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THE CHARM OF KASHMIR

*' Hominum Dhomque Voluptas

trOKKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR

THE SILKEN EAST: A Record of
Life and Travel in Burma ; in 2
vols.

MANDALAY and other old cities of
Burma ; in I vol.

TRAVELS IN THE PYRENEES;
including Andorra and the Coast
from Barcelona to Carcassonne.

THE SCENE OF WAR.

Digitized by the Internet Archive

in 2007 with funding from

IVIicrosoft Corporation

http://www.archive.org/details/charmofkashmirOOoconuoft

ASOKA, WHO BY THE WHITE STUCCO OF HIS FAME MADE
SPOTLESS THE UNIVERSE

THE

CHARM OF KASHMIR

V. C. SCOTT O'CONNOR

AUTHOR OF 'THE SILKEN EAST'

IVITH 16 COLOURED PLATES AND
U ILLUSTRATIONS FROM PHOTOGRAPHS

LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO.

39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON

FOURTH AVENUE & 30TH STREET, NEW YORK

BOMBAY, CALCUTTA, AND MADRAS

1920

JUN 1 ?> 1967

THIS BOOK IS

BY THE QUEEN'S GRACIOUS PERMISSION
DEDICATED TO HER MAJESTY

CONTENTS

Prelude

PAGE
1

BOOK I. THE VALLEY

OHAPTBB

I. The Water Gate - - . .

II. The Wular Lake ....

III. Night at Manasbal ....

rV. Approach to Srinagar - - . .

V. Entering the City - -

VI. First Morning at Srinagar ...

VII. The Capital

VIII. The Dal Lake .....

IX. The Nishat Bagh ....

X. Chasha Shahi .....

XI. The Nasim Bagh .....

XII. Hazrat Bal .....

XIII. The Shaumar .....

XrV. The Isle of Chinars ....

XV. Habbak ---...

XVI. Tyl Bal

XVII. Nagina Bagh .....

XVIII. Solomon's Throne ....

XIX. Asoka's City .....

XX. Manas Bal .....

BOOK 11. THE MOUNTAINS
I. Floating down the River ...
II. Morning at Gunderbal. ...

III. Gunderbal .....

108
107
109

CONTENTS

Vlll

PA6B

rV. First March ..-----■

„ ^, 115

V. Kanoan - - - - -

VI. The Beauty of the Sind Valiey ... - - 11

128

VII. SONAMABG - - -

VIII. Baltal -

IX. Amar Nath

X. The Zogi-la

XI. Towards Haramukh
XII. The Temples of Vangat

XIII. Tronkhal by Haramukh

XIV. NUND KOL

XV. The Frozen Waters
XVI. The Erin Valley
XVII. Conclusion of the Journey

EPILOGttE - - -

NOTE

Quotations from Eastern poets such as Abu'1-Ala are

for the most part taken from translations in "The

Wisdom of the East" series.

129
188
141
145
151
157
161
167
178
175
179

|b ILLUSTRATIONS

Foreword : In this book an attempt is made to capture the charm of
one of the acknowledged beauty-spots of the world ; but charm is essen-
tially an elusive quality, not easily trapped in a net of words. Pictures
have therefore been added, and a brief introduction to those which embellish
this volume may not be deemed out of place.

The place of honour will be rightly assigned to the paintings of Aban-
INDRO Nath Tagore, whosc work as the founder and inspirer of the modern
school of Indian Art at Cglcutta, has attracted wide attention, not only
in India, but in Paris, in London, and in New York. The grace, softness,
and beauty of line which characterise his work speak for themselves ; and
the qualities of Vision and of Poetic insight which are displayed in the
examples before us, require that they shall be considered as something more
than mere Illustrations.

They are interpretations in colour of the soul of Kashmir in so far
as it finds expression in these pages, and they depict something more than
the external beauty that is acknowledged by the eye of every traveller in
that exquisite country.

Next after these come the paintings of Mrs. Sultan Ahmad, Miss
Hadenfeldt, and the late Colonel Strahan.

Colonel Strahan's work is well known in India. He was a great traveller,
and his countrymen in India, many of whom treasure specimens of his skill
with the brush, will be glad to see some of them included in this volume.

Miss Hadenfeldt has spent the last five years in the Happy Valley, and
she is intimately familiar with its scenery and characteristics. The decora-
tive beauty of her pictures, made specially to illustrate the text, will appeal
to all who know the country and take pleasure in originality and freshness
of outlook.

Mrs. Svdtan Ahmad's pictures fall into another category. Like Aban-
indro Nath Tagore, she would reach the spirit that lies hidden behind the

X ILLUSTRATIONS

glow of colour and the splendour of the world in Kashmir. In the two
pictures she has contributed to this volume, there stand revealed the lustre
of Day, when the world is going about its business; and the mystery of
Night, when the dark Canals are veiled in shadows. They are symbolic
of the East, where Life and Death jostle each other, and Secrecy and
Candour go hand in hand.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

COLOURED PLATES

ARTIST.

"ASOKA, WHO BY THE WhITE StUCCO OF HIS FaME

HADE Spotless the Universe " -

A. N. Tagore, CLE. Frontispiece
G. Hadenfeldt - To face p. 30

L. Sultan Ahmad -

Noonday Peace

Day : — ^The Apple Tree Canal - - -

Night : — The Mar Canal L. Sultan Ahmad -

Nishat , - ■ - A. N. Tagore, CLE.

Chashha-Shahi A. N. Tagore, CLE.

Nasim A. N. Tagore, CLE.

Night at the Shaubiar — The Emperor Shah Jahan A. N. Tagore, CLE.

Fate and the Pleasure-lover - - - - A. N. Tagore, CLE.

Travellers in Kashmir G. Hadenfeldt

The Lidar Vallejy Col. G. Strahan -

A Beauty of the Valley G. Hadenfeldt

The Waning Light Col. G. Strahan -

Nanga Parbat : across the Valley - - - Col. G. Strahan -

Lake Land Col. G. Strahan -

The Shepherd G. Hadenfeldt

108

117

189

145

166

175

ILLUSTRATIONS

FROM PHOTOGRAPHS

Spring in the Upland Valleys To

Ruins of the Temple of Avantisvami Vishnu at Avantipura (a.d. 854-888)

Poling on the Wular

The Shepherd's Daughter

An Idyll of the Vale

Brahmans of Kashmir

Friends at the Shalimar

The Shalimar

Morning Scene at the Takht-i-Sulaiman. The City and the Lakes a
Thousand Feet below

Fish-Spearing on the Lakes

The Birth of a River

The Sindh Valley --

The Glaciers of Thagwaz

The Haji

The Pilgrim Camp of the Maharaja

The Maharaja as a Pilgrim

The Zogi-la Pass

Sheep in the Anoent Temples

High Solitudes

The Bakrwal

The First Flock of the Year

The Flock at Peace

The Breaking of the Ice at Nund Kol

Mountain Pastures

face p.

6
9
18
19
26
57
68
71

88
98
108
112
125
180
183
188
148
152
157
160
162
164
172
176

NOTE

Half of these plates are from photographs taken
by the Author ; for the rest he is indebted to
the kindness of Miss Aurilla Boyer ; to Messrs.
Shorter, Bremner, and Vernon ; to the Kashmir
State; and to the Thomason College.

" This Land in the womb of Himalaya."

Kalhana.

"The most delicious spot in Asia or in the World."

Elphinstone.

" The Paradise of the Indies."

Francois Beenier.

" Learning, lofty houses, saffron, icy-water and grapes : things that
even in Heaven are difficult to find, are common there." . . .

" And the sun shines mildly there even in summer, in this place
created by Kashyapa as if for his glory."

Kalhaka.

" Its flowers are enchanting and fill the heart with delight. Violets,
the red-rose, and the wild narcissus cover the plains. Its Spring and
Autumn are extremely beautiful."

Abul Fazl.

" The valley to the Kashmiris was a rock-bound prison from which
escape was difficult. The great snow-mountains suggested nothing to
them beyond the hopelessness of flight from* tyranny."

Sir Walter Lawrence.

" All the people I send into Kashmir turn out rascals ; there is too
much pleasure and enjoyment in that country,"

Ranjit Singh.

THE CHARM OF KASHMIR

PRELUDE

(I)
The 24th of April, and I find myself on the road to Kashmir. For a
thousand miles my journey lies across the plain of India, that spreads here
like a sea. Somewhere above me upon the northern Horizon, there climbs
towards Heaven, the mighty wall of the Himalaya, yet hidden as completely
from sight, as though it had never been. A traveller who came here at this
season might see all of India, and yet leave it unaware of the greatest
mountains in the world. So easily are Facts concealed.

How smooth too and level is this plain ! as though Nature having
exhausted her constructive purpose in the building of the mountains was
content to lie idle at their feet in the negation of all further effort. No
incident breaks its level monotony ; and at this season of the year it is
white with dust, and grey with the desolation of Asia.

White columns of dust drive like the phantoms of a dying world along
it's highways ; and a cloud of dust hangs like a shroud over the fields and
cities. In the vague distance one can trace, as in a dream, the faint outlines
of a City ; the walls and towers of some Feudal stronghold, or Caravan-Serai
of the Emperors ; for it was here along this track that they pursued their
way, with a pomp and splendour unsurpassed in the history of the World,
from the Imperial Capital to their secluded vale of Kashmir.

Nearer at hand, where the veil of light and incandescent dust is less
intense, one can glimpse a few pictures of the life of the people who inhabit
this strange world ; pictures of Ruth gleaning in the shorn fields, of cattle
feeding in the stubble, of a flock of sheep following their shepherd in a

2 THE CHARM OF KASHMIR

cloud of separate dust, as one sees them on the heat-ridden plains of
La Mancha or Castile ; and nearer still, of Persian wheels droning their
music of toil, and splashing their crystal waters in the vivid sunlight, under
the shelter of tree Oases, green as nothing else is, by favour of The Well.
At the Railway Stations through which the trains pass, over metals whose
unbending directness and iron devotion to the service of these people are
symbolic of the race which now governs India, one sees the people clustered,
waiting for carriage, visibly rejoicing in the abundant flow of free and pure
water that sparkles and foams at the taps. The key-note of the scene
is Thirst, and the whole world here would die, and the trains would cease
to run, and men would vanish from this surface of the earth, as they have
vanished from other once populous centres of Asia, were it not for the sub-
terranean flow which the wells reveal, and for the mighty rivers, which
wander hungrily over these spaces that even they cannot fill.

Thirst and Heat and the Desolation of Asia .'

Who coming here would suspect that within a hundred miles of all
this weariness and dun monotony, there hangs, halfway as it were 'twixt
heaven and earth, the freshest and most lovely valley in the World ? Yet
in the white glare, we cross the very waters of that river whose birth-place
and vernal youth are in that valley ; the River of so many conquerors
since Alexander, of so many poets, since he who sang in far-off Rome of
the fabulous Hydaspes.

In the early dawn we are on the road to the Mountains, each moment
nearer to us, as the swift Daimler swallows space ; and in half an hour
from the Railway, we are caught in the sinuous toils of the Foot-hills. It
is a road flanked in its lower courses by golden corn-fields and green avenues
of trees, and trodden by guns and infantry and cavalry on the march, and
fine upstanding men and splendid women. Here we are in the cradle of
a martial breed, the heirs of centuries of invasion and war. The men are
virile with lithe erect bodies and a direct gaze ; some harnessed to the business
of war in the Empire's khaki and scarlet, others sickle in hand, bending
to the wind-blown corn, tying their sheaves of gold, or cracking their

PRELUDE 3

carters' whips along the white highway. And the women are good to look
upon, straight of feature, erect as lances, full-bosomed and stately to the
world.

