impressive. Limpid water

impressive. Limpid water from the hills flows down over four successive terraces, through pools and cascades, to fall into the lake. In the center of each terrace is a simple but graceful stone pavilion. The whole area is dotted with huge chinar trees, which look like cousins of the European plane or American sycamore but are immensely bigger.

As though to offset the gentleness of the scene, the nearest range of the Himalayas, snowcovered and still cloudcapped at the end of February, after the recent rains, provided an austere backdrop. Ironically enough, just as the sun was coming out for the first time that day. I slipped in the mud that coated^one of the marble pavements and put my camera out of action for the rest of the trip. On our way back we looked in briefly on the next most famous garden. Nishat Bagh, but my heart had gone out of the business.

The following morning we set out by car again on an expedition into the Himalayas themselves. Our destination was Pahalgam in the Liddar Valley, some 60 road miles east of Srinagar and roughly 7000 feet above sea level.

We started in a southerly direction, on what was obviously the main road connecting Srinagar with the rest of India, and close beside the River Jhelum, key to the Vale’s fertility. At that season, of course, there were no recognizable crops in the fields. The villages and little towns we passed through differed from their counterparts further south much as Srinagar differed from other Indian cities—solider buildings, drabber clothes, harder faces.

More than once my eye was caught by crisscross piles of wooden billets, obviously left that way to dry. The answer to my query was "Cricket-bat blades." I had wondered where the indispensable willow grew: it is not the kind of tree to fourish in the climate of central