many times in one day in the whole of India it is played.) We drove back to dinner feeling there might be worse places in the world than Peshawur in the spring.

There are few more interesting sights than its native city, which on account of its position upon the frontier, surrounded by such varied types of humanity, is, among all Indian native cities, unique. India, unlike England, has few large towns. For instance, in England and Wales, in 1891, more than half the population lived in towns with upwards of twenty thousand inhabitants, while in British India less than one-twentieth of the people lived in such towns. India, therefore, is almost entirely a rural country, and many of the so-called towns are mere groups of villages, in the midst of which the cattle are driven afield, and ploughing and reaping go on. Many millions of peasants struggle to live off half an acre apiece, or one thousand two hundred and eighty to the square mile; for the peasant clings to his fields and parcels them out among his children, even when his family is too numerous to live upon the crops, instead of migrating to tracts where spare land abounds. If the rain falls short by a few inches, the result is one of those terrible famines of which we have heard so much lately. However, Peshawur is an important city of eighty thousand inhabitants, walled-in and fortified.

We drove in at one of the few gates, and were struck dumb with the infinitely picturesque scene.

Before us stretched a street crammed with natives, all walking, all talking, all dressed in white and scarlet and blue and yellow-every conceivable colour. Sikhs, Afridis, Afghans, Yusufzaies, Pathans, Hindoos, Mohammedans, all meet in Peshawur. Most of them are armed, with quaint knives and what not concealed in their draperies. One realises at once what it is to be the only Englishwoman among thousands of natives. Every eye is on you-not rude nor staring, but you feel eyes everywhere; and you begin to realise that were there no cantonments outside, you would probably have one of the many knives in your back,-which reflection puts you on your mettle. The secret of the British power in the East is that they have no fear.

The fascinating bazaars on either side held the native sellers and their workmen; we bought some of their quaint waxwork, and slippers of all colours with turned-up toes; farther on carpets and saddlebags and poshteens were to be had; the silver was of a very rough description.

I have never seen such a veritable rabbit-warren of humanity as Peshawur native city: the little mudcoloured, flat-roofed houses seemed as though they could not get near enough one another, and were piled and squeezed into every atom of space, tier after tier, gallery after gallery; and from those down the street hung out carpets, silks, embroideries, forming a carnival of colour which would satisfy the most thirsty soul, waving above the strange Oriental

throng below, and flashing and fading into the dazzling blue sky.

To be back once more in the cantonments was to feel so near and yet so far from that unique city, the hum of which could always be heard even in our bungalow. But Peshawur was not a quiet spot in those days it was crammed with troops, who were still waiting till all the tribes should have sent in their submission, and paid their fines in rifles; from morning till evening we could hear distant sounds of various bands, and bugle calls.

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In the early spring it is a charming station, and after Mian Mir appeared a paradise. Every compound was filled with orange blossom; every bungalow hedge was made of roses in full bloom; orchards of pink peach blossom stretched for miles round the lines; the scent was intoxicating and overpowering -perfumed Peshawur. The trim lawns on either side the Mall, well shaded, were gay with flower beds; here and there a bungalow was half-hidden in creepers; and behind them all stretched the lines. Cantonments all over India vary but little the everlasting native strolls down the roads; the everlasting mem-sahib goes out calling under a sun umbrella; the everlasting cool-looking subaltern drives in the same cart, same pony, same terrier running behind! Three more months and the whole place would be deserted, except in the evenings, when the white-faced sahibs who cannot get up to the hills meet to while away the stifling hours in the club.