In the evening it looked like rain, but we did not much mind. We settled ourselves in our tent-like cabin and laughed at the mosquitoes which howled outside our curtains, when all of a sudden everyone on board seemed demented. I jumped up and found the dress of a Highlander quite unsuited to a gale of wind. My wife also sadly deplored her scanty costume. The usually quiet going gondola was flying in a most distracted manner before the wind; our gray, red, and white curtains flew out like long, dishevelled locks; our mosquito-nets jumped up and down in extraordinary fits; our boatmen’s family announced their numbers with great loudness, for in the back part of our vessel the voices of male and female old age joined in fiendish clamour with those of youth and babyhood, and our dogs barked incessantly! On flew our dissipated and ill-behaved, flat-bottomed barge, which had broken loose from the bonds that bound it to the muddy bank, and had started off on a lark, when the sudden squall had rushed down from the mountains and shouted ‘Come!’ How we were ever stopped, I know not; but, after half an hour of great anxiety, the unwieldy and reckless, flat-bottomed barge was made fast to the muddy bank, and we were left in peace to repair damages. CHAPTER X. THE MAHARAJAH. CHOWNI--SRINAGUR--WOODEN BATHING-HOUSES--BABOO MOHAS CHANDER--OUR FUTURE DOMICILE--‘ME COME UP’--OUR SHIKARRAH--SUMMUD SHAH, THE SHAWL-MERCHANT--ANCIENT TEMPLES--THE MANUFACTURE OF CASHMERE SHAWLS--DINNER WITH THE MAHARAJAH--A NAUTCH--THE MAHARAJAH’S ‘HOOKEM’--LORD MAYO’S FETE AT AGRA--UNINVITED GUESTS--RISING OF THE LAKE--THE POPLAR AVENUE--THE PARIAH DOG--CAUSE OF THE FLOOD. CHAPTER X. When morning broke we continued our voyage. As we had left the lake the day before, the river was now more narrow, and twisted and turned like a serpent in the green fields through which it made its way. And then we came to Chowni, which was intended by Golab Sing to be the dwelling-place of English visitors, but, owing to want of good drinking-water, was never used. We breakfasted under the shade of a grove of poplars, and then, entering our gondolas again, we were towed up to Srinagur, the capital of Cashmere. As we glided along, we had to pass the old gallows on which many a mortal has suffered in days of yore; now it is seldom used, but during our visit to Cashmere a culprit was executed on it, and was left to hang there for days, filling the air with his horrid presence. But when we passed the gallows was empty, and a weird-looking old raven was perched on the cross-beam of the gibbet, croaking dismally to itself about the good times of Golab Sing, which were changed completely now. We had pictured this city to ourselves as a scene of ruined palaces, but all we saw were crazy wooden houses with pent roofs overlaid with earth and covered with grass and plants.