insuperable height of loftiest shade,
  Cedar, and pine, and fir,”

and seated at the base of a solemn circle of mountains, gives the group of tottering shrines a picturesqueness and importance which I cannot concede that they would otherwise have had.

I do not remember ever to have seen it noted that all buildings which are impressive by the mere majesty of size are to be found in plains and not in mountainous countries.  This is probably due to two causes.  The one being the denser population of the fat plains, whereby a greater concourse of builders and of worshippers would be sustained, and the other being the—­probably unconscious—­instinct which debarred the architect from attempting to vie with nature in the mountains and impel him to work out his most majestic designs amid wide and level horizons.

The fact remains, whatever may be the cause, that architecture has never been advanced much beyond the mere domestic in very mountainous regions, with the exception of the mediaeval strongholds, which formed the nucleus of every town or village, where a point d’appui was required against invasion, for the protection of the community.

Breakfast, followed by a prowl among the ruins and a short space for sketching, gave the sun time to pour his beams with quite unpleasant insistence into the confined fold in the hills, where we began to gasp until the ladies mounted their ponies, and we took our way down the valley, crossing the river below Wangat, and keeping along the left bank to Vernaboug, where we camped, the only incident of any importance being the sad loss of Jane’s field-glasses, which, carried by her syce in a boot-bag, were dropped in a stream by that idiot while crossing, he having lost his footing in a pool, and, clutching wildly at the pony’s reins, let go the precious binoculars.

This morning we were up betimes, Mrs. Locock having ordained a bear “honk”!  This was, to me, a new departure in shikar, and truly it was amusing to see the shikari, bursting with importance, mustering the forty half-naked coolies whom he had collected to beat.  A couple of men with tom-toms slung round their necks completed the party, which marched in straggling procession out of the village at dawn.

A mile of easy walking brought us to the rough jungly cliffs, seamed with transverse nullahs, narrow and steep, which bordered the river.  Here we were placed in passes, with great caution and mystery, by the shikari and his chief-of-the-staff—­the “oldest inhabitant” of Vernaboug; and here we sat in the morning stillness until a distant clamour and the faint beating of tom-toms afar off made us sit up more warily, and watch eagerly for the expected bear.

The yells increase, and the tom-toms, vigorously banged, seem calculated to fuss any self-respecting bear into fits.  We watch a narrow space between two bushes some dozen yards away, and see that the Mannlicher across our knees and the smooth-bore, ball loaded in the right and chokeless barrel, lie handy for instant use.