Page:ER Scidmore--Winter India.djvu/283

Rh dred and seventy-eight miles from Lahore—the latter distance covered by fast-mail train in seventeen hours. The storied mud walls of the city were like adobe pueblos, and the same dry and treeless plain, dry, thin atmosphere, and glaring white sunlight of the American Southwest blinded us as we drove from the end of the track at the cantonment station to the drooping roses and poinsettias in the dusty gardens of the dak bangla.

By previous correspondence with the commissioner at Peshawar—and here let me bear testimony to the unfailing courtesy, the endless kindness, the considerate interest which every English official in India accords to the winter wanderers—through the kindness of this unknown northern commissioner we had been fully informed of the preparations necessary for a visit to the Khyber, and by dint of many telegrams everything was in train for our arrival. The khansamah at the bangla served his tiffin on the moment, and soon the babu of the political agent was there with the permits to travel the as far as Ali Masjid on the following caravan day, and with an order for the detail of sowars of Khyber Rifles to act as escort. Straightway we judged horses and made bargains with splendidly whiskered old Hassan Khan at his hospital of broken vehicles in the bazaar, and quoted to him the while the commissioner's warning that the only danger in the Khyber Pass would be from the chance of an unbroken pony being put in harness. The turbaned one, with his hand on his heart, assured us that we should have the most safe and