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INDIA

hill-station, and the seat of the local Government of the
North-West Provinces. It is easily accessible from its
satellite station at the foot of the hills, Kathgodam, which
is a railway terminus, But Naini Tal is a cramped little
place, shut in round the lake which gives it its name, and
incapable of expansion in its own immediate vicinity,
The shaly nature of the surface rocks on some sections
of the hill-sides has given Naini Tal an unenviable notoriety
as the scene of some disastrous landslips. Naini Tal
leads to the military cantonments of Ranikhet and
Almorah, and outside its own little circle of hills there is
possibility of developing further sites suitable to European
accupation.
Darjiling is the hill-station par excellence of Calcutta
and Bengal, and enjoys the advantage of direct railway
communication with the plains. Of its great natural
beauty I have already spoken. But its rainfall is excessive,
 and its climate lacks the bracing qualities of that
of the north-west,
Murree is on the extreme north-west. It is the station
of the Punjab, and, with a series of minor stations called
“gullies” (from “galli,” a neck or spur), proves a most
delightful resort for the over-worked and over-heated
Punjab official. It is connected with Rawal Pindi by
about fifty miles of good carriage road. The charac.
teristics of Murree scenery (particularly of the « gullies ”’)
are those of Kashmir, of which country it forms, as it
were, the commercial base. Much of the trade of Kashmir
(in which fruit is a predominant feature) passes down
the highroad leading through Murree to the plains ;
countless loads of apples being yearly exported to the
Punjab; and itis through Murree that Srinagar is supplied
with European goods, and its yearly stream of European
visitors.
There are many other minor Himalayan stations,
some of them purely military, others (as for instance
the settlements in that most charming of sub-Himalayan
valleys, Kulu) purely agricultural, each possessing its
own special local advantages in climate and position, to