Though I now feared the worst, I tried to encourage my brave servant by shouting to him that I was being taken to Taklakot, and that he would be brought after me the following day. He had exhausted his last atom of strength in creeping to the door. He was roughly seized, and brutally hurled back into the room of the mud-house, so that we could not exchange a word more. Mansing, the coolie, was placed, with his arms pinioned, on a bare-backed pony. The saddle of the pony I had been thrown upon is worthy of description. It was in reality the wooden frame of a very high-backed saddle, from the back of which some five or six sharp iron spikes stuck out horizontally. As I sat on this implement of torture, the spikes caught me in the small of my back. My guard having been augmented by twenty or thirty mounted men with muskets and swords, we set off at a furious pace. A horseman riding in front of me led my pony by means of a cord, as my hands were manacled behind my back; and thus we travelled across country for miles. [Illustration: "SIR, SIR, I AM DYING"] But for those awful spikes in the saddle, the ride would not have been so very bad, for the pony I rode was a fine spirited animal, and the country around was curious and interesting. We proceeded along an apparently endless succession of yellow sandhills, some of them as high as two or three hundred feet, others not more than twenty or thirty. The sand seemed to have been deposited more by wind than by water, though it is also possible that the whole basin, not very high above the level of the huge stream, may at some time have been altogether under water. The whole space between the mountain-range to the North of the Brahmaputra and the river itself was covered with these sand mounds, except in certain places where the soil was extremely marshy, and where our ponies sank in deep soft mud. We splashed across several rivulets and skirted a number of ponds. From the summit of a hill to which they led me, I could see that the hills were of much greater circumference and height near the river edge, becoming smaller and smaller as they approached the mountain-range to the North. Moreover, they increased in number and size the farther we went in an easterly direction. [Illustration: SPIKED SADDLE]