(II) DOMEL

When vvc drove up to the staging bungalow and I looked down upon
it, embroidered in pink roses and half-hidden under trees, by the shores
of the rushing Jhilam whose great music filled the valley, it took my heart
so, that I wished to stay here and bring my journey to an end ; and now
that I must go forward, since life is but a journey, I leave it with a pang
of more than passing regret. For the place is one of a sweet and intimate
beauty, yet upon the edge of great world-forces ; of an ancient river whose
fame was spread over the world when the world was still young and had
an ear for mysteries, and of a line of mighty mountains, ' the Abode of
Snow ' ; the manifest Valhalla of the Gods.

Late last night when the silver clouds had dispersed and the Moon
shone in the high vault of Heaven overhead, I stepped into the garden
whose paths were soft with the fallen lilac bloom, and dappled with shade
and light, and I walked for an hour by the high stone terraces, and down
the stairways, and along the rose-hedges, whose clustering pink coloured
the night and filled it with their soft unobtrusive perfume ; and so to the
great retaining wall which fronts the threatening river, and keeps it
at bay, as do the great cliffs opposite. All night its vast susurrus of
music passed through my sleep like the distant tones of an organ, and I
slept at peace.

And now in the morning with the clouds of yesterday all fled, and
the sky very blue over the valley, it is hard, as I have said, to leave this
exquisite and fragrant spot ; which without its eastern glamour might
be a Pyrenean valley, or a meeting-place of waters in the Tyrol ; as at
Brixen, where the rivers rush and mingle and the felled timber floats with
a mad buoyancy upon the raging tide.

I have walked under the chintz-like bloom and delicate foliage of the
Indian Lilacs, which make long avenues here, and I have listened to the
voices of innumerable birds, ringing with the amorous ecstasies of Spring.

4 THE CHARM OF KASHMIR

Here is Nature abounding with life and creative purpose ; and the flights
of cheerful starlings, the half-silent and elusive dayals, the little garden-
warblers, convey the same sense of a prolific and out-pouring Life, that
the roses do, falling upon each other in their thousands, drooping over
the railings and fences and the cut-stone walls, half-hiding an English
homestead, and blooming in their prolific abundance even upon the gables
and walls of this Posting House, as though they would lure the traveller
to dally by the way side, and take his share of the joy of life.

Domel — ^the mingling of two — bears this elemental name, because
the Jhilam and the Kishengunga meet here ; and it needs little imagination
to understand why amongst all primitive people the union of waters is a
mingling of the Gods. For here are passion and might, the out-pouring
of life, the symbolic act of creation. Standing here in the sun-light, on
the low grassy shore of the Jhilam by the suspension bridge, one can see
it coming exultantly along with the strength of many lions, dashing with
its masculine beauty and joyousness into the laughing vivid Kishengunga ;
and thence rushing on for a space shoulder to shoulder with her but still
apart, till a little further under the cliffs, their waters mingle and the streams
become one.

One sees from here so many things that quicken the imagination ; the
statue of the God there graven in stone upon the pillars of the bridge ; the
grey and grim old Mogul Serai, with its grand air and lofty Porte, where
the Emperors encamped — in marked contrast with the domestic English
peace and beauty of the Bungalow ; the sunlight gleaming upon the white
houses of Mozufferabad as upon some hill-town of Italy, the blue mountains
and shining lustre of snow, the wild pomegranate, red as the lips of Anarkali,
and the Oleander her lover made his horsemen wear in their plumes as
they marched up the valleys to Kashmir.

And yet when all is said, the sentiment of this place is neither of India,
nor of Asia, nor of any named corner of the world ; but just of one of those
fragrant and exquisite spots where waters meet, and birds sing, and flowers
bloom, and trees are heavy with shade, and the seclusion is unbroken by
grace of the high encompassing mountains.

PRELUDE S

(III) GARIII

Thirteen miles along the Jhilam river, through lilac avenues that shimmer
and meet overhead, bring one to an Elysian haunt, known as the Bungalow of
Garhi. ^ut here I had a singular conviction that I had dropped into a
corner of old France. This was after I had breakfasted, and fell a dreaming
in the secluded garden, where a round table stood in the centre, laden with
the lilac drift. There was an outer circle of wooden benches ranged about
it, one of which was crimson with the fallen petals of a Rambler — Nature's
pot-pourri — while other Roses drooped in luxuriant bloom, their burden with
difficulty upheld by wooden props. Their perfume filled the garden with
its richness, and was blown by the breezes over the walls to the high road
along which the world passed on its way. A young Plane tree — ^the first
of the Kashmir chinars — flung her deep and abundant shade over a part of
the house, and made of her grace a lovely portal to the garden. Outside,
the green bare Pyrenean forms of the mountains towered into the sky on
one hand, while upon the other the river, unseen but heard, like the murmur
of the wind, flowed upon its destined way. Upon every branch of the
Lilac trees, and in the Rose bushes, there was a bird singing with all the joy
of spring in his throat, and anon the great Ravens came and flung their
sombre shadows over the garden, and broke its music of wind and water
and song with their loud sinister notes. In the Pyrenees, I remembered,
each of them is still believed to embody the soul of a departed Saracen. . . .

It was of France as I have said that this garden, run to weed a little,
exuberant with its own abundant fertiUty, full of whispers of summer days
and fading roses, somehow reminded me.

There were I noticed wild strawberries growing about the benches
amidst the clover ; there were mulberries and figs and a cypress tree, while
the hollyhocks clustered like a nursery of children about the knees of the
table, touching its very rim ; and there was an old dog who came along
unobtrusively wagging his tail and lay down in the clover and the lilac
drift, meekly thankful for anj^hing I had to give him.

I was so pleased with the soft summer airs of this garden, and its note
as of a place haunted with tranquil memories, that I sat very silent in it.

6 THE CHARM OF KASHMIR

and half closed my eyes the better to learn its character ; and I must have
done so for some minutes, when an old woman in a check apron, with a hand-
kerchief over her silvery hair, and wooden shoes to her feet, came down the
pathway under the plane tree and wished me a good day.

" And where," I said, " is Monsieur ? "

" Monsieur,'" she said softly, and yet with a touch of fire in her voice,
" est d la guerre" and with this she looked wistfully about her at the fallen
petals and the shadow of neglect that lay upon the garden. " Mais la
patrie . . . la patrie. Monsieur ..." and with this her voice broke and she
could say no more. Upon which I awoke, for I must have slumbered in
these moments stolen from a day of travel, — to find the driver standing be-
side me, with his battered bugle and professional air, and a suggestion that
we should go upon our way.

(IV) UB.I

At Uri I passed the night. The Post-House here was less charming
perhaps than those at Garhi or Domel. There was no secluded garden here,
the roses were less abimdant, and the season being later at this elevation,
for we had climbed two thousand feet from Domel, they were not yet in
bloom. The high stern mountains, the river rushing far down in the narrow
valley, the freshness and verdure of the meadows and the fields, intersected
by channels of water ; all these took me back to Spain and Andorra ; and
the snow-spangled summits of the greater moimtains might have been those
I looked upon one summer day when first I entered the little Republic.

But how different is the temper of the people ! There they would die
rather than yield up their pride and their independence of a thousand years ;
here they are a people whose spirit, crushed under centuries of misrule, is
only now timidly lifting its head from the dust.

I walked for an hour in the village lanes, and passing a lovely chinar
tree, came to a new mosque that was nearly completed for prayer. Here
I met the Maulvi and some Elders who invited me to enter and look within.
Built of timber and stone, with carved windows of arabesque designs that
linked with their subtle harmonies this little village chapel with the per-
fection of the Generalife, it was of two stories, with a slight inner stair-

PRELUDE 7

case leading from the one to the other ; the one I was told for use in summer,
the other in winter. The timber was a free gift from the Maharajah, who,
with a true Hindu feeling, has a soft heart for all religions ; and the labour,
save that of the Master Builder, had been given as of love by the Moslems
of the valley ; so that the mosque has cost them very little in money. Its
design was charming and very happily adapted to its mountain environ-
ment. It took the place of an older mosque, which had died of age, and its
very foundations were set amidst the earthen graves of bygone generations.

" I have seen just such a Mosque in use amongst the Mussulmans of
China," I observed ; and they wondered at their Faith being spread so far
abroad ; and with that note of communal affection which is so character-
istic of Islam, they asked :

" And are they well entreated by the King of China ? "

I replied that it might be so now ; but that in the past they had suffered
much persecution. Whereupon they shook their heads sadly, as those not
unacquainted with sorrow, and said gratefully enough :

" It is not so under the benign rule of our Emperor of London. Since
you came here our Fate has changed, and our Religion, our Lands, and our
Women have been left inviolate. We know well to whom we owe this
change, and we are grateful."

As I walked on by a little stream, under a hedge of young poplars, I came
upon an Ancient, a visiting Saint from the capital ; one of those devout but
seemingly idle people, for whose existence there seems so little justification
in the pages of a statistical work ; yet it occurred to me that this man's pres-
ence might well bring with it something of a benediction ; for his mien and
voice were gentle, and his large dark eyes shone with humanity. Here I
observed was no fanatic of Islam ; but a timid old Philosopher, with the
heart of a child.

In the rice-fields here and there, in its lordly beauty and isolation, stood
a chinar tree, mighty of girth and old at its base, but satin-bodied and young
above, with its wealth of drooping foliage.

"It was there," said the Saint, "when I was a child and as high and as big
as it is now. It belongs to another and a bygone age and was planted by
some dead Sultan."

8 THE CHARM OF KASHMIR

A boy of nine or ten — though he could make no guess at his age — spoke
to me of his heart's ambition to become a pubUc servant.

" What would you like to be ? " I enquired.

" Ah ! " he said with a singular sweetness and beauty of expression,
such as you might look for on the face of a young girl dreaming of the unknown
lover—" I cannot tell ! "

If his mother when she bore him was as beautiful as he, with his lustrous
eyes, and deprecatory air, and finely-cut features, she must have been a joy
in his father's eyes.

At Uri the morning broke fresh and exquisite, with the crisp freshness
of mountain air ; and the world shone new-minted after recent rain. While
the horses were being brought up, I walked upon the village green, where the
ardent golfer drives his first ball in Kashmir. It was set about with English
cottages and slim Poplars, and over it was a sky of blue, and upon all the
circle of the valley there were mountains, enclosing in their dark and sunlit
folds, white gleaming shapes of snow. One of these shone above the old
Fort of Uri and its loopholed walls, another loftier and of a keener gleam
looked over the valley of the river towards Kashmir. Under the rising sun
there was a wide expanse of rock-hewn peaks and soft billowing fields of
snow ; and behind me the river plunged on its way to sea. The crystal
clearness of the air, the emerald freshness of the grass, the wonderful
sensation of a world upborne in security and peace, were such as one
may enjoy in a mountain land alone, when the winter is over and gone

and the voice of spring is calling in the valleys.

* *
*

From Uri one soon passes into the fellowship of the great mountains,
with their blue forests of Deodars and their high and mighty cliffs of Basalt,
which rise from the swirling river like the breast-works of a Titanic world.
From afar off through the sequestered gloom of deep gorges, there descend
in white foam, as in a dream, long waterfalls, and at their base spread
velvet meadows and camping grounds under the shade of the Cedar trees.
In the midst of these wonders of nature, whose gigantic character alone
would impress the imagination, one is suddenly confronted with the first of
the classical temples of Kashmir.

