one is driven nearly mad with vexation.  At dusk the flies return to roost, and then myriads of mosquitoes emerge from their hiding places, and make night hideous with their monotonous hum and blood-thirsty propensities.  I do not find chepatties so bad as I expected, indeed I rather like them, but then my boy makes them excellently well, using soda in their composition.  The process of manufacture is not pleasant—­the flour is made into a paste, and then flattened and consolidated by being thrown backwards and forwards from one hand to the other, though one may avoid seeing this, it is difficult to escape hearing the pit-pat of the soft dough as it passes rapidly between the Khitmutgars extended, and I fear not always clean fingers, it is then toasted, brought in hot, and you may eat it dirt and all.  But travellers must not be too particular, and so long as your food is wholesome, eat and be thankful.  But here comes my dinner, with the chepatties I have just seen prepared, and which sight suggested the foregoing lines.  Chicken for breakfast, chicken for dinner, chicken yesterday, chicken to-morrow, toujours chicken, sometimes curried, sometimes roasted, torn asunder and made into soup, stew or cutlets, or with extended wing forming the elegant spatchcock, it is still chicken; the greatest and rarest change being that it is occasionally rather tender.  I have had chicken soup and roast fowl for dinner, the chicken in the soup as stringy as hemp, the fowl as tough as my sandal, and with so large a liver that I doubted whether the bird had not met with a violent death.  I like fowl’s liver, it is my one bonne bouche during the day, but these startled me, and after straining my teeth on the carcase, I gladly swallow the soft mouthful.  Oh!  English readers, you who have never wandered far from your native shores and who esteem chickens a luxury to put on your supper table at your festive gatherings, come to India and surfeit on your dainties, you will see it calmly collecting its daily food unsuspicious of danger, then comes the rush and loud clacking as it flies pursued by the ferocious native, ending with cries of despair and the fluttering and hoarse gurgle of its death throes, in half an hour Murghi will be placed before you hot and tempting to the eye but hard as nails to the touch; they are cheap in this part of the world.  I pay one anna (or three halfpence) for a chicken, or two annas for a full grown fowl.

JULY 22nd.—­A little march of three miles to Koopwaddie.  I am glad I came here for one or two reasons.  In the first place the walk afforded me a nearer and finer view of the head of the valley, surmounted by its high and rugged snow peaks; and secondly, I find I can return from here to Sopoor in two marches instead of going back over the old road.  From Sopoor I shall boat to Alsoo.  The range which at Lalpore was on the further side of the valley has gradually approached the other hills until now they are only a quarter of a mile apart, and are connected