"I think I wrote you last from Loralai, beyond Quetta to the east: well, from there I explored a new road which is to run through Mekhtar, Kingri, Rukni, to Dera Ghazi Khan on the Indus. It has been approved, and is to be carried out at once; as in the event of troops moving up towards Kandahar, it would be the route along which all our regiments and stores from the Punjab would move. The country is a wild one at present, savage, with no cultivation or inhabitants, except a few robbers: but the lie of the road is good, and the gradients are easy. Of course a made road will draw the large Kafilas of camels with merchandise from one end to the other, and as the roads will be under our protection the native merchants will gladly use it, and this will gradually people the various halting-places, and so settle the country by degrees. There was much game along the route; markhor, a large goat with splendid horns; gud, a large sheep with very large curly horns, wolves and small game, hares, partridges, wood-pigeons, etc. I had very little time for shooting, but shot one markhor and much small game here and there as I came across it; but as I had a lot of surveying to do all day, I had no time to make excursions after game alone, though I should much have liked to have had a turn with Stephen in some of the hills through which I passed. You would have been delighted with the country in some places, something like Scotland with fewer trees and more sun, but comparatively cool for India. The only disagreeable thing about it is the general want of water and the number of poisonous snakes. Water is found only in certain streams and in single springs, and is very valuable. Of course, any good road which is {68} required has to follow the line of water, but the rivers commence to flow at any point in the river-bed, and after becoming a rushing torrent, disappear as suddenly as they arose, into the ground and are seen no more; where they go to no one knows, but you may seek in vain further down the bed of the river and not find water. In some cases the water reappears in the stream ten miles lower down, and disappears again as before. The snakes are everywhere, and it was a few days before I left Khur that a young engineer named Hackman was bitten. I saw his death in yesterday's paper. I killed several cobras while marching, I am glad to say."