PRELUDE 9

It stands by the wayside, where from immemorial days the world has
passed ; and its beauty impinges upon one with the clear flash and sword-
stroke of the human brain. It is so small a thing in its environment ; yet it
dominates all, as a beam of light in a great chamber. It has many graces
of colour and form, and time has laid its hand upon it, softening its lines
and yielding up to it some of the wistfulness of the departed centuries ;
but its principal quality is that which descends to it from the Greek genius.
That is unmistakeable.

How, or by what wondrous paths, the Hellenic spirit inspired these early
buildings in this far-withdrawn valley is something of a mystery ; but that
it did inspire them, no man can doubt.

The spirit of Islam, the worship of the One God, which have given us
so much that is clear and sublime and touched with emotion, the Pagan
fecundity of Hinduism which has lavished its skill upon a thousand intricacies
of carving, and created generations of craftsmen ; the Roman grandeur of
our own great bridges, which hold in their iron grasp the passion of our
Indian rivers, these are things familiar upon the face of the Indian Peninsula ;
but it is here, unexpectedly, in the mountain fastnesses, that one is met by
this sudden and overwhelming claim of the Hellenic mind. Even in this
its derivative form, it seizes upon one here, and gives this little wayside
temple, lordship over all the majesty of the hills.

BOOK I

THE VALLEY

CHAPTER I

THE WATER GATE

Baramulla is the one exit for the waters of Kashmir, the cleft in the moun-
tains which emptied the valley of its Lake and so gave birth to its varied beauty.
It is thus one of the dramatic gateways of the world ; and no man can pass
down the still waters of the river — the classic Vitasta — of a summer evening,
to the point at which its life is suddenly accelerated like a tragic crisis in a
quiet life, without being deeply moved by the spectacle ; but the approach
to it from below is unimpressive. One enters it as it were through an ante-
chamber which is called by the people ' Little Kashmir.' The cliffs of
basalt, the dark pointing forests of Deodar which seize and impress the
imagination at Rampur, are left behind, and the landscape falls to level and
quiet spaces, with the river running like a domestic creature even with the
cultivated fields ; while willow trees and poplars line the road, and alders
and elms the waterways. There is no sudden gorge or break in the low bare
hiUs, and one's entry into the Valley might pass unnoticed were it not for
the splendid gleam of Haramukh beyond, the manifest outpost of a greater
world.

But there is one moment of a wonderful transition that no one, I suppose,
can ever forget, and it comes on passing from the dust, the toil, and the clang
of the hundred and seventy miles of mountain-road upon which one has
travelled, to the cool seclusion of one's boat, and its soft gliding movement
over the satin face of the river.

Here is something that is unlike any other locomotion in the world.
A rustle at the prow alone tells of the resisting stream.

The view expands as the great mountains, white with snow at their
sxunmits, and spangled with silver at their lesser elevations, come into vision.

t4 THE CHARM OF KASHMIR

The colours are blue and white on the mountains, brown and green upon the
lower hills, green on the meadows as upon any towing path in England, and
the water is dun under keel, and a mirror for lovely things ahead.

Yet it is not always beautiful, for upon the lower river, monstrous
buildings of tin and iron, shapeless and shameless in their ugliness, have been
built by the engineers ; masses of debris dredged from the bottom make
ungainly piles upon the shores ; and the electric wires which carry power
up the valley are a blot upon the immemorial landscape.

But the river, serene and peaceful, and unconscious of the turmoil that
lies before it in throttling defiles, moves on its way to the Indian plains
— " wide as the Tigris at Mosul." It seems unconscious, but the people
say that it is well aware of its destiny ; that it lingers because it will not
part with the loved valley of its birth, and that the turmoil at its gates is
the symbol of its passionate grief at parting.

Upon the mountain tops there are fantastic clouds which dream
and die and come to life again, beneath a sky of blue. Upon the low
edge of the world where land and water meet, there are long lines of green
poplars with a glint of white, and majestic chinars of a beauty that is royal
in its stateliness. Anon there is a village with its tattered houses and more
stately mosque or Ziarat, there are buffaloes and black cattle by the water,
people calling to each other, the daughters of the soil husking rice, parties
of travellers in small boats making across from shore to shore — withal, a
placid, dreamy peace.

When the towing cord is taut and the passage way is clear, you feel as
if the boat might go on for ever without an effort, but you soon learn that
below the tranquil surface there lies no artificial water, but a live thing that
lives and moves, with moods and passions of its own. You are travelling
up a sheltered water such as trackers love, when upon a turn the boat is
caught in the swift racing current and all is changed to animation ; or again
it must cross from one bank to the other, and, in spite of six rowers and
polemen, it can only make the further shore at a point far below that from
which it set out.

As the day reaches its close, you move your chair to the roof of the boat,
whence your eyes travel without an effort over three-fourths of the horizon.

THE WATER GATE 15

What a circle of beauty it is ! with the rosy light flushing the brows of
Haramukh and other giants of the world, and a moonlike whiteness on the
snow-fields and peaks which face away from the sun. The green towing-path
is grooved by the passing footsteps of the trackers, and the spacious fields
lie spread like a table under the Heavens.

The river itself is the haunt of grey and purple shadows and of lustrous
bands of colour ; red and green under the banks, silver and opal in mid-
water, flaming pink and gold.

Long after the white snow-fields up in the mountains are wrapped
in sleep, the high peaks glitter like sword-edges, and the scheme is one of
some far north world. The boat moves so peacefully along the water that
it forms as it were an integral part of the landscape.

A pair of Bulbuls come to perch upon its roof and play at love,
a Willy-wagtail climbs up here to walk with dainty footsteps along
the edge of the carved railings. Here and there a Heron stands mirrored
in the water, a duck flies swiftly across the darkening sky. The groves
resound to the closing music of doves, the chatterings of sleepy
sparrows.

This seems to be the hour loved by the birds. The sensation it yields
is one of an unmeasured peace and a world remote from care. You would
think that no one who lived here had ever a grief or a pain, and that at
Death men passed insensibly here into the bosom of Nature.

The colours which so please one's eyes are soft in their appeal ; a har-
mony of grey and silver and lavender ; but the flush of sunset on the peaks
towards Nanga Parbat is an exquisite rose, and behind them, in response to
some final message from the sun, there break out into the sky long sudden
fans of violet light or shadow.

Then the full-orbed moon emerges from behind those same peaks,
that were rosy a moment ago and are now already sad and grey. Her
radiant form is bright with the gold of the departed sun, and twice her
accustomed size when sailing through the sky.

Did those violet shafts know that the moon was about to rise?

Hear the mysterious singing of the air, the delicate tremolo of the cricket,
and the ripple of the rudder in the silent water !

i6 THE CHARM OF KASHMIR

At eight o'clock the world has become Arctic, yet with the warmth
and glow of an English summer night under a harvest moon.

Long after sleep had fallen upon it save for the patient trackers who,
like yoked cattle, pulled in silence by the shore, I sat on under the high moon,
lost in the beauty of the night. So bright was her gleam that the snows
upon the mountains were imaged in the waters ; yet so faintly that they
looked like some lost pattern in the waters themselves.

No sound broke the incomparable stillness of the night.

Save for the ascending Moon and the scarcely visible progress of the
boat, the world seemed at pause, transfixed with wonder at her own

loveliness.

" It seemed as if the hour were one

Sent from beyond the skies,

Which scattered from beyond the sun

A light of Paradise."

When I could no longer endure the poignancy of this scene, I went below
and sat by the Moorish windows of my boat, and felt more of kin there with
the beautiful things of the night. These little windows, I reflected, were
made for lovers and frail beings, who would forget here in the laughing
moonlight on the water, and its gleam upon the fretted arabesques of roof
and wall, upon crimson silken curtains and human forms, the relentless
march of time ; the passing in their stately pageant of the Universal Gods.

I slept well, but more than once I woke as though summoned by some
invisible messenger to go and look once more upon the divine perfection of
the night.

CHAPTER II
THE WULAR LAKE

When I rose in the morning we were slowly gliding into the Wular ; the
greatest of all the lakes of Hindustan. The surface of its waters was embroid-
ered with lilies, which here and there the early folk were collecting into their
dark canoes as food for their cattle. The Lake spread vastly before us, of
a radiant blue, and as we moved across it, the snowy masses of the Pir
Pantsal behind us slowly lengthened out into a mighty array and wall of
glittering snow. Beyond them, somewhere upon their farther side, there
lay the plains of India in the grip of a demoniac summer. Yet was it hard to
believe that they still existed, so complete was the transition to this magic vale.

Oh ! the warm vital sunlight ! the incomparable freshness of the morning
air, the blite and silver of the mountains, and the rippling sheen of the lake !

Here upon this sunlit morning, on the last day of April, I found the per-
fection of idleness. The sun's warmth was tempered for me by a shamiana
awning which left the view untrammelled, and the swinging of the boat
brought every phase of the horizon in succession into sight. The near water
was carpeted with the soft green and red leaves of the Singara, and the snow
and purple of the mountains on the north were mirrored in the satin surface
of the lake. Upon it moved with a solemn and stately progress the Dungas
with their pent roofs, like gigantic hay-stacks in the illusion of sky and water,
and the light shikaras that carried the village folk about their affairs. Far
across the unruffled waters I could hear the voice of a man singing from very
lightness of heart, and the murmur of mingled voices came to me from a
hamlet under the giant wall of the mountains.

Towards noon, as the boat neared the end of her voyage across the Lake,
every feature of these mountains was doubled in the lily-embroidered waters,

0 17

i8 THE CHARM OF KASHMIR

and my eyes travelling from the reflection to its source, rested with a feeling
of kinship on the green fields and homesteads, where the great valleys falling
precipitously from the snows, soften to shelving fans and spaces of land
fit for human subsistence. Upon many such as these I had looked in
other years from the edge of Garda and Leman, but all there is known and
frequented and a little worn with use ; whereas here these hamlets and
homesteads slumber on like Nature herself, unconscious and nameless to the
outer world. No tourist steamer here ruffles in its daily transits the calm of
the waters, the lily tapestry, the immemorial stillness. Here the wild duck
still wings her flight, the heron makes her home, and those who would cross
the waters must ply their oars. Here is life in its simplest form ; the life
of the East.

At this far end as one nears the shore the waters shallow, and acres of
reeds make green fields on the Lake, leaving only here and there a winding
pool, or passage-way for the boats. At such places the dlicks and the water-
fowl shelter, and the reed-sparrows chatter, and new earth is slowly brought
into being for the plough. Upon the green meadows, level as by the shores
of Brook in Vaterland, where the Dutch cows feed, there are herds of cattle
and horses, and whinnying foals, and lambs ; and here, willows grow, flinging
their shadows on the pools, and ever as we move the white mountains behind
us stand up more and more in all the pride and glory of their high estate, and
the great white circle which hems in this secluded world like a diadem,
becomes increasingly manifest. So vast are its snow-fields, so lofty its
summits white with eternal ice, that even in the full noon-light of this
summer day, they carry with them a chilling and cold suggestion. Neither
Leman, where its white mountain shines above the waters of Geneva, nor
Garda, where its purple cliffs are mirrored in the blue of the once
Austrian shore, nor any other of our great and beautiful lakes in Europe,
has anything to show by comparison with this Titanic circle.

