Dawn was breaking as we emerged from the pass, and apparently immediately before us, though really fourteen miles distant, towered the mighty Himalayas. A rest for a bath and breakfast at the delightful, cool, and clean hotel at the foot of the mountains, prepared us thoroughly to enjoy our steep climb up to Mussoorie. As we rose higher and higher, we got, as it were, into the very heart of the hills, and to us, direct from the breathless plains, the air seemed strangely rarefied, and gave one a sensation of deafness, which passed away after a short time. We were pleasantly lodged at a private hotel not far from the club. After the duty was performed which had brought me away from the heat to the delightful temperature of the hills, we wandered about among many well-remembered places, not forgetting Landour, where we had passed some months a year or two before this visit. Mussoorie is the fashionable part of this hill station, but is not to be compared with Landour in purity of air and grandeur of scenery. In the early morning there is nothing to equal the view. When the sun has just risen above the mountains, and the soft breeze fans you gently, the distant sounds are heard like far-off music, and it is difficult to realize--looking down on the plains, which extend in the boundless horizon like a glistening sea--that the thermometer, which marks 70° in this mountain retreat, is registering well over 100° in the beautiful country on which you are now gazing. Then on the other side of the heights, far off in the heavens, tower the snowy range. In the world, there can be nothing more superb than the view of the snowy range as it bursts suddenly into sight, peak upon peak glittering bright and cold under the cloudless sky. There is a hitherto unknown, intense feeling of solemn awe as one gazes on the still grandeur of perpetual snow. Nearer and nearer come mountains and valleys. Down hundreds of feet below appears a silver line, so far off that it requires glasses to discover the washer-men beating the clothes with fearful energy in the stream. The mountain on whose spur Landour’s many cottages are gathered, is two thousand feet higher than the one on which Mussoorie is built, and the air is so exhilarating that one feels inclined to shout out for joy. I was grieved to say farewell to this favoured spot, and often, when a cold east wind is blowing, the remembrance of Landour and its soft, sweet breeze comes back to my memory like a dream. As we prepared to descend the mountain to Rajpore and Dehra, we had to pass the club, where we saw the well-dressed young officers lounging forth, on their way to the Mall, where all Mussoorie assembled to talk sense or nonsense, as suited the occasion. Some delicate ladies and children were in jampans, while others rode or walked.