"Like Auster, whirling to and fro, His force on Caspian foam to try; The thermometer sank at once to 41° from about 65°; and during the night it got down to freezingpoint within my tent. Before night the clouds lifted, showing new-fallen snow all round us. In the twilight everything looked white, and assumed a ghastly appearance. The pond was white, and so were the stones around it, the foaming river, and the chalky ground on which our tents were pitched. The sides of the mountains were white with pure new-fallen snow; the overhanging glaciers were partly covered with it; the snowy peaks were white, and so were the clouds, faintly illuminated by the setting sun, veiled with white mist. After dark, the clouds cleared away entirely, and, clearly seen in the brilliant starlight, "Above the spectral glaciers shone" beneath the icy peaks; while, above all, the hosts of heaven gleamed with exceeding brightness in the high pure air. The long shining cloud of the Milky Way slanted across the white valley; Vega, my star, was past its zenith; and the Sat Rishi-the seven prophets of the Hindús, or the seven stars of our Great Bearwere sinking behind the mountains. We had some difficulty in getting off by six next morning, when the thermometer was at 36°, and every one was suffering from the cold. Unfortunately, too, we had to ford several icy-cold streams shortly after leaving camp, for they would have been unfordable further on in the day. There are no bridges on this wild route; and I could not help pitying the poor women who, on this cold morning, had to wade shivering through the streams, with the rapid water dashing up almost to their waists. Still, on every side there were 20,000-feet snowy peaks and overhanging glaciers, while great beds of snow curled over the tops of the mural precipices. After a few miles the Chandra ceased to run from north to south, and turned so as to flow from east to west; but there was no change in the sublime and terrific character of the scenery. Out of the enormous beds of snow above, whenever there is an opening for them, "The glaciers creep Like snakes that watch their prey; from their far fountains Have piled-dome, pyramid, and pinnacle— Is there, that from the boundaries of the sky We were soon doomed to make a closer acquaintance with some of these enormous glaciers. Ere long we came to one which stretched down all the way into the river, so there was no flanking it. At first it looked as if we were painfully crossing the huge ridges of a fallen mountain; but this soon proved to be an immense glacier, very thickly covered over with slabs of clay-slate, and with large blocks of granite and gneiss, but with the solid ice underneath exposed here and there, and especially in the surfaces of the large crevasses which went down to unknown depths. Some of these edges must have been two or three hundred feet in height. This glacier, as also others which followed, was a frightfully fatiguing and exasperating thing to cross, and occupied us nearly three hours, our guides being rather at a loss in finding a way over. I should have been the whole day upon it, but for the astounding performances of my little Spiti mare, which now showed how wise had been the selection of it for this difficult journey. Never had I before fully realised the goat-like agility of these animals, and I almost despair of making her achievements credible. She sprang from block to block of granite, even with my weight upon her, like an ibex. No one who had not seen the performance of a Spiti pony could have believed it possible for any animal of the kind to go over the ground at all, and much less with a rider upon it. But this mare went steadily with me up and down the ridges, over the great rough blocks of granite and the treacherous slabs of slate. I had to dismount and walk, or rather climb, a little only three or four times, and that not so much from necessity as from pity for the little creature, which was trembling in every limb from the great leaps and other exertions which she had to make. On these occasions she required no one to lead her, but followed us like a dog, and was obedient to the voice of her owner. Shortly before coming to the glacier I thought she was going over a precipice with me, owing to her losing her footing on coming down some high steps; but she saved herself by falling on her knees and then making a marvellous side spring. On the glacier, also, though she sometimes lost her. footing, yet she always managed to recover it immediately in some extraordinary way. Her great exertions there did not require any goad, and arose from her own spirit and eager determination to overcome the obstacles which presented themselves, though in ordinary circumstances she was perfectly placid, and content to jog along as slowly as might be. Even when I was on this mare she would poise herself on the top of a block of granite, with her four feet close together after the manner of a goat, and she leaped across crevasses of unknown depth after having to go down a slippery slope on one side, and when, on the other, she had nothing to jump upon except steeply inclined blocks of stone. The reader may imagine that I have exaggerated the exploits of this little animal, but I have not done so in the very least, and have only given what I wrote at the time in my note-book. Captain Harcourt says of this glacier: "In the early morning, when the sun has had little power to melt the ice, the passage of the glacier is comparatively easy, though I doubt whether it would be ever possible to ride over it, for every step has to be conned over, and, as I counted 3648 of these when I walked over it in 1869, it might be safe to put the width of the Shigri at nearly two miles." I was not in a fit state to cross it on foot, and had no bearers to carry me had that been possible, which it was not. The glacier bore no signs of having diminished in size, and as we wandered about a good deal on it, having difficulty in finding a way, we must have gone over a great deal more than two miles of ground. I could not have got over it except by riding on this pony. The two Losar yaks also, magnificent black creatures with enormous white tails, did wonders; but their indignant grunting was something to hear. They had to be goaded a good deal, and were not so surprising as the slender-legged Spiti mare. Of course the latter had no shoes; and it is not usual to shoe the horses of the Himalaya, though they do so sometimes in Kashmír; and in Wukhan, to the north of the Oxus, there is the curious compromise of shoeing them with deer's horn, which protects the hoofs, while presenting a surface less slippery than iron, and one more congenial to the horse's tender foot. There was something affecting in the interest which this mare and some of the other mountain ponies I had elsewhere, took in surmounting difficulties, and not less so in the eagerness, at stiff places, of the foals which often accompanied us without carrying any burden. Thus in early youth they get accustomed to mountain journeys and to the strenuous exertions which these involve. At the same time, the Himalayan ponies husband their breath very carefully in going up long ascents, and no urging on these occasions will force them to go faster than they think right, or prevent them from stopping every now and then just as long as they think proper. These are matters which must be left entirely to the ponies themselves, and they do not abuse the liberty which they claim. More trying is their fondness for trotting or ambling down the steepest ascents on which they can at all preserve their footing; and they show considerable impatience when restrained from doing so, and have expressive ways of their own of saying to their rider, " Why don't you trust me and let me go down at my own pace? I shall take you quite safely." This ambling down a precipitous mountain-side is particularly unpleasant when the path is a corkscrew one, with many and sharp turnings, because when the pony rushes down at a turning, it seems as if its impetus must carry it on and over; but at the |