At this north end of the lake, whence the Gilgit Road may be seen
winding its way in sharp diagonals up the mountains to some of the highest
lands in the world, a canal or passage, separated from the lake on either side

POLING ON THE WULAR.

THE WULAR LAKE 19

by a narrow strip of grass, marks the entry of the Jhilam into its bosom, and
so changes the character of our progress. The long poles are put away and
the polemen wade ashore with the towing line. The grassy margins are the
haunt of flocks of sheep and cattle and ponies, and amphibious and level is
the earth with these pastoral incidents to give it character. The canal itself
is a sinuous, winding creature, as natural in its beauty as any other feature
of the landscape. In these shallows the grey Herons, whose plumes were
once sought after by Emperors and great noblemen, whose flight was pursued
by their falcons upon many a sunlit morning, now live at peace ; yet, still
mindful of those days, alert and suspicious of every passing boat.

It is the secret of the charm of Kashmir that it combines these homely
and pastoral scenes that might be taken from an English valley, with a land-
scape that dazzles the eye with its majesty, and fills the mind with its
records of a splendid past. And how happily, notwithstanding the great
mountains, and those memories of departed greatness, one's eyes rest upon
the humble meadows scarcely raised a foot above the water ; these ruminant
herds at peace ; that field of mustard, spread like an embroidered coverlet
of green and gold at the foot of the mountains, the very air scented by its
bloom as we pass along its borders !

Here, as the waters wind through hamlet and village, are children at
play, and women with their babes, and old men basking in the kindly sun ;
the Maulvi or village saint with his white beard and rosary and fastidious
gait ; the weaver by his washing pool. Here is the crooning of doves, the
crowing of cocks, the singing of rowers as a marriage party speeds upon its
way ; here arc young lambs that skip upon the meadows under the mulberry
trees, while women pole and track, and even little children of five harness
themselves joyfully to the towing cords. Here is the tomb of a prophet
with its purple Iris bloom, and the village headman's house with its pro-
jecting oriels and grace and ornament, and here are the humbler tenements,
each a legible picture of the simple life of the people.

'Soon as the evening shades prevail.
The moon takes up the wondrous tale,
And nightly to the listening earth.
Repeats the story of her birth ;
While all the stars that round her bum
And all the planets in their turn
Confirm the tidings as they roll.
And spread the truth from pole to pole."

% CHAPTER III

NIGHT AT MANASBAL

As the evening came I left the boat to pursue its tranquil course along the
winding river, and took a path across the meadows through orchards and by
quiet waters, till I came upon Manasbal, buried deep below the fields, an
amethystine pool of water that took my breath away with its very loveli-
ness. Upon its further shore there is the hill of Ah Tung, a solitary out-
work upon the plain, and the Lake wanders northwards into a cleft in the
mountains, whose purple walls and snowy gleam from a far interior are
imaged in the waters, as still and deep as though time and incident were
unknown to them.

Two small boats lay upon its surface ; one that was carrying some
travellers from the Lake to the River ; another with a woman at the helm,
and a man fishing at the prow. The travellers passed on, leaving this man
and his mate alone upon the silent water.

I followed along the grassy shore to the hamlet of Nunni Nara, where the
stone boats lie at anchor in the canal, under willow trees, by an ancient high-
backed bridge of Imperial days. Here in the gloaming many of the people
were clustered together, as in some little Dutch village, idly observing the
life afoot. Along the canal where the boats were anchored, the boat
people sat enjoying the quiet evening amidst fields of purple Iris ; their
children about them, and their hearth-fires glowing within their tran-
sitory homes.

We anchored off Sumbal village, facing its superb cluster of chinars,
from the heart of which, where a shrine lay hidden, a flame kept flickering
like some soul that couJd not find repose. The night was silent, save when
a boat came out of the darkness, the rowers singing softly to their oars,

22 THE CHARM OF KASHMIR

but the river bore them away into its mystery. The Moon rose behind
stray wisps and veils of cloud and lighted the river and its motion, and the
reflections from the trees lay like velvet upon its surface. Afar off the Pir
Pantsal was visible, with its veins of silver in the deep falling valleys and its
far-spread snow-fields and icy peaks above.

DAWN

I woke by some happy fortune at early dawn, to find the Moon in the
last moments of her dominion over the night, and the white mountains still
as the Sleeping Beauty under her spell. A band of violet shadow lay between
them and her silver orb, and for a few seconds or moments the scene was
one of life in suspense.

There lay the wide space of the unruffled river, and upon it the image of
the Moon, and there was the grove of chinars, its light gone out, silent and
still asleep. Upon the Iris meadows by the bank where the boat lay at
anchor the night dew hung like jewels.

The world might have come happily to its end at this moment.

Yet was this but the prelude to a day in Kashmir.

The white silver of the Moon grew rosy with the dawn, as if swept by
some secret emotion ; pink waves of colour mingled almost invisibly with
the violet shades, the morning-song of a thousand doves broke from the
coverts, and upon the loftiest peaks the first arrows of the sun shone with a
divine radiance. The eastern sky over Ah Tung, where Manasbal still
slumbered, was lit with saffron hues, and Day was visibly at hand. The
last star had gone and with it the shadows of night. Yet the moon still
shone, queen-like and radiant upon her throne.

The trackers now awakened and stole swiftly ashore, the boat, as if
quickened by some voluntary purpose, began to move, and the whole scene
thereupon became animated with life. From instant to instant the snows
became emblazoned with the morning, and from Tatakuti to Apharwat,
along the whole array of the Pir Pantsal, the new-born day was ushered in.
Gone were the violet bands, and the moon lay a-dying ; and the moment of

NIGHT AT MANASBAL 23

her trespass was lost in the general resurrection. She passed like the light
of a candle and was no more.

As though to mark the transition from night to gorgeous and animated
Day, we were caught at this moment in the swirling current of the river,
where it fiercely races under the obstructing piers of the wooden bridge of
Sumbal.

CHAPTER IV

APPROACH TO SRINAGAR

At Shadipur the boatmen stay to eat their morning meal, and the boat lies
by the shore in the midst of a circle of entrancing beauty.

Here is the loveliness of a Pastoral Land, with its flocks of sheep and
their shepherds imaged in the still pools, under the shade of spreading trees ;
of a Water Land, through which a noble river flows placidly on to its destiny,
dallying with the shining hours of its youth, while boats full of sheep and
young lambs, that fill the gentle air with their plaints, are borne across its
waters from level shore to level shore ; of a Mountain Land, where sublime
peaks and glaciers uplifted to the Heavens shine in the radiance of an eastern
sun, and blue valleys fall precipitously to the water's edge.

Here at Shadipur also there is a mingling of the waters, and every
outlook is upon a picture that fascinates the eye with its gentle and exquisite
perfection.

As the boat moves, the softest of zephyrs blows, tempering the glow
of the sunlight to a heavenly perfection of climate, so that one whispers
to one's self, with a sense of complete attainment, the famous words of
an Emperor :

" If there be a Paradise on earth,
It is here, it is here, it is here."

And there is indeed no other combination of wood and water and mountain,
with physical ease, in all the world to equal this.

Every outlook here is a picture. There, upon my right hand, are the
trackers bending under their toil by the edge of the silver water in the midst
of green and purple fields, with the snowy bloom of the white thorn about

D 25

26 THE CHARM OF KASHMIR

them and the yet more dazzling snows beyond ; and there upon my left,
knee-deep in the same green and purple pastures, are flocks of white sheep
and black cattle, with a blue lagoon beyond and the mountains near at
hand. A little further a fisherman flings his silvery net, and golden acres
spread amidst the purple and the green ; while a shepherd in his cloak stands
still and solitary between water and mountain, his flock about him, and
herons are mirrored in the next lagoon.

Here upon the lush meadows are mares with their young foals, and colts
galloping about, intoxicated with the joy of life ; here are cattle ploughing
the rich earth to the loud calls of the ploughmen, milch goats with their kids
passing the slumberous noon under the heavy shade of immemorial trees ;
birds overhead in the branches, and swallows that wheel by the hamlets
and skim the lustrous water, and dart like arrows througli the silken awnings
of the boat.

And over all, there is the skylark singing his song in the sunlit spaces
high above the world !

We pass a Ziarat by the river's edge, a walled-in enclosure, where, under
the shade of mighty trees bending under their burden of years, a man lies
buried who in his little day rose a head above his fellows by reason of his
sanctity, and whose bones are now treasured as of help and comfort to the
living. The Sayyad Husein Bokhari they call him, and he came, as his name
implies, from some far haunt in Central Asia, by

" Samarcand that far-famed Belvedere,'*

to live and die here amongst these people. Who shall say what was the
real story of his life ?

Round about him the village dead are buried, under a green hillock that
flames with purple or gleams as white as snow in the season of the Flag,
and in this secluded place under the light and shade of the great trees, where
the birds sing and the river sweeps placidly on its way, they sleep in
peace.

From somewhere here, up the long vistas of the river, we get our first
glimpse of Hara Parbat and its dark fortress on the hill, and the Takht-i-
Sulaiman, where from immemorial time there has been a temple of the Gods.

AN IDYLL OF THE VALE.

APPROACH To SRINAGAR ±i

Between these two, the Acropolis and the Shrine, there hes Srinagar, the
capital of Kashmir, and here the circuit of the mountains to far beyond
Vernag is now visibly complete. The long poplar highway which bisects
the valley makes a great line like an army arrayed for battle, and the river,
sweeping in splendid coils and loops through fields of flowers, brings one to
the Gates of the City.

CHAPTER V

ENTERING THE CITY

The picturesque assails one at every turn. Here are many things ; an
orchard overhanging the river wall ; a mosque with its tall tower and carved
windows, and its gallery by the water where two men in white garments
are deep in the Moslem prayer, facing the full glare of the sun with a
stoic piety ; cool green pergolas of vines upon whose under-surface the
water-gleams dance ; two pretty faces at a fretted window, which is promptly
closed with a coquettish smile, as though the owner would say " Very
nice, no doubt, but not for you. Sir " ; great stone basement walls
from which rise, as in Venice, many-storied houses with windows looking on
the river ; glorious chinars flinging their dappled shade on sunlit walls and
inner courts ; gardens by the river hung with jasmines ; and little birds
that sing in cages as if they were free ; the silvered cupola of a temple ;
beyond these the old-world bridges of the City, and Hara Parbat like a
mediaeval castle on its hill ; and then a side canal up which we turn, as in
Venice, with a cry of warning, and the life changes as it does from the Grand
Canal to a side water, and hundreds of boats are busy with the incidents
of trade, with mighty timber for house-building, with straw and firewood
from the country. Here in the vistas the view is grey and lacking in beauty
of form and line, the houses tottering and squalor about. One murmurs
" A Venice of hovels " after some by-gone observer ; but near at hand there
is the beauty of great trees to redeem it, of carved balconies ; — and the
unfailing life and <;olour of the Orient. Yet its very resemblance makes one
sigh for the splendour and majestic loveliness of the Queen City. . . .

Perhaps it was like this a thousand years ago ?

Let us call this rather a rural Venice.

30 THE CHARM OF KASHMIR

We have to make a hard fight and struggle for place, wherever the cur-
rent runs fiercely under the piers of a bridge or where the passage is narrow.
For here we are dealing with no still lagoon, but with a live creature given to
passion under restraint. Every foot of progress has to be fought for here,
every vantage seized, be it the side of an arch, or the hull of a boat, or the
beams of a bridge overhead, and towing cord and punting pole are swiftly
interchanged as the one or the other offers better promise of victory.

