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258 And again it was intimated to the public in the formal phrase of a viceregal ball- or dinner-card, by a secretary, who said:

At sunrise the next morning we saw the blue range of the Hindu Kush with a sprinkling of snow on its sharp crest-lines, and the same dreary, dry, stony plain around us, broken only by a few clay bluffs and the gullied watercourses of the rainy season. The air was thin, sharp, and frosty as we lowered the rattling blue window-panes for a look at the forlorn adobe village on the banks, and the great fortified bridge across the Indus at —Attock! the ford and crossing-place of every invader and conqueror from the North since Aryan times; where every one of them camped and fought,—Egyptian, Persian, Greek, Scythian, Afghan, and Mogul, down to Nadir Shah. When the train had trailed slowly across the high iron girders and passed through another great fortress bridge-tower, it turned sharply and ran along the bank, giving us a view of the great picturesque front of Akbar's fort on the opposite bluff. Except for that imposing battlemented castle and fortified bridge, the muddy river, the banks, the stony plain, and the blue mountain-range showing so clearly in the thin, dry air, might as well