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Rh hundred barbarous soldiers armed with matchlocks, who being protected by a mud fort, cared little for the orders of the Rajah. At length he obtained a score of Cashmerian attendants, only half of the necessary number; but being annoyed at delay and the heat being intense, he loaded them with the more necessary portion of his baggage and pushed forward with a part of his attendants. It was dark when his rear-guard joined him; and soon afterwards a fierce storm arose which lasted all night. The terrible lightning, happily, did no mischief to the party, but the torrents of rain, says Jacquemont, in one of those numerous letters which he found means to write from these mountainous regions, "melted my mules, my horses, my soldiers, my porters, as if they had been made of sugar." At sunrise, he found only his horsemen, among whom there was some kind of discipline. All the rest had disappeared. Their road was now one of extreme difficulty. It was necessary to dismount every moment, and in spite of every care two of his troop of horses fell over a precipice. "For my own part," adds the light-hearted, indefatigable naturalist, "I was always on foot, my geologist's hammer in my hand, constantly quitting the path, which was only a low and narrow opening through a close jumble of thorny shrubs, to gain some neighbouring height, in order to gain with my compass the direction of the strata, and prudence required that I should be accompanied in all these deviations by armed attendants."

On one of these occasions Jacquemont was actually taken prisoner by one of his old annoyers, the native chiefs. Passing at sunrise over the mountain ridge on