high hill rises from the edge of the water.  A stream is artificially conducted along its face at a height of about fifty feet, and the surplus water escapes in several pretty little cascades, by the side of one of them grow some noble chenars.  The bottom of the lake around the edges is very uneven, and covered with a dense growth of mynophillum spicatum, on which planorbus and other molluces graze and tiny fry pick their invisible atoms of food.  The elegant shape of this plant with its branching and finely cut leaves, and the inequalities of the ground remind me of the pine-clad hills in miniature.  A brilliant king-fisher took the gunwale of the boat as the “base of his operations,” and I amused myself all the morning, by watching him catch fish; when one approached the surface he descended with a splash which I imagined would have driven every fish far away, emerging quickly and very seldom without a capture, which he turned head downwards and swallowed alive and whole, then looked round with a laughable air of self-satisfaction.  When the fish was a size too large to be trifled with, he first polished it off by rapping its head on the boards.  It is now sunset, and that bird is still feeding, and probably the day will end without deciding whether his appetite or his capacity is the larger.  A native brought me a dish of excellent apricots and mulberries—­the mulberries especially good, and my garden is celebrated for the best peaches in Kashmir.

JULY 27th.—­Up the Jhelum again, past Sumbul with its deodar bridge (similar to the others described with this exception, that the footway appears to be built in imitation of the roof of a house sloping on either side from a high central ridge, not the best form of bridge I have seen, but variety is charming) to the entrance of the Scind river, where a chenar stands in the middle of the stream, protected by a square block of masonry.  Tradition says this tree never grows.  Near it is a small island over grown with trees.  Here we left the Jhelum and pursued the course of the Scind which soon contracted into a narrow and rapidly flowing river, its water derived from the snows, being very cold.  It was slow work rowing against the strong current, but we presently emerged into a great lake entirely covered with high rushes except where a winding channel was cut for the boats, and here progression was slower still as the rope had to be abandoned, and the pole called into requisition, so that it was nearly dark when we reached Ganderbul.  Passed a number of men wading in the water up to their necks, and spearing the ground with poles armed with a single barbed spike.  Although this seems an insane way of attempting to catch fish, their boat was well laden with a small species of trout, and I saw several drawn from the water impaled and wriggling upon the sharp point.  Sreenuggur seen in the distance at the extremity of a mountainous spur, with the Fort and Soloman’s Throne, standing upon two elevated rocks.  Within a few miles of Ganderbul the lake became clear, and presented a fine expanse of water, but with so many shallows, that our course was very tortuous.  Having travelled twenty miles, we are now only five miles from Manusbul.  Ganderbul stands at the opening of the Scind valley, but it was too late to take any observations when I arrived; so I must wait until my return.