A bend in the road, and the bicycle sweeps over a substantial brick bridge, spanning an irrigating canal large enough to float a three-masted schooner.  The bridge and the ditch convey early evidence of English enterprise no less conspicuous than the road itself.  Neatly trimmed banks and a tropical luxuriance of overhanging vegetation give the long straight reach of water the charming appearance of flowing through a leafy tunnel.  Under the stimulus of the monsoon rains and the more than tropical heat, the soil seems bursting with fatness, and earth, air, and water are teeming with life.  The roadway itself is swarming with pedestrians, trudging along in both directions; some there are with the inevitable umbrellas held above their heads, but more are carrying them under their arms, as though in lofty contempt of 130 deg.  Fahr.

Vehicles jingle past by the hundred, filled with villagers who have been visiting or shopping at Lahore or Amritza.  Their light bamboo carts are provided with numbers of little brass cymbals that clash together musically in response to the motion of the vehicle; the occupants are fairly loaded down with silver jewellery, and for color and picturesqueness generally it is safe to assume that “not even Solomon in all his glory was arrayed like one of these.”  The women particularly seem to literally revel in the exuberance of bright coloring adorning their dusky proportions, the profusion of jewellery, the merry jingle-jangle of the cymbals, the more than generous heat, and the seeming bountifulness of everything.  These Sikh and Jatni merry-makers early impress me as being particularly happy and light-hearted people.

Splendid wheeling though it be, it soon becomes distressingly apparent that propelling a bicycle has now to be considered in connection with the overpowering heat.  Half the distance to Amritza is hardly covered, and the riding time scarcely two hours, yet it finds me reclining beneath the shade of a roadside tree more used up than five times the distance would warrant in a less enervating climate.  The greensward around me as I recline in the shade is teeming with busy insects, and the trees are swarming with the beautiful winged life of the tropical air.  Flocks of paroquets with most gorgeous plumage—­blue, red, green, gold, and every conceivable hue—­flit hither and thither, or sweep past in whirring flight.

Some of the native pedestrians pause for a moment and cast a wondering look at the unaccustomed spectacle of a Sahib and a bicycle reclining alone beneath a wayside tree.  All salaam deferentially as they pass by, but there is a refreshing absence of the spirit of obtrusion that sometimes made life a burden among the Turks and Persians.  In his disgust at the aggressive curiosity of the Persians, Captain E, my companion from Meshed to Constantinople, had told me, “You’ll find, when you get to India, that a Sahib there is a Sahib,” and the strikingly deferential demeanor of the natives I have encountered on the road to-day forcibly reminds me of his remarks.