Both yesterday (Saturday) and to-day it has been cold and disagreeable. The past winter, I am told, has been a very severe one, and the melancholy brown skeletons of all the eucalyptus trees in the place show the dismal results of the frost.
This forenoon the day darkened, and a very severe thunderstorm broke. So dark was it at lunch that candles had to be lighted in haste, and even now (4 P.M.) I can barely see to write.
Thursday, March 30.—Monday was showery, and Tuesday decidedly wet; but, in spite of the hospitable blandishments of our kind hosts, we were most anxious to get on, as, having arranged with the Smithsons to go into the Astor district to shoot, it was most important to reach Srinagar before the first of April—the day upon which the shooting passes were to be issued to sportsmen in rotation of application. Knowing that only ten passes were to be given for Astor, and that several men were ahead of me, I felt that we were running it somewhat fine to leave only three days for the journey.
General Woon, who knew Kashmir well, did his very best to dissuade us from attempting the passes into Astor, reading to us gloomy extracts from his journal, and pointing out that it was no fit country for a lady in early spring.
He did much to shake our enthusiasm, but still I felt we must do our best to “keep tryst” with the Smithsons. So, on Tuesday, we sent on the heavy luggage in two ekkas which Sabz Ali had procured, the two others being only hired from Hassan Abdal to Abbotabad.
Sabz Ali had pointed out that, although he himself was a wonderful man, and could do almost, if not quite, everything, a second servant would be greatly to our (and his) advantage. So, acting on my permission, he engaged one Ayata—a gentle person of a sheep-like disposition, who did everything he was told, and nothing that he was told not to, during our sojourn in Kashmir.
CHAPTER IV
ABBOTABAD TO SRINAGAR
Dismal tidings came in of floods and storms on the Hassan Abdal road. The river had swollen, and both men and beasts had been swept away while trying to cross. Undeterred, however, by such news, even when backed by warnings and persuasions from our friends, we set forth in the rain yesterday morning. The prospect was not cheerful—a grey veil of cloud lay over all the surrounding hills, here and there deepening into dark and angry thunder-clouds. The road was desperately heavy, but the General had most kindly sent on a pair of mules ahead, and, with another pair in the shafts, our own nags took a holiday as far as Manserah.
The weather grew worse. It rained very heavily and thundered with great vigour, and as we straggled up the deeply-muddied slope to the dâk bungalow at Manserah we felt somewhat low; but we did not in the least realise what was before us!
Our road had lain through fairly level plains, with low cuttings here and there, where the saturated soil was already beginning to give way and fall upon the road in untidy heaps; but this did not foreshadow what might occur later.