Put a stick into the ground, and in an extraordinary short space of time it becomes a tree and bears fruit.

What were we about, to sell such a country for three quarters of a million sterling?
It would have made the most perfect sanatorium for our troops, and furnished an admirable field for British enterprise and colonization, its climate being as near perfection as anything can be.
How sad it is that, in a country 'where every prospect pleases, only man' should be 'vile'! And man, as he existed in Kashmir, was vile--vile, because so miserable.

The Mahomedan inhabitants were being ground down by Hindu rulers, who seized all their earnings, leaving them barely sufficient to keep body and soul together.

What interest could such people have in cultivating their land, or doing any work beyond what was necessary to mere existence?
However hard they might labour, their efforts would benefit neither themselves nor their children, and so their only thought was to get through life with as little exertion as possible--in the summer sitting in the sun absolutely idle the greater part of the day, and in the winter wrapped up in their blankets, under which were concealed curious little vessels called _kangris_, holding two or three bits of live charcoal.
Every Kashmiri still carries one of these _kangris_, as the most economical way of keeping himself warm.
Early in September we said good-bye to the happy valley and returned to Peshawar, where I rejoined the Mountain Battery.
In November, to my great delight, I was given my jacket.

At first my happiness was somewhat damped by the fact that the troop to which I was posted was stationed at Umballa.