If it be a little placid on the open river as the boat glides slowly on its
way, here in the City there is no lack of incident. It is evident that here
w6 are launched upon a struggle in which victory may incline to the other
side. And when the current is mastered there is danger from the overhanging
boughs of the mulberry trees, which reach across the waterway and threaten
the roof of the boat.

Presently we are rewarded for all this turmoil by a Persian Lilac hedge
whose fragrance fills the narrow waters and makes the eyes rejoice with its
wonted beauty. Its scent is somewhat richer, its bloom and foliage a little
diverse from our own ; yet is it Lilac unmistakeably, and we reach up to
it, and take of its abundance as we pass.

There are many faces at the windows and oriels of the houses as the
boat pursues her course. Here for one is an ancient dame with her little
grand-daughters, who laugh and salute us as we pass up, here a proud lady
who draws the papered shutters to with a high disdain, here a white-bearded
Pandit with glasses on his nose and a sacred volume on his knees, and by
the water's edge, where the Quince trees are in bloom, there are women in
pink with oval faces and dark eyes scouring and filling their brazen pots,
and there is a wooden bridge over which the people pass on horseback and
afoot, while the boat fights its way through the turmoil below. It is held
with the utmost difficulty from dashing back into the piers, by poles which
quiver and beat a rat-tat against the hull, till the straining trackers hurry to
the bank and the battle is won. But while all this is happening and the result
is yet uncertain a raft of a dozen great logs lashed together comes swiftly down
upon us, and striking a pier envelops it, and bursts asunder. The two
raftsmen with their long poles are carried down on a moiety, while the rest
break away and drift down the river, a danger to those embarked upon it.

NOONDAY PEACE AT THE NISHAT BAGH

ViAlUV. AH

ENTERING THE CITY 3^

Another fight, more tense and longer in suspense, brings us under the
walls of Sher Garhi, the palace of the Maharajah, to the beating of drums,
the blare of conch shells and the noise of ritual, into the wide river ; and so
into the dusk, with the pink hues of sunset on the water, a blue haze in the
vistas and sparrows busy settling for the night. We pass by carved stair-
ways that betray the touch of a noble hand, into the Tsunth-Kul or Apple
Tree canal, where under the great chinars all is peace.

The stars are now shining over head, and their reflections gleam in the
lane of waters.

A little further and we are in the midst of the far-famed Chinar Bagh,
where the English house-boats lie at anchor, and as we pass them slowly,
one by one, they yield glimpses of homely interiors, and drawing rooms with
pictures and books upon the walls, of silver and white linen — of a woman
bending over a night-lamp making a child's food.

The boat touches and we come to rest by a grassy bank under the
sweeping boughs of a mighty tree, and one is assailed by the conviction that
one has dropped into the very lap of the Gods ! One is in the midst, it
would seem, of a conspiracy on everybody's part, from the Kashmir Raj
to the humble boatmen who toil all day, to do all that the heart of spoilt
and luxurious man can require.

For here is everything ; scenery, solitude, company, service, indulg-
ence, the vagrant irresponsible life, and a home upon the water. Here
one is eneloistered in the heart of Asia, upon the far side of those majestic
snows which shine like an eternal barrier between India and the world
beyond ; yet by some magic, here is the life of an English river, the life of
Henley and of Oxford — of house-boats and window blinds, and level places
over the roof, set with chairs and cushions and flowers, and within, books,
and all the last refinements of civilized life. A miracle — nothing less !

"Each spot in Kaslunir one is inclined to think the
most beautiful of all."

Sir Francis Younghusband.

aA/5A'»^HHT aj'i'lA MHT

-Th'r

THE APPLE TREE CANAL

CHAPTER VI ^

FmST MORNING AT SRINAGAR

The morning light reveals the sum of my environment. Here below me,
where the water is running past to its junction with the river, is the Tsunth-
Kul or Apple-Tree Canal, A few yards away are the great gates through
which the clear sparkling waters of the Dal Lake rush with a vehement joy.

The Dal Lake is one of the wonders of the world, and its joys must be
left to another exploration ; but so tempting is this doorway that I cannot
resist crossing the water from the green-gold corner where my boat has
passed the night, for a glimpse into the far-famed loveliness beyond.

Here is water, " clear and soft as silk," through which as the shikara glides
I can see the little fish darting about like arrows in their under-world of
weeds. Here are bending willows by its shores, and orchards yet in bloom,
and house-boats with chairs and cushions under white canopies the image of
holiday enjoyment, an English boat-house with a girl painting from a corner
of its balcony, and shikaras waiting like slim gondolas by the gate to carry
one abroad ; a Rajah encamped in a secluded corner, groups of Biblical
people under the shade of the chinar trees, boat loads of veiled women and
laughing children of kin with those who dwell by The Sweet Waters of Asia ;
and over all the resplendent snows, and Solomon's Throne and the castle of
Hara Par bat.

So I leave it for the present, and returning to the Apple-Tree Canal
follow it up stream to the river. It winds here in a great curve through
lines of slim poplars whose shadows fall in velvet bars across its lucent
face, and there are black cattle moving along its green slopes, and house-
boats at anchor beside it. And then, wonderful to relate, there is the sudden
tolling of a church bell, and along the foot-paths and high embankment

B 33

34 THE CHARM OF KASHMIR

of the river there are EngUsh women and children on their way to church
in sweet frocks and hats, with prayer-books in their hands !

Such are the surprises and contrasts of Kashmir ; and it is character-
istic of this favoured corner of the earth, that no sooner is one scene of
lovehness past, than one is plunged into another of equal but wholly
different beauty.

So I felt when, from the Dal Lake and the Apple-Tree Canal, I came
upon the river embankment by the Munshi Bag for the first time in my
life. For here were plane trees of the most noble proportions, shelving
gardens to the river's edge of white and purple Irises, the air heavy with
their perfume ; house-boats in the shelter of the young willow trees, and
the river itself like a superb Isis with giant avenues of poplars upon its
further shore.

Here upon the near bank were Elizabethan-looking houses, laden with
wisterias and roses, encompassed about with lawns and gardens, and shaded
by great trees at whose feet the daisies enamelled the grass. There was
throughout a sense of abounding life, as though growth came without voli-
tion, and Nature seemed to look at one with a deep benevolence and say :
" This is but a fraction of what I can accomplish."

The church, whose spire rose but a little above the level of the embank-
ment, seemed buried in roses and flowers and rooted in lush meadows, and
upon the embankment itself there was the English club, with its rich carpets
and dark timbered walls and its wooden seats across the road, reserved for
its members, whence under the shelter of four monumental chinars, that
may have grown here when Elizabeth was on her throne, they see the world
go by, the rushing river upon the one hand with its multitudinous life, and
their own women and children, domestic, as in England, upon the other.

One soon grows accustomed to this environment and comes to take it as
of course ; but this first impression must linger on far into after years. For
here indeed is a pleasure-ground unsurpassed in Asia ; and the life is in-
dulgent, Oriental. Instead of poling your own punt or paddling your own
canoe, you sit here in a light shikara, with white awnings and embroidered
curtains to temper the sunlight, and are carried where you will by those
whose one object in life seems, to be at your service. It is this mingling of

FIRST MORNING AT SRINAGAR is

Eastern complaisance with English homeliness and beauty that makes
Kashmir so unapproachable in its way ; and wherever you go there is room
and freedom to do as you will.

My own boat is anchored, apparently by some voluntary act upon its
own part, by the rim of a grassy island, under the most princely trees in
the world, and the neighbourhood by some enchantment has become mine.
All day long I can sit here upon the roof of my boat, by the edge of a sun-lit
stream, with this green-gold canopy above me and a series of infantile bays
and inlets in the grassy shore below, and life ever in motion on the stream.
Here a slim shikara, with a bevy of Indian women in pink silks and white
muslins out for the day, then another laden with objets d'art, insinuating its
way under my notice as though I might be Croesus himself ; while all the day
long, from early dawn to starry night, the people go about their affairs of busi-
ness and of pleasure, softly, by indulgence of the placid water. Here is life
made easy, and it is a life that appeals to East and West alike. We have
it upon high authority that they can never meet ; but they meet in
Kashmir.

CHAPTER VII

THE CAPITAL

Skinagar is unique. You may compare it with this or that (and it is like
a tattered Venice most of all), but it remains, and will always remain, in a
category apart. Some fourteen hundred years ago it supplanted Asoka's
city at Pandrethan hard by, and it has retained by right of place its claim
to be the capital of Kashmir.

" Where else," asks its chronicler with an affectionate pride — " where
else on earth, apart from that city, can one find easily streams meeting,
pure and lovely, at pleasure-residences and near market streets ? "

" Where else do the inhabitants, on a hot summer day, find before
their houses water like that of the Vitasta, cooled by large lumps of snow ? "
And

" Where else in the centre of a city is there a pleasure-hill from which
the splendour of all the houses is visible as if from the sky ? "

From this Acropolis, indeed, one can look not only upon the streets and
lanes, the canals, the lazy coiling river, the shining lakes and pleasure-
gardens, the mosques, palaces, temples, and many-storied houses of the city,
but upon nearly the whole of the valley of Kashmir. In bygone days the
city was itself known as Kashmir, and it ruled the valley and the mountains
and absorbed them into its own life as completely as Athens did or Florence.
All the tradition and personality of the Kashmiri — the intellect, wit, craft,
arts, religion, beauty, refinement, and degradation of this singular people
— ^are concentrated in this sordid yet lovely city, that fascinates and repels
one by turns.

Its soul and impulse is the river, which winds through it in loops, flow-
ing under its seven bridges, its stone embankments in which the shattered

38 THE CHARM OF KASHMIR

remnants of temples and shrines and violated gods are buried, its stairs
where the people bathe, and women with bare feet, descending and ascend-
ing, fill their water-pots ; its shops, its mosques, its gardens blowing by the
water's edge. Side canals, that ultimately link with it, flow through dark
alleys and under ancient high-backed bridges, and carry one into the city's most
secret haunts. Streets and lanes intersect the maze of houses, with the same
bewildering complexity that they do in Venice ; and curious surprises await
one, as when the Mar Canal, after an hour's wandering, carries one's boat
to a point whence it is borne upon the shoulders of a dozen men through a
crowded lane of high houses, that almost meet overhead, and dropped
into the wide open stream of the river. Here in the heart of this city is Asia :
life and death jostling each other ; children that swarm in prolific homes,
while cholera and disease slay them without pity ; vice in the dark alleys
and secret places ; piety in the streets, where men seem ever at prayer ;
houses that grow into beautiful forms and delicate traceries as by the light
of nature, yet are so shaken and awry with neglect that one marvels how
they escape an instant dissolution ; gardens, laden with roses and filled
with the scent of lilacs and jasmines, overhanging dark waters whose breath
is the breath of a sewer; a populace steeped in poverty and given to
incredible toil with fine needles, whose supple fingers in bygone days made
the shawls of Kashmir a wonder of the world ; yet a people idle and pleasure-
loving, who pass you with smiles upon their handsome faces and the treachery
of centuries of practice at their hearts ; a people reputed by strangers to be
full of duplicity and treachery, and a hundred unpleasant qualities ; yet
also commended by some who know them for their hospitality, their grati-
tude, their domestic affections, and their freedom from crime ; homes that
are sealed to the outer world, yet a life that is lived in public, with that
astonishing candour, sociability, and charm that characterise the East.

