it and carried it through, and in the determination with which, despite serious discouragement, I pursued what appeared to be a desperate remedy. My original intention was only to visit Masúri and Simla, and have a distant view of the Himálaya; but the first glimpse of the Jumnotri and Gangotri peaks excited longings which there was no need to restrain, and I soon perceived that the air of the hill-stations could be of no use to me. So I set off from Simla, determined above all things to keep as high up as I could, and to have a snowy range between me and the Indian monsoon, and then, so far as consonant with that, to visit as many places of interest as possible. It probably would have been better had I been able to take more notes on the way; but the great fatigue of the journey, and the strain arising from my being alone, were rather too much for me; and sometimes, for several days at a time, I could do no more than note down the name of the village where we camped, and the temperature at daybreak.

There are many subjects, especially relating to the latter part of my journey, on which I wished to write. at length, but found it inexpedient to do so in order not longer to delay the publication of this volume. As it is, I feel deeply indebted for its having been written at all to the encouragement, consideration, and advice of Mr Blackwood, the Editor of the famous Magazine which bears his name, and in which a great part, but not the whole, of this narrative originally

appeared. From the outset he sympathised warmly with my plan, and throughout he never failed to cheer my flagging spirits with generous praise, not to speak of other encouragement. Then he gave me a great deal of admirable advice.

There is nothing that

is commoner in this world than advice-nothing that is showered down upon one with more liberal profusion ; but there is nothing rarer than judicious useful advice, the first condition of which is sympathetic appreciation of what one would be at; and it was this invaluable kind of advice which Mr Blackwood freely tendered, pointing out where the treatment of my subject required expansion, or aiding me by his knowledge of the world and profoundly appreciative literary taste. I am charmed to find that the lotus of literature contains such a jewel; and I must say, also, that both the Messrs Blackwood did me essential service by the consideration they displayed when I sent in my manuscript at unreasonable times, or altered proofs unmercifully at the last moment. Prince Bismarck said to Count Arnim that the business of the Prussian Foreign Office could not be carried on if every Embassy were to conduct itself in the way that of Paris did; and I am sure the business of Maga could not be carried on at all if all its contributors were to try its patience as I did.

I was much indebted also to an old friend—a genius loci and yet a man of European celebrity-who at the commencement of the appearance of my articles wrote

to me in terms of the warmest encouragement. It may be that the favour with which the original articles appear to have been received may stand in the way of success now that they are reproduced in book-form; so I may mention that, though long passages have not been added to this reprint, yet very many short ones have ; the interstices, so to speak, have been filled up; greater accuracy has been attained; and the whole work has been recast, and that into a form which, I venture to believe, will make it more acceptable to all readers; and I am led to hope that this may be so, among other reasons, by the fact that an American publishing house, G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York, has already prepared stereotyped plates of my book, with a view to republication across the Atlantic.

I feel some regret at not having been able either to repress my outbreaks on the difficult subject of the policy which ought to be pursued in governing India, or to enter into the question in a fuller and more satisfactory manner than I have done; but while that subject lay beyond the proper scope of this work, it was one which the incidents of my journey naturally led me incidentally to refer to. I shall now only express my profound conviction, that if India were more directly governed with an enlightened view to our own national interests than it is at present, it would be far better for the people of India; that it is the English in India, far more than the Bengal ryot, the educated native, or the Indian prince, who have

reason to complain of the British Raj; and that, under a superficial appearance of contentment and progress, there are gathering forces, mostly powerless for good, which may at any moment break forth with destructive fury, and are certain to do so whenever the energies of this country are more fully occupied elsewhere.

It may be fancied that some of my descriptions of what I encountered among the Himálaya are somewhat exaggerated, and especially, I understand, the achievements of the little pony which carried me over the great Shigri glacier. A lady writing to me on this subject remarks: "Had I not known you to be scrupulously truthful-in fact, fastidiously careful in the use of language, lest it might convey a shade of meaning beyond the thought, opinion, or fact, you wished to express—I might have regarded some of your descriptions as exaggerated; but I consider accuracy, both verbal (that is, in the use of words) and in the statement of facts, to be one of your strong pointsbarring and excepting in the making of promises with respect to letter-writing." So I have carefully reconsidered everything which might appear to bear the marks of exaggeration, and, while finding almost nothing to alter on that ground, have thought it best to say nothing about one or two incidents which might really appear incredible. I have only to add on this subject, that the state of Himálayan paths differs somewhat from year to year, according to the amount of

labour expended upon them, and the landslips which

occur.

The frontispiece and vignette to this volume are both taken from photographs of Messrs Shepherd & Bourne of Calcutta and Simla, who sent up an expedition into Spiti, and have provided the public with many admirable photographs of Himalayan scenery, all, or most of which, are obtainable in London. The frontispiece represents a view in the Shigri Valley, or Valley of Glaciers, looking down the Chandra river, near to where my first camp in that valley was pitched; but the snow has been brought down a little lower by the lithographer, in order to represent the scene as it was when I saw it; and the figure of a yak, along with something like my tent, have been added to the foreground. The vignette gives a very fair idea of a Himálayan highway, and of one of those jhúlas, or twig-bridges, which I have described in Chapter XXI. The bridge represented is in the upper Spiti valley, between Dankar and Mani, and differs from those usually to be met with only in that it does not cross a deeply-sunk

torrent.

The map which accompanies this volume has been based on a section of a large school-map of India by the Rev. J. Barton, published under the direction of Committees of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge and of the National Society. Mr Trelawney Saunders, the Geographer to the East India Office, has given this school-map his valuable aid in bringing out