Dak Bungalow to be closed to all travellers for some time to come. This was a pretty lookout for two wet and weary men whose tents were still a march or two back on the road, for the Dak Bungalow was the only public house of entertainment in P. We sent for the issuer of this disastrous order and demanded instant shelter if he wished it to be complied with, and he soon solved the difficulty by breaking open the Public Works Department Rest House and allotting us excellent quarters therein.

After refreshment in front of a roaring fire, we found that the rain had stopped and the clouds had lifted, and that we were in a very lovely little place, not high enough to be classified as a hill station, and apt to be uncommonly hot in June and July, but very pleasant in April. A ruined church, a ruined club-house, a ruined school, a new dak bungalow and sessions-house, built on anti-earthquake lines, that is, of light wood framing, instead of solid masonry, showed us that the traces of the appalling earthquake of 1905 were still very visible. Nowhere in India had its effects been more terrific than in the district of which P- is the centre.

Forty thousand lives of men alone were lost in the space of a couple of minutes,at least so we were assured by all classes of people,—and an equal number of cattle. Ruin stared every one in the face, and to no class was the catastrophe so

overwhelming as to the unfortunate English tea - planters. A few years ago so many members of this cheery community lived on their own estates within riding distance of P that seventy used to sit down on big nights to the club dinner. A succession of bad seasons put them into difficulties, from which the present improvement in tea might have extricated them, but then came the earthquake. There remained only one thing, and that was to sell their estates to rich native capitalists from Amritsar, Benares, and Lahore for any song they would fetch, and go out and begin life again.

We spent about a week at P and other places in the tea district, and moved about among the people, looking at the, to us, unfamiliar teagardens, and and asking many questions. The central fact that remained impressed on our minds was that the English planters had succeeded, as a class, in winning the trust, affection, and loyalty of their native neighbours to an extraordinary degree. By their surnames they were unknown, but the meanest field - hand would point to a mass of ruins and tell us that there "Willy Sahib" had lived and died that there "Freddy Sahib's " wife had been pinned by a falling beam and taken out with a broken leg; that there "Bobby" and "Teddy" and

Franky" had succeeded their father and grandfather, only, in the end, to be compelled to sell an estate "worth three

planter lived close by, one of the very few who still remained, and so we went off to pay our respects, glean information about the state of the passes in front of us, and beg him to keep an eye on the dogs we were leaving behind. This planter was referred to universally as "Freddy Sahib," but as we neared his house it seemed better to try and discover an address slightly less informal, so we asked by what other name he was known. Two of our escorting hosts declared unhesitatingly that he had no other name; the third, after turning the matter over in his mind, said that he thought that "Freddy Sahib's" father had been called "Frizzle." As a matter of fact he hadn't, but it was near enough to identify with a well-known

Irish surname.

grazing rights, and potatogrowing tracts.

He took us round his estate next day, and showed us all the processes of tea - making, from the plucking of the leaf by handsome stalwart women and children down to its final deposit in air-tight tins. Many processes there were, and much modern machinery was used in them, but to our surprise we learnt that the operation as a whole was a short one, and that the leaf we had seen growing on its bush in the morning could end the day as the finished article in our teapot, though this speed is not usually demanded of it.

Next morning we had a note from the planter saying that some men were at his house about a contract for carrying salt for his sheep up to their pastures, and that, being summer residents of the country we were hoping to reach, they might give us some useful information.

This was an op

portunity not to be lost, so we hurried over and interviewed the strangers, or rather stood by while "Freddy" addressed them in a dialect of which, despite many years' residence in India, we could not understand a single word.

The upshot, however, was discouraging to the last degree, for we were told that the season was quite an abnormal one, that the snowfall had been both heavy and late, and that the various routes into “ our country" would not be open for six weeks after the usual dates. The particular Pass for which we were making was