You enter your shikara, and are carried down the buoyant water, sway-
ing with its life, and as you go the houses of the city defile before you. Here
is a shop, with its carved oriels overlooking the river, and its creaking sign-
board inviting you to buy the finest carvings, the best papier-mdchS in
Kashmir. At the windows are the numerous proprietors calling upon you
with voice and gesture to enter. You yield to the invitation, resolved to

THE MAR CANAL

^ihri.^^J^_nt\.y''i .'J t«

THE CAPITAL 39

buy nothing ; your boat is stopped by a flight of stairs ; you climb a narrow
and sullied street, and you enter — an enchanted garden ! Did you think
when you climbed up here and crossed that forbidding threshold that you
would find before you a sun -lit patio, green grass and banks of Persian
lilac, whose perfume would fill the drowsy air ? Those dark and solemn
cypresses, that little orchard set upon its terrace, those roses waiting
to bloom ?

At the far side of this inner court seated at the carved Saracenic win-
dows, each a frame for a picture, sit the patient carvers and painters ;
while the rooms beyond are full of lovely things the product of their skill.
From the windows on the river-face there is a view that is one of the world's
masterpieces.

You resume your journey. The river rushes under the wooden piers
of the bridges, the people pass overhead ; from carved oriels and fretted
balconies groupF of women and girls look out upon the passing show. Some
have beautiful faces, many more are graceful. At others there are old men
with white beards, and these sit with a singular dignity by the windows
reading from some scriptural text, regardless of the outer world. Children
laugh and play by the stream's edge. Upon the silvered roofs of the
temples the sun shines with a dazzling light, and the whole face of the river
is luminous with a brightness that vanquishes the eyes. A puff of white
smoke suddenly emerges from one of the bastions of the fort overlooking
the city, the air is filled with a roar, and slowly round a bend in the river
comes the Maharajah's barge with its rowers in scarlet, its walls lacquered
and painted in red and yellow, the colours of Spain. In the rush of boats
that follows, your own is jostled and splashed by the sparkling waters.

You leave the river and enter the narrow crowded streets of the city,
where the people are astir like bees in a hive. Here goes the Pandit with his
stately air and his pretty wife in a rose-pink gown ; the Mullah with his
rosary, representing the rival creed ; the Hamal, as you have seen him in
Stamboul, bent under a great burden; here in the shops are the tailors
and the goldsmiths, the cobblers, the braziers, the bookbinders, the con-
fectioners, and all those numerous people who ply their trade under the
public eye in an Eastern city. And here are the purchasers, women buying

40 THE CHARM OF KASHMIR

little cups of milk for a farthing and small groceries meticulously weighed
out, and life in all its variety and simplicity.

You would see the interiors of some of these tall houses whose fretted
windows and forbidding doors invite your curiosity ? You would obtain
a gUmpse of the craftsmen at work on their shawls, their embroideries,

their papier-mache ?

It is possible just now to see both together in two of the most attractive
old houses in Srinagar. These houses are a revelation of beauty after the
rococo palace of the Maharajah and the tin-roofed shops and distressing
buildings of the European quarter.

From the narrow street you pass into a wide sunlit court, upon the far
end of which there opens the front door of the house. Over it there is a
wide Sara<;enic arch, which is half a dome, painted and cusped within, with
a seat upon either hand for the doorkeeper and his cronies to sit and warm
themselves in the sun. Here, some mules which have carried in a burden
are tethered as before a Spanish entrance, fretting and whisking away
the flies. High above them soars the front of the house, perfectly pro-
portioned and spaced, with deep overhanging eaves of carved cedar, with
projecting oriels and windows filled with pinjra work in arabesque designs.
From the door a stone passage leads straight through the house to the
crowded sunlit street beyond. You cannot but pause in its soft gloom to
enjoy this sight of the passing worid, like a picture on a screen.

A narrow and winding stair that suggests the middle ages cUmbs through
the interior of the house to the lighted rooms, in which the workers are busy
over delicate embroideries ; no less than seventy-five men and boys m a
space that would be cramped for half a dozen Englishmen. They are a
frail community these hereditary weavers, who sit here now with their
slender pUant fingers, their sensitive faces and dark liquid eyes, embroider-
ing the linen and canvas before them with millions of stitches. What
incredible labour it is, like that of bees in a comb, which goes to create the
finished article, for which you pay so little, and which you so lightly fling
aside in the dealer's shop for some little fault in the pattern or in the scheme
of colour ! Here it seems inhuman to tax the fife and patience of any
creature with a soul, to this extent.

THE CAPITAL 41

This house in which they are assembled once belonged to a Vizier ;
so that beside these more open rooms there is the secluded chamber in
which his women sat behind a screen of fretted cedar, half visible and half
concealed. Its front window looks out upon the world, and in particular
upon the upper floor of an adjoining house, where to-day there is a great room
full of children at school. But in the past ... it may be that glances passed
from lattice to lattice of which the Vizier was unaware.

Here is another house which is even more attractive than this. You
enter it directly from the street, and passing through its central hall, where
the door-keeper slumbers, you are taken at a sharp angle into a garden-
court, which, though a little neglected now, is still beautiful. Into this
secluded place, with its high walls, there is no entrance save past the door-
keeper. In its centre is a deep well, and beside it an impluvium of cut
and fashioned stone, over which a great vine spreads its lucent canopy, and
in its season bunches of the finest grapes in Kashmir. The vine reaches
away to the walls of the house, which it partially covers ; and under its
shelter a wooden trough, brown with the velvet of time, carries the water
from the well to the Hummam within the house.

A flight of outer steps carries you to the door of entrance, and
through it into a narrow hall, where in a cool (Corner under the
staircase the drinking water of the house is stored in earthen jars. On
the right there is an attractive room with a carved ceiling and a line of win-
dows opening on the garden. This is the winter sitting-room with its
double floor and walls, through which the heated air from the Hummam
passes, escaping outwards at last through little apertures under the roof.
Adjoining it is the Hummam, where the luxury of a Turkish bath is avail-
able to the owner and his guests. Passing on up the spiral stairs one arrives
at the chef d'ceuvre of the house — a summer room under its flower-bedded
roof, with a long series of windows upon three of its sides, yielding exquisite
views of the Pir Pantsal snows, and of the green roofs, balconies, and spires
of the houses and mosques of the city. There is an inner row of carved
wooden pillars which supports an oval dome, lined with cedar wood. The
floor of this inner compartment is a few inches lower than that of the surround-
ing verandah, which is yet a part of it ; and the whole plan and design of

42 THE CHARM OF KASHMIR

this elevated chamber are conceived with an instinctive skill. You cannot
doubt that it is the creation of a living school of Architecture, thrown off
with scarcely an effort by craftsmen trained by centuries of practice. The
plaster cornices and Saracenic arches, the shapely pillars and the perfect
ovoid dome of the roof, all speak of a facile skill.

There is but one door to this beautiful chamber, that by which you
enter it up the winding stair. Light and shadow mingle in subtle grada-
tions within it, though every window of it is open to the brilliant sun. But
each of these windows is also equipped with fretted screens of cedar, which
fall with a touch into their places, making beautiful sombre patterns against
the sunlight without, and filling the room within with harmonies of light.

Here you will find the papier-mdchS workers at their craft, seated at
the windows and in the bays and oriels of the outer space, half in shadow
themselves while the light falls upon their work ; a community of humble
patient people with refined features and delicate hands, more like women
than men. Some are busy smoothing the surface of the papier-mdchi,
others grinding the brilliant paint ; while the rest, and these the skilled
craftsmen, are painting in with fine brushes the design of each bowl and tray
and box, without any pattern before them, and next laying over this the
colours, and ultimately the varnish of liquid amber, which brings the piece
to completion. The finished products are displayed, or covered over with
a veil of fine muslin, in the inner chamber under the dome. Foreign taste
and low prices have not helped to raise the level of this craft, and with the
strange unconsciousness of Eastern workers, the same person will produce
an exquisite piece full of feeling and refinement of design and colour, beside
another which is only fit to be thrown out of the window or carried to the
furnace of the Hummam. One feels that these people go right or wrong
without knowing it. Yet here are skill, the instinct for beauty, the mar-
vellous patience and infinite labour of those who would succeed.

The craft of the papier-mdchi painter was introduced here from
Samarcand by King Zain-ul-ab-i-din and was confined at its outset to the
bow-shafts of the period. It is still known as Kamangari, or Bow-craft,
and the quarter of the city where the painters congregate is called by that
name.

THE CAPITAL 43

This beautiful and convenient house was built some forty years ago by
a Persian merchant, who came here to trade in shawls, and eventually
settled down in Kashmir. His son, to whom the house has descended,
pursues his father's calling as a dealer in shawls, though an ever-increasing
shadow has fallen upon it since the Prussians broke the Second Empire and
deprived the shawl trade of its principal market.

From these intimacies of the City one may pass on to its more notable
sights : to the Tomb of Zain-ul-Abidin, the Sultan whose fame still sur-
vives in Kashmir, to the great Mosque which is like Solomon's Temple, built
upon a stately scale with lofty pillars of cedar, but is now in a state of disso-
lution. Beside its tall columns, each of which was once a prince of the forest,
some of the greatest of the Mogul Emperors have bowed their heads in
prayer, and the idlers and Mullahs who beg in its precincts, the refuse of a
departed age, still murmur the name of Aurangzeb.

Old as it looks, it supplanted a far more ancient temple of wrought
stone, whose mouldings and pediments lie scattered about the grounds.

Islam has done much for the world in its Architecture, inspired by the
doctrine of the one God ; but the havoc it has wrought in its iconoclastic
fury is fearful to think of. All over Kashmir there lie in ruins the classical
temples of the past ; and countless others have disappeared from the face
of the earth, broken into road metal, built into dams and embankments,
and flung into the lakes and rivers. There was one egregious person who
boasted of the title of the Sultan Butshikan — ^the Image Breaker — by
which infamous designation he is likely to be known with increasing ill-
favour as the full extent of his depredations is revealed.

There are other Mosques, some of marble like one that was built by
Nur Jahan, others of wood ; there are Temples covered with tin, and one
with sheets of tarnished gilt by the Maharajah's palace. There is even
a ruined place where Christ is supposed to have lived, and whence he ascended
into Heaven. And then, overlooking all this strange welter of beauty and
decay, this maze of streets and canals and houses, and all the seething life
of this incomparable city, is Akbar's old fortress, with its Castle high
upon that hill, " whence," as the old chronicler says, " the splendour of it
all is visible as if from the sky."

44 THE CHARM OF KASHMIR

You enter it through a great gateway of cut stone, fashioned by the
unerring hand of the Moguls. Here, through its half gloom, from sunlight
to sunlight, the people pass on their way to and from the City. Over the
archway an inscription upon marble in the flowing script of Persia records
the construction of this new (and now so old) City of Akbar, its walls and
towers, at a cost of one hundred and ten lakhs of rupees. Two hundred
workmen in stone, and many skilled masons, were brought here from India
to build it ; and it was twelve years, as the people will tell you, before the
Emperor and his son, who had begun at opposite ends, finally met upon the
completion of the walls.

