state officials found us transport.

We met the pilgrims at Tanin. Their camp lay at the junction of two narrow gorges where the crags meet high above the stream like huge natural gates. Beautiful glades of maple and pine and silver birch hung over them, and the freshness of this delicate orchard-like greenery folded in the titanic arms of the cliff, underneath the naked limestone, with the snows glistening over all, appealed to me more than anything I had seen up to that time in Kashmir, though no doubt the thought of the pilgrims encamped there lent an element of romance which helped to complete the spell.

I sat on a snow bridge in the nullah leading to Shisha Nag and looked down on it all. At twilight the camp-fires began to twinkle in the trees. The straight black pines stood out in a weird, spectral light, and the grey smoke rose up between them in tall columns like the wraiths of trees dead. When night had fallen they still stood side by side, vertical shafts of darkness with their ghostly attendants, one little more substantial than the other. Then the moon rose, and one only saw a mist among trees. The grey rocks above became silvered like snows far away, the same dull argent as the stream. High up the masts of the pines were etched against the cliff. Human figures kept moving by the camp-fires, rising and stooping over them, but all

sound was merged in the everlasting roar of the torrent.

In this link-lighted glen under the crags the strangest human miscellany were falling asleep or thinking of the needs of the moment or of eternity

ecstatic Sannyasis, steeped in Vedic law; naked ash-strewn Yogis in their spiritual trance; clownish Bairagis and vagabonds sunk in drunken sleep; peaceful, gentle Sadhus, ascetics who have renounced even speech; homely, comfortable folk, to whom this quest is the one adventure of their lives; simple peasants who have never before left their homes, childless perhaps, and trusting to that cold stalactite for a son; wanderers who pass their lives in pilgrimage from Ramesvaram by Adam's Bridge to far Kedarnath and Badrinath, and the shrine of Krishna at Dwarka, and the temple of Kali at Hingalaj in Baluchistan.

It would have been interesting to read their night thoughts. Most of them believed that the lingam in which the essence of the god resides waxed and waned with the moon, and many believed that they would have heirs if they approached and touched it. There were Maharanis in the camp, of ancient line, who must have lain awake for hours under the silver birches in hope and doubt.

In the morning I visited the camp before the pilgrims had left. The Sadhus were all gathered about their fires, sitting under their umbrellas

or strips of cloth and blanket stretched across three sticks which served them as a tent. Some were cooking their rice; others wrapped in lofty contemplation; others observant, pleased with the interest they caused and ready to be communicative. I had always wanted to see the badges of pilgrimage they wore, and it was not likely I should meet a more travelled crowd. For it is a strong flame that draws the spirit to Amarnath, as the path is long and the hardships great, and I knew the pilgrims who had trodden the road must have visited many shrines.

I searched for a man who was not too proud or sullen or spiritually aloof or physically repulsive, and I came upon a swart, dwarfish creature, who was loitering on the road and watching me with interest. He looked like a Purbiah syce, a drudge from the cradle. There was nothing about him, in his eyes or his gait, to suggest an ideal. The soul side of him did not emerge from its material wrappings.

He told me he was a Nepalese Sannyasi, and he showed me his signs, pleased as a campaigner with his medals. On his right arm he wore a brass bangle with tiger heads meeting, the badge of Jowala Mukhi in the Kangra hills. On his rudraksha, the necklace of beads which every Shivaite wears, hung the brass image of Pasupatinath, token of his pilgrimage to the shrine in Nepal. And he wore the iron ring of Kedarnath, and the copper

bangle of Badrinath, who dwell in the snows beyond Dehra Dun. I asked him if he had made the pilgrimage to the shrine of Krishna at Dwarka on the Bombay coast, and he pointed to undecipherable symbols branded on each arm like very faint inoculation marks which had almost disappeared. He had made Ramesvaram, he told me, though he did not wear the conch shell on his wrist, and many other pilgrimages to holy places which yield no badge, as Jagganath Puri and the priestless cave of Amarnath in the ice-world he had just visited.

I looked in vain for the necklace of "golden flies," emblem of the shrine of Kali at Hingalaj in Baluchistan, but no pilgrim wore it.

I put a rupee into the Sannyasi's hand, but his palm did not close on it; it lay there like a leaf that had fallen by chance. His mind was setting slowly two ways. It was an obscure piece of casuistry which troubled him, and I helped him out of it by turning round and wishing him God-speed. looked hungry, and it meant a square meal to him every day for a week. But he made me feel that it was not etiquette to tip a holy man.

He

The Sadhu is seldom an ascetic by choice. Huge cauldrons of rice were being prepared for the different groups, and they had drawn circles round their kitchens to keep off any whose profane shadow was pollution. But defilement menaced them in the shape of

Phillips, who had come across the stream from his tent and nearly blundered into the sacred ring. I heard angry cries and protests from the kitchen, and saw the subaltern doing the most extraordinarily solemn pas seul, one toe on the ground and the other held up aloft poised at each step, while he looked over his shoulder with a parody of deference to inquire exactly where he might put it down.

It was a graceful retreat, a very original slow-step, and high art at the same time, for the movement symbolised his own view of the position so well that the holy men were grinning all round at the goodnatured irony of it, and even those who so narrowly escaped being defiled looked sheepish and ready to smile. I had forgotten that the Sadhu had a sense of humour.

