white cloud that hid everything for half an hour. The toy engine screeched, wheezed, panted, and slowly drew us up to cloudland by many loops and switchbacks; going backward and forward, but always upward, until we came to Ghoom, a double row of huts lining the track. There were picturesque folk in that bazaar, and foremost was the "witch of Ghoom," a wrinkled squaw who claimed to be one hundred years old, and begged for an anna on that account. A stumpy little Gurkha officer boarded the train there, his breast covered with war medals, and his wife covered with rows and rows of gold and silver coin necklaces and strings of coral, turquoise, and amber beads; her head as thickly plated with family assets, and her costume only richer in material than the bright purple, red, green, orange, and yellow garments of the hill folk that made Ghoom's one street a lane of color and light. Children rode pickaback instead of astride the Hindu hip; all loads were carried on the back by a strap over the brow, and after the inert and melancholy Hindus, these hill folk seemed a light-hearted, laughing people.
We were eight hours in accomplishing the fifty miles, reaching an elevation of 7470 feet at Ghoom, and descending to 6000 feet at Darjiling, a whole daylight of child's play with a toy train to any one who has traveled on Colorado's narrow-gage mountain railways.
We were carried from the station to the hotel in dandy-wallahs, carrying-chairs like the swan and shell chariots of stage pantomimes, the bearers