But the glory of Akbar's day has departed : the titanic wall, with its
embrasures and loopholes, is shattered and in ruins ; the great gates are
crumbling, and within there is scarcely a trace now of the houses and
palaces and buildings of that period. Herds of cattle and ponies graze
on the soft undulating grass which covers the waterways and fountains of
some old garden ; and almond-trees now blossom over the whole of the
vast interior. Here in the spring the city people come and sit all day under
the white bloom which ushers in the vernal year ; and here, as one stands
upon the battlements and looks far down upon the back-waters of the Lake,
one realises that one is looking upon the remnants of an early time, when the
foundations of an empire were being laid, and before the silken daj-s of
pleasure had supervened. For it was Akbar's half century of mastery that
won for Jahangir his thirteen years of ease and dalliance in Kashmir.

From this dead city one climbs to the citadel of Hara Parbat, which
soars above it. Water was always the difficulty of these old rock-castles,
and as one ascends one passes an old well with the remnants of great stairs
descending to it from the keep ; and here, covering the bare and forbidding
slopes, there are acres of Iris, and from out the tawny grass there stand out
black mottled stones, like a squadron of panthers advancing upon the
citadel. One enters it by a side gateway as one enters Chitor or Toledo,
its massive door armed with spikes of iron ; and so one passes through one
court into another, where roses are blooming, and a small garden of pome-
granates relieves the mediaeval fierceness of the place. Over another gate
there is a piece of marble inscribed in Persian, relating the exploits of Ata

THE CAPITAL 45

Mahamad Khan, the Afghan Viceroy, who built this castle in the 1226th
year of the Prophet. The folds of the door are of solid slabs of chinar.
There is a Hindu temple within, and a priest ringing a small bell and chant-
ing his daily litany. His voice, as it echoes within the sombre interior, and
is borne through the loopholes and embrasures of the Fortress into the
outer air, carries one's thoughts back far beyond the days of Akbar to some
primitive mist of time, when this hill was the abode of the dread goddess
whose name it bears, and whose worship survives the lapse of unnumbered
centuries. From these secret and inner courts one ascends to the roof of
the Citadel, whence the whole world seems spread at one's feet in the
sunshine.

There, are the tawny roofs of the city, soft vistas of the winding river,
green fields and lonely avenues of trees, mosques and palaces and shrines,
all mingled at this distance in one serene and composite whole. Nearer
at foot one can trace the circumambient walls of Akbar, the circle of almond
orchards that engirdles the Citadel, the Lake of Anchar, the far-famed
beauty of the Dal, the gleam of the distant Wular, the splendours of Hara
Mukh, and Mahadev, the Throne of Solomon superb and simple in its grace-
ful line, the cumulose masses of chinars which mark the Imperial Gardens,
bridges, and roads, and all the thousand incidents of a city displayed. Over
and above these there is the white gleam and encompassing majesty of the
Pir Pantsal, which stands sentinel over this valley in the " womb of Hima-
laya," as though to shelter it from the rough hands of a barbaric world.
From here I could see the cloud masses sweeping in purple folds over valley
and mountain, the sun shining in floods of sunlight, gilding the temple
spires and peaks of immortal loveliness, and the whole pageant of Nature,
in which man plays so transient and humble a part, accomplishing itself.

The Fortress still dominates the scene with its guns and high walls and
frowning battlements ; but the hard unrelenting race which built it, ruling
this lovely valley with an iron hand, and careless of the feelings and affec-
tions of the people, has been long since flung out — as such people always
are in the end — to be punished in the next world, if not in this. No one
regrets the Afghan in Kashmir. But how gladly the people speak of the
Padishahs, of the wise and tolerant Akbar, the pleasure-loving Jahangir,

46 THE CHARM OF KASHMIR

and. the splendid Shah Jahan. Their memory survives not only in the fine
old walls and gateways of Akbar's City and in the exquisite gardens by tha
Lake shores, but in the hearts of the people.

Who would suspect in the midst of this City, with its wooden houses,
in these gardens and haunts of pleasure, anywhere in this lovely valley in
which Nature and Man seem alike so complaisant, the existence of this
typical Mohammedan City-Fortress, so like in its character to those which
the Moguls have left in India? There are some indeed who spend many
years in the valley and upon the Lakes without discovering that Akbar
designed to create here a city after that model.

But in truth it was needless, and out of harmony with the soft and
voluptuous character of the people. Give them their silken waterways,
their canoes and pleasure-boats, their floating gardens and orchards, and
let who will rule and build fortresses, so long as they are not called upon to
live in them. That is their sentiment. And so it was that Akbar's city
failed of accomplishment.

But when the almond-trees are in bloom, and Time, to whose wisdom
they trust, has covered all fierceness with soft green turf, then are the
people willing to come in and dream under the white flowers, and sing
and pass a fortnight of the year here, where Akbar would have had them
live in martial state.

" The delight of the Worldling and the retired abode of the Recluse."

Abul Fazl.

" Perliaps in the whole world there is no comer so pleasant as the Dal Lake."

Lawrence.

CHAPTER VIII
THE DAL

The Dal, whose beauties were so opulently chanted by Tom Moore, who
never saw it, is something more than a piece of exquisite water. It is a
world in itself. Here are fields, and orchards whose bloom drifts upon the
lucent waters, and meadows enamelled with purple and gold ; splendid trees,
the chinar, the poplar and the apricot, and willows by the water-ways ; houses
of the great and the humble, and gardens of the Emperors : sheep feeding in
the grassy glades, and black cattle ; the plough-man behind his steers ; little
fish speeding like arrows through the limpid waters ; halcyons displaying their
turquoise wings and bulbuls singing in the willows, and turtle-doves whose
music fills the morning. Here are canoes carrying the people about their
dail> avocations, with women in them and lovely children, and barges laden
with the produce of the islands ; shikaras that wait in line behind the
flood-gates like gondolas at S. Mark's. Here are the floating-gardens of
Kashmir, and the gardeners at work carrying fresh soil across the Lake where
it widens, while their punting poles shine like silver in the sunlight, and one
who is love-sick sings a, ghazal in the stern. The gardens look like firm earth
till you move away a yard or two and then see them suspended in the
lustrous water, while the dragon-flies flash about them with incredible
speed.

And ever beyond these there are the white snows and Solomon's Throne,
and the blue uprising mountains with their shining peaks and shadowy
valleys imaged in the Lake.

It is a place that is apt to spoil one, its beauty like that of the woman
who loves you is so accessible, its charm so little concealed. You have
but to call a shikara, and in a moment you are launched upon its joys.

Q 4»

so THE CHARM OF KASHMIR

You leave for it, it may be, at early dawn, before the melting snows have
raised the level of the River and so closed the great sluice gates of the Lake.
Early as is the hour, life is already afoot. Here is a man standing placidly
in the water taking his morning ablution, and many more like him with the
early light shining upon their faces, absorbed in the morning prayer. The
boats are moving and the day has begun.

The sun is not yet risen behind the Takht-i-Sulaiman, but Hara-Parbat
is already bathed in an amber glow of light, a beautiful proud castle on its
hill. Upon the far snows of Tata Kuti and the Pir Pantsal the sun has long
been shining, but the Eastern mountains, behind whose sierras his orb is
concealed, are yet wrapped in deep violet shadows, where the Nishat Bagh
and the Shalimar still slumber in the embraces of Night. The waters
below and about us are grey and green and gleaming with light, birds are
a-wing, and the sovmds of increasing day are abroad ; the plash of oars,
the voices of women, the twittering cheep of the swallows as they swiftly
skim the water, the strident crowing of chanticleer.

See the red-heifer in the morning sun, the whole poise of her body receptive
of his warmth and light ; the boats, stealing through the green willows, like
phantoms of the morning ; the white geese sailing with their little families like
a fleet abroad ; the orioles flitting like shafts of sunlight through the glades !

We come to Kraliyar where a temple with its silver roof is shining in
the sun, and its stairs and carved balconies over the water are crowded with
Brahmins bathing and at prayer. The ritual they are at is incomparably
old. Beyond the temple there is a beautiful old bridge of Mogul days,
with the name of the builder written in marble under its shadowy arches,
and about it a cluster of many houses, with high garden walls hung with
vines and alive with tha dancing of water gleams on wall and leaf. Red
roses droop from the garden pavilions, and a field of white Iris is as moon-
light in the morning. Hereabouts is a big shepherd carrying sheaves of
young willow-shoots to his goats, while his children play by the water.
One of these, a little girl of five, consents to be made a picture of, but holds
her very heart with fear and finally breaks into tears, though she goes
bravely through the awful ordeal to its close.

The home of this family is upon an island that rises a foot above

THE DAL 51

the lake and is ringed about with white poplars. Upon its outskirts there
are water-lihes and neat willows, and upon its edges there lie the last clods
of earth and fibre from the lake bed that have been added to its sum.
Within this miniature embankment there are fields and orchards. In
the centre there is the house, tall and double-storied, of brown wood, with a
thatched roof ; and about this little inclusive world there is an expanse of
clear waters, and high mountains whose shadows change and swoon upon
its surface.

Twenty years ago when this man was still a lad, this homestead had
not emerged from the waters of the lake. One need not grudge him his
possession ; yet it is this ceaseless hunger for firm earth which is gradu-
ally narrowing the borders of the Dal, and will one day convert one of the
loveliest waters of the world into fields and tenements.

As we approach the Nishat Bagh the environment changes subtly from
peasant homes in a fen-country, from the pleasant scenes and events of rural
life, to something that is visibly superb and noble. For here the mountains
are very near, and their giant masses stand up above the lake " like the /
thrones of Kings." Deep blue shadows lie about them, giving a lustre to
their green surface, and steep valleys fall profoundly to the water.

Yet between them and the lake there is room for an Imperial
Garden.

The still noon, as we draw near it, is resonant with the crooning of
doves, whose music is borne as if by enchantment across the unruffled
mirror of the lake. A high-backed bridge makes a water-gate or portal
to the garden and its imperial pavilions.

A man who passed it in bygone days must have known that he was
now entered upon the dangerous precincts of the Court.

Every step I take in this wonderful valley carries me into possession
of something that is yet more exquisite, till my power of expression is numbed
and my senses are overcome with a beauty I cannot yet grasp or describe.
I am thus in a position to sympathise with the Court Poet at the Coronation

11 THE CHARM OF KASHMIR

of the Emperor upon whom a fresh Robe of Honour was flung with each
verse that fell from his lips !

I have a suspicion as I enter the Nishat Bagh that the Door of Paradise
has been opened, and that I have been led by some Peri by the hand to
look upon what must surely be the most wonderful view in the world. I
speak not of the garden rising in imperial terraces, with a lavishness of
space, and of height beyond height, to the overwhelming contour of the
mountains ; for as yet I have had no power to advance beyond the first
pavilion of the garden. To this I am tied as by the Peri's wand, and I am
content to sit by the marble throne upon which ^o many that were great
and splendid in their day reposed ; Shan Jahan who so loved his dear lady
of the Taj, Dara unwitting of his terrible end, and Aurangzeb whose cold |
heart was set upon other things than the beauty of this World. RecUn- i
ing here in the noon-day peace, I look upon the same marvellous picture
that they, and so many more whose names are writ in water, must have
looked upon. Even now it is something of an exclusive view, for the door
which admits me into this belvedere is closed behind me, and I am the
sole tenant with the birds of this magic chamber looking out upon a
faery scene of incomparable beauty.
How shall I record its loveliness ?

