and supplied with all the comforts of an exotic civilisation.

The environs of the city are beautified by magnificent clumps of chenar, the Oriental plane. Among the many contributions of the Moghul emperors of Agra and Delhi to the embellishment of the Kashmir capital, which was their favourite summer retreat, for none have later generations more reasons to be grateful than for the artistic forethought which originated in so many places, avenues, or groves of these stately trees, and which even imposed upon the native villages as a yearly duty the plantation of a stipulated number. Later dynasties have responded by an almost equally abundant introduction of poplars, and the long lines and avenues of the latter are among the delights of suburban Srinagar.

No visitor goes away without diverging from the river by one of the lateral canals and spending a morning in his boat in furrowing the glassy surface of the Dal Lake, immediately behind the city, and in inspecting the pleasure gardens and pavilions around its shores that were erected for the diversion or the dalliance of the Moghul sovereigns. The floating gardens of the lake are famous; great lotus leaves and water-lilies quiver idly upon the pellucid surface; wild-fowl of every description dart in and out of the rushes, and kingfishers flash like streaks of blue flame amid the trees. Perhaps our destination is the Nasim Bagh, or Garden of Soft Breezes, or the Nishat Bagh, or Garden of Bliss, or the Shalamar Bagh-the two latter the creation of the Emperor Jehangir more than three centuries gone by.

There the water still descends from terrace to terrace and ripples in deftly constructed cascades; it still spurts from the Moghul fountains, and plashes in the decaying and deserted pools. The gardens, once so trim and neat, though little tended, are still bright with flowers. In the pavilions that are built above the waters one may lie at ease on the very spot where the emperors and their sultanas played and quarrelled and were reconciled. The eye wanders over the terraces and cascades and pools, and across the blue levels of the lake, to where the Takht-i-Suleiman and the Hari Parbat, like two grim sentinels, keep watch at the gates of the invisible city at their feet, and at such a moment, and from this agreeable distance, the beauty of Srinagar becomes crystallised into a positive sensation.

To the traveller, however, and in a scarcely less degree to the sportsman, Srinagar is only the gateway to regions possessing an even more potent fascination beyond. The young subaltern halts there on his way to shoot ibex or markhor in the nullahs of the Hindu Kush or amid the crags of Baltistan. The explorer or the voyager takes it in his stride on the march to Gilgit, or the Pamirs. It was as a member of the second class that in 1904 I passed through on my way to the outer frontier of the Indian Empire. I afterwards wrote a book about the latter, which though it was already in print and had been sold for a substantial sum to an enterprising publisher, I was never allowed to bring out; for, when I had actually corrected the final proofs and my photographs had been engraved, I was

appointed Viceroy of India; and the Prime Minister, Lord Salisbury, declared with, I believe, a quite unnecessary punctilio, that a new Viceroy ought not to publish anything about the country which he was so soon to rule. So my plates were put away, the cheque was returned, and my proof sheets reposed, as they have done ever since, in a tin box from which they will now never emerge-not indeed from any pedantry or spleen, but because I find them to be superfluous and out of date. The Pamir Question has been settled, at any rate for the time being; the majority of the little mountain republics have not the political interest or strategical importance that they once possessed; and what was then all but virgin ground has since been frequently trodden and described. Here I will only give a slight sketch of the region in question, in its relation to the frontier problem as a whole.

The frontier pass of Gilgit is situated 230 miles north of Srinagar, and is separated from it by the main Himalayan range. A glance at the map will indicate the importance which, owing to its geographical situation, the place has always possessed in the military and dynastic contests of the Hindu Kush region. Planted on a fertile oasis, at a slight distance above the junction of the Hunza River— which runs down through the valley of that name from the watershed separating India from the Eastern Pamirs-and the Gilgit River, which flows in from the borders of Chitral on the west, receiving in its course tributaries from Yasin and Ishkumman, it has always been the point from which connection