useless they took to cursing and gesticulating, which they continued as their boat moved away and so long as they were within hearing, screaming across the water, making faces, and shaking their fists aloft; the old man was especially violent, it was very laughable.  My present crew consists of the man I have mentioned, three good looking young woman, one of whom has the hooping cough, and a variety of children I have not yet made out the different relations to each other.  There was lightning and some heavy rain last night (the result no doubt of yesterday’s ceremony) and the sky is still gloomy and overcast.  On from Alsoo after Chota Hazree or first breakfast to Lunka, a small island, which is only fifty yards square, is thickly covered with pine trees, with trailing grape vines clinging around their boughs, on it stands an old ruin, and fallen pillars and carved stones litter the ground.  From a distance it looked very lovely, floating as it were on the bosom of the open waters, but as we neared it an unpleasant odour became perceptible, rapidly increasing to a horrid stench.  This proceeded from a colony of natives who were in temporary habitation of the island, and were engaged in catching and drying the fish with which the lake abounds.  I landed however, but was soon forced to beat a rapid retreat.  Such a mass of all kinds of filth crowded in so small a space, I have never before witnessed.  Man is ever the plague spot of the world, where he is not, all is peace, and beauty, with his presence comes contamination and discord.  Saw many a whistling seal in one part of the lake.  The water soon became contracted into a narrow channel, with a low bank on either side, after travelling a few miles more we reached the broad Jhelum above its entrance into the lake.  Remained for the night at Hajun.

JULY 26th, Sunday.—­Moved on in the morning to Manusbul, a small lake connected with the river by a canal.  This lake is about three miles long and one mile wide, it is very deep in the middle, and said by the natives to be unfathomable.  In one of the Hindoo Legends we are told a story of a holy man who spent all his life endeavouring to make a rope long enough to reach to the bottom, and failing, at length threw himself in and was never seen again.  My boatman to give me an idea of its depth, dropped in white pebbles which could be seen for a long time sinking in the clear green water, until they gradually disappeared from sight.  I longed to take a plunge into the cool fluid, and Ungoo evidently read my wish in my looks, for he proposed that I should gussul or bathe.  The presence of three women however proved too much for my modesty, and I refrained, although I have no doubt that had I not done so their feelings would not have been in the least outraged.  Very handsome water lilies (lotus) on the surface of the lake, the flowers being of a delicate pink colour with a yellow centre, and as large as the crown of a man’s hat.  At the further extremity, a