The real hardships begin for the pilgrims after Tanin. The two thousand feet zigzag up to Zogpal, a ladder of penitence, has tried many pious hearts since the Sadhus first passed this way. At Zogpal they leave the tree-limit behind; every camp after that is a battlefield with its unrecorded roll of dead. Shiv's votaries are not provident: they carry little food and clothing and no fuel. They are grilled by the sun all day and at night the wind off the glaciers in the side valleys chills them to the bone. Many of them are weaklings who have never seen a mountain before, or ice or snow, but, sick or sound, it is the law that every pilgrim must immerse himself daily in some icy stream or tarn. Some carry the kangar of Kashmir, a small wicker-covered earthen pot of burning charcoal. They place it between their legs and sit up over it all night, wrapping their blankets round them to keep in the fumes.

The first camp beyond Tanin is at Shisha Nag, 12,000 feet, the loveliest lake in the hills.

The next day they cross 8 pass of 14,000 feet, with glaciers to the east of them and the Koh-i-noor peaks to the south, and camp at Pangitarni, in an unexpectedly broad valley at the foot of a glacier, the main source of the Sind. Here they must bathe in all the five confluent streams. They make the pilgrimage to Amarnath and back the same day. The savage wildness of the last maroh, the twisted pinnacles, the strange scorings of the orag, must appeal to the Hindu's love of the marvellous and affect the least impressionable. It may be the pilgrims think it is only here on the threshold of the god that nature assumes these horrid shapes.

The road is a rough ordeal for women and old folk. Pneumonia takes its toll; mountain sickness frightens some to the brink of the grave; the cholera

goddess makes fearful havoo when she strikes, and it is strange that any survive immersion in the the icy glacier streams. But now the State has recognised its obligations, few die of actual cold or hunger or exhaustion. How the Sadhus disposed of their dead in this treeless waste before the Durbar took care of them, Heaven and the vultures only know. The lammergeiers we saw were drunk with meat and could not fly or hop from one rock to another, and were palpably afraid of being overtaken by us on foot. But now beasts sacrificed for man, and the skeletons of transport ponies litter the way.

are

Many times and for many reasons we congratulated ourselves that we were not marching with the pilgrims, but we gained in one way we had not counted on by coming after them. At Shisha Nag and Pangitarni we found scores of Sadhus' wooden stools and camp-beds left behind by the State officials as not worth the transport. These we piled high and made a blaze beyond the wood limit which outshone our log-fires in the valley.

We took the short out to Amarnath from Pangitarni, sheer ascent and descent. From the snow eornice on the summit we looked down into the cavern in the wall of rock opposite, so bleak and ominous and remote from the warmth of human fellowship, we wondered the first pilgrim dared enter it.

saw a

As we descended we thin grey wreath of smoke curling up by the mouth of the cave.

We had been told that no one approached Amarnath except in the pilgrimage, and thought it must be some hermit dwelling there alone, communing with the infinite. We could just distinguish two diminutive figures bending over the fire far away. They looked so weak and helpless in all this vast desolation, they reminded me of a tiny brown naked child I had seen in Rajputana sprawling alone on a great rock.

It took half-an-hour's more scramble over rough crags and down the snow bridge in the gulley before we were within hail of them. The man, lithe and straight, in the prime of life, came forward to meet us. We could tell at a glance that he had been a soldier by the easy, confident way he approached, naked as he was but for a loin-cloth, conscious of a bond with the Sahib, the only bond of strength and endurance that links the East and West.

I caught a distant glimpse of the woman just at the moment she thought it decent to throw a blanket about her face and shoulders. Her skin was fair.

The man was a Brahmin. He had been a pay havildar in the 26th Bombay Infantry. He had served in Burma and China and Waziristan. He and his wife had come with the pilgrims; they and one other alone of the seven thou

sand had remained behind. He told me quite simply that he was hoping for a son. And he was searching for the truth. He had sought it in many places and not found it, but here at Amarnath he believed he would find it. And it seemed to me as I stood under the roof of this Himalayan cathedral very natural that he should. If the problem of existence is to be worked out alone, if nature yields up her secrets anywhere to searching or to faith, it might well be to such a man in such a place.

"Sahib," he said, "I knew two Englishmen would come here to-day."

We asked him how.

He pointed vaguely at the glacier up the valley. "Nature told me," he said. "Sahib,' "Sahib," he went on, "I have been here five days. I brought no food, yet God has provided for me day by day. I think I shall find truth here."

We offered him rice, but he would take nothing.

"I eat only what God sends," he said. "There are plenty of leeks by the cave."

He was modestly proud of his spare diet and his prophetic lore. He pointed to the rocks below, and we saw the mauve heads of wild of wild onions growing among the rhubarb leaves. We had seen

neither plant until then in all our twenty-three marches from the plains.

"I have slept in the cave five nights," he said. "They told me that no man could do this.”

We, too, had heard that it was a priestless shrine, and that no pilgrim dwelt there. A Maharajah of the royal house had tried to sleep there once, but Shiv had cast him out. He He was lifted up by some mysterious subterranean wind and left senseless on the ground before the rock pillars of the

cavern.

The Brahmin spoke of God's favour like a man who has

just discovered a new way of life and wishes to impart it, something he had suspected but never quite realised before. There was no hint of boasting or desire to impress.

And then he talked of his army days. He had brought home loot from China, and given it all to God. It reminded me of the golden age of Hindustan, when a man was all things in his life, but each thing separately and at the right time. First, the student; then the husband, householder, parent, wage-earner; then the Sannyasi searching for truth in the forest, with or without his wife; lastly, the ascetic and recluse dwelling solely on the world to

come.

At intervals he