advertisements of a certain "Green Seal Whisky," the Himalayas as gaudy as a London omnibus or railway station. At last a turn revealed to us the snowy range, far away up against the sky, and then Simla's straggling crescent of houses was seen across a great chasm or valley. In seven hours and a half—just the time taken for the trifling trains to climb to Darjiling—we reached the Simla tonga station, seven thousand and eighty-five feet above the sea.
It was the place of the "Phantom Rickshaw," but what a material vehicle appeared to us! No wonder it is spelled with an unnecessary "c" and a barbarous "w," or with any alphabetical lumber that can be dragged in by Anglo-Indians. Nothing could be more ludicrous in a farce or burlesque in a Japanese theater than such a vehicle. Four thousand miles by road and centuries of intelligent development lie between the Tokio jinrikisha and the Simla "jinny rickshaw"—the one an airy seat on flying wheels; the other a solid, clumsy cart, a rattling, rumbling affair of cast-iron and thick planks, drawn by four shuffling coolies, who walk leaning against the long tongue or the back board of the undersized juggernaut.
A late tiffin awaited us in the ramshackle wooden hotel, which, patched, shabby, and unsightly, was in the hands of workmen getting ready for the opening of the season in March, The landlord was voluble and kind, for tourists never come to the hill-tops in winter, and he gave us the best of the shabby old rooms—dark, sunless holes, with cheap furniture and fittings so long past their day that they might
