The Mohammedans of Baltistan, on the opposite (or northern) side of Kashmir, again surprise us by speaking a Tartar tongue. We are not told that they are Scotch, endowed though they undoubtedly are with some of the canny and thrifty characteristics of the dwellers ayont the Tweed. They are inveterate tradesmen, and carry their small wares, including hill-ponies, all through the mountains. Let us drop in upon them, if such an expression be applicable to a climb of the most tremendous description. It takes us up the steps of the steepest and loftiest slope of the amphitheatre which forms the maharajah's dominions. First, however, we begin by a gentle and pleasant descent down the Jhelam to Lake Wular. Then begins the trouble. We turn northward, and find ourselves at the end of the first stage four thousand feet above the valley, on the brink of an artificial sheet of water surrounded by dense evergreen woods. Next day we rise 2000 feet higher, and redescend 6500 feet to the banks of the Kischanganga, the chief affluent of the Jhelam, running mostly parallel to the course of the latter stream. Then we undulate--if so soft a term be applicable to a route so sharply, abruptly and irregularly serrate--along the spurs which border the river, now in the forest and now on a bleak plateau where careful irrigation avails to grow nothing less hardy than millet, peas and buckwheat. In crossing to the valley, or rather trench, of the upper Indus, we have the choice of two passes, one 13,060 and the other 13,500 feet above tide. Having selected the least of these two evils, we swoop nearly six thousand feet down upon the village of Astor and a new language, the Dard. The temptation to stop and study either is small. If we are insatiate of climbing or find the heat at Astor--only 7853 feet above the sea--oppressive, we have the ice-cone of Nanga Parbat, 26,629 feet high, within ten miles to the west. We are within unpleasantly easy reach of the western and north-western frontier now; for the opposite slope of Nanga Parbat and the ridge to which it belongs is held by the independent Mohammedan tribes of Yaghistan, born marauders since the beginning of tradition. They have a republican form of government, one of the fierce democracies numbering only seven houses. Life, liberty and the pursuit of other people's property is a motto they act up to with a persistency and consistency highly disagreeable to their neighbors over the hill. The latter have, in self-defence, evinced a tendency to adopt the same rule of action, and to steal from their friends by way of reimbursement for what is stolen by their enemies--a disposition which is discouraged by the maintenance of a considerable garrison at Astor. [Illustration: A KAGANI, OR LAMA MONUMENT.]