There is in truth the Lake before me, a great pool of tranquil water,
blue where the sky looks into it, white and opal where the ascending clouds
throw their living image upon it, still, as if an enchantment lay upon it ;
like a sheet of silver here, like an embroidered carpet there, where the
water-lilies rise upon their slender filaments to its surface, to lap at ease
above the hidden world below ; so wide and calm that it looks of kin with
infinite space, yet defined by shadowy trees which hang as it were between
water and heaven, by hamlets and villages whose brown roofs mingle with
the natural world, by a castle set upon a hill, the image of an Hellenic
Acropolis, yet touched with I know not what suggestion of a monastery
upon a hill, in which some Buddhist Pope might have his habitation, aloof
from the sorrow, the transitoriness and the illusion of Life ; and yet again,
defined by mountains so vast and so far-uplifted into Heaven, that they
might be the very thrones of God !

THE DAL 53

Blue they are and silver in their valleys, and snow-white upon
their heights, yet in this fierce noon-day svm all molten into one mar-
vellous prism of light. So great they look, with the white cloud-towers (
mingling with their summits, that they seem to have no limits to their '
greatness. ^

Thus you have mountain and sky and water and a castle upon a hill,
and the tale might be thought complete were it not for some one whose
instinct for perfection added a bridge, high-arched as of olden days, dark
and shadowy in the midst of this lustrous world. A thin line like a thread
of green connects it at either end with the substantial earth, and cattle steal
out from the woods and cross this filament of road, and ascend and descend
the high arch of the bridge like phantoms shaped in velvet.

And yet again there are boats that come from the city, laden with
veiled women and flower-faced children, and slowly they steal across the
water, every form and line reflected in its magic surface, till they touch the
landing stairs, — as of old an Emperor might have done, — and so pass into
the enchanted garden.

Nor is this all, for nearest of all, below the black marble throne, is the
high stone wall of the garden with its vases filled with purple, and a pool
with fountains set amidst the grass upon which the spray falls like mist.
And upon either side of this there are far-reaching thickets of Persian lilac
still in bloom.

Inside the Pavilion, from which all these wonders are meant to be seen,
there is silence, and there are veiled shadows, and the wistful peace of a day
that has gone for ever. In the place of the magnificent Lord who built it, of
the mighty Emperor who claimed to hold the world in fee, of the lovely women
chosen for their perfection to add the last touch to this place of superlative
excellence, there are little sparrows building their nests under the fretted
eaves, and rooks that chaffer within the inner court, and a dove sheltering (
from the summer noon.

Yet is this place not sad, like so many other relics of departed glory.
The ferocity of Asia has not reached to this secluded corner, the dust and
the havoc that appear in so many other places once the chosen of kings,
have no power here over the beneficence of nature. The grass is as green,

54 THE CHARM OF KASHMIR

the flowers are as bright and scented, the waters as sparkling, and the vision
of the world without, as majestic and beautiful as they ever were in the days
of the Mogul prime. There is but enough of decay, and of the touch of a
vanished hand, to whisper of our frail mortality which turns to Dust. It
does it so soothly that it falls like a benediction upon the spirit, and almost
reconciles the soul to the inevitable.

NISHAT

lAUP.m

CHAPTER IX
THE NISHAT BAGH

Oulzdr-i-nuhdt u 'aish-i-dtt M

The Nishat Bagh rises in a series of twelve terraces — the number of the
Zodiac— from the water's edge, and is of a size and stateliness befitting the
Mogul Court at the height of its splendour. Much of its architectural
beauty has suffered from the passing of three hundred years since Asaf
Khan, the brother of Nur Jahan and the father of Arjumand the Lady of
the Taj, turned his accomplished mind to its construction ; and many of
its details have been lost or obscured in the vicissitudes to which so many
of the princely tombs and palaces and gardens of that day have succumbed ;
and none more so than the tomb of Asaf Khan itself, which stands stripped
of all its marbles, a worn skeleton by the railway track outside Lahore.
Yet withal, this garden of his retains its perfection, and Time has even added
splendour to its trees, now at the very climax of their lives.

It is indeed these trees which first and foremost appeal to one's un-
measured admiration. There are groves of them, and each is a giant of its
princely race. Then there are the Great Terraces, as superb in their dignity
and in their proportions as on the day they were made, and one cannot
fail to admire the art with which they were designed to convey the impres-
sion of infinity, as of an endless series, passing into the high mountains
which rise above them. The tenth terrace which marks the approach to
the Zenana of the great nobleman, is the loftiest and most impressive of all,
and it indicates the transition from the public to the secluded part of the
Garden. "Behold the high wall which guards my Honour," it seems to say,
"and respect its mandate." An octagonal throne surmounts it, and a
great fall of waters plunges from it into the pool below. Here is the com-
pletion as it were of the third act of the drama of this spectacular garden.

56 THE CHARM OF KASHMIR

On either hand of these stairs and fountains and thrones, and of the
central stream that animates it, the garden melts away into orchards and
secluded meads, so that its high boundary walls are hidden from sight.
Here in these humbler days flocks of sheep graze under the apple trees, and
amidst fields of snow-white Iris, adding their note of pastoral beauty to the
formal stateliness of the garden.

At the far summit where of old the beauties of the Harem walked, there
is a final belvedere which commands, without itself being seen, the whole
reach of the garden to the Lake, and the world of loveliness beyond it.
This innermost sanctuary is now in ruins ; but most lovely at this season
of early May, with its roof garden of flags, whose violet and purple glow
like the robe of an Emperor through the sunlit screen of the chinars. At
the wings also there are octagonal pavilions, from which to look out upon the
countryside ; but these are now in hopeless decay. Through holes and
doorways in the back wall of the garden cattle steal in and graze where the
ladies walked, and beyond this wall there is naught but the peasant hillside
from which this princely garden was evolved.

All its secrets are now laid bare, and the stately mystery in which it
was wrapped, whether as a work of Art or as the Sanctuary of one who was
mighty and powerful in his day and generation, is no more. You may take
a measuring tape and learn just how long and how broad this garden of his
is, the number of its terraces, and the width of its inner chambers, and there
is no corner of it into which you may not pry. Yet so fine and perfect is it
in its design and character that you retain for it at all times a great
respect.

For the rest ; there are beds now of brilliant flowers. Guelder roses which
droop under the weight of their own bloom, roses which sustain the fame of
Kashmir by their perfection and luxuriant growth, honeysuckle on the high
terrace walls, and daisies self-sown enamelling the grass. Time has de-
stroyed much, but it has added such mellow qualities as time alone can
give, and you feel this when you see old brick pavements, once so formal,
now become a part of the earth itself, and billowing about the trunks of the
great chinars, which were infants when they were laid in geometrical designs
along the water courses.

THE NISHAT BAGH S7

It would seem also that there is no garden in the world in which one is
so free to do as one pleases. My breakfast was laid in this garden, as if it
were my own, under the heavy shade of a chinar which stands alone by the
fourth terrace in all the pride of its own loveliness. The grass below it was
like a carpet, and the roof above me was a marvellous fabric of pointed leaves
dappled with light and shadow, of grey boughs spotted like the cloudy
leopard, and little spaces of blue sky. There was light, vivid and splendid,
all about me, but none that directlj penetrated this natural canopy. The hot
sunlight, and the gentle zephyrs of the garden as they came blown in ripples
across the lake, combined to provide me with an Elysian climate, while the
plashing soaring fountains filled the garden with a mist, upon which there
were graven all the colours of the prism.

Across the water from the City the boats stole one by one, landing their
freight of sight-seers out for a day of pleasure. All these people came
silently almost into the garden, women with babes carried high upon their
shoulders, as you see them in the Bible pictures, and grave Brahmins who
walked like princes, full of a cultured enjoyment of the garden, of the
Guelder rose in her bloom, and the Persian Lilacs whose day was nearly
over.

The noon quiet was made musical by the birds, the crooning ring-dove,
the ecstatic bulbul, the oriole fluting his liquid note as he flew in flashes of
gold from tree to tree. Upon the clover-scattered grass the hoopoes strutted,
and the cock-sparrows danced in tense blandishments before their loves.
The Head Gardener rose from his labours at the prescribed hours, and stood
and knelt and lay prostrate upon his face in prayer, and the sound of his
voice audibly conversing with his God was mingled with the rushing of the
waters and the plashing of the fountains.

* *
*

The colour note of this garden is green and purple ; its character
majestic. Its proportions so noble, that notwithstanding the high moun-
tains and precipices that rise so far above it, it conveys itself the sense of
dignity and greatness. It has an air of Versailles, as of formal Majesty ;

58 THE CHARM OF KASHMIR

but more human, as Majesty is in the East. Yet it has many intimate and
lovely haunts as well, as every garden should have.

To me, as I sat here, it seemed above all this to offer that exquisite
something that an old-world garden in England has to bestow upon its
votaries, upon that one day of Summer that attains Perfection.

Yet as I sat here and brooded upon the loveliness of the garden I
learnt that there was yet one thing lacking to it ; such an Eden I realized
was not made for Man to walk in alone ; and had I failed to discover this for
myself, those secluded terraces yonder, and old Ronsard who lay beside me
upon the grass, would have brought the knowledge to my ear. Moreover,
there was the Spirit of the garden. This garden was destined by him who
made it for a place of pleasure, and the soul which animated him haunts
it still. It offers perfection ; but only to one who will consent to share it

with another.

* *

Towards sunset I took the shikara and made a little tour of the inner
lake, where the splendid Lotus blooms in her season and reeds and lilies
give shelter at all times to water-hens and the small lake terns. Here I
found their eggs laid upon the surface of the lake. A thunderstorm came
drifting over the valley and the castle of Hara Parbat, making marvellous
pictures of light and shadow, and filling the reeds with wind. Yet the
little terns rode secure upon their lily leaves, and their eggs lay exposed with-
out harm to the elements. The young moon shone above the dark fragments
of cloud, her image trembling in the water. By the pier-head where the
waters of the garden fall in music into the lake, rows of earnest Moslems
stood concluding their day's enjoyment in reverent prayer, their faces lit
by the gathering storm. Along the road behind them passed the goat-
herds with their silky flocks, on their way to the mountain pastures. Grey
herons flew with slow rhythmic beat of wings between sky and water.
Wonderful colours played upon the high cliffs whose image was reflected
in the sombre waters. Many boats, laden with those who were returning
to the city, made their way across the lake to the slow plashing of their
oars. A few still lingered by the pier under the dark shadows of the chinar

THE NISHAT BAGH 59

trees, and far into the night tlie flames of their cooking fires glinted across
the dark surface of the Lake, and the sound of their voices singing in unison
was borne above the stillness.

Here and there only, a man sat alone, motionless, looking out into the
darkling night, lost in contemplation, his heart filled with the mystery of
life.

CHASHMA-SHAHI

CHAPTER X

CHASMA SHAHI

A Summer Dawn in Kashmir is a lovely thing, like a piece of music or some
frail yet immortal verse. It comes in a wave of primrose over the peaks,
and is followed by a divine radiance, as of heliotrope inspired with life or
the awakening of a soul, and then by the sword-like glitter of Day, passing
with the hours into a faint and misty remoteness. On the Lake itself are
deep shadows and reflections, the silver gleam of oars, the glint of white
stakes, the stooping forms of the weed-gatherers outlined darkly against
the morning. The quay lies empty, and the last of the pleasure-seekers
is stealing across the water in his boat, back to the toil of the City.

My own destination is the Chasma Shahi, or Royal Fountain, and I
drive along the barred highway, with its tall poplars like a regiment in line,
in the incomparable freshness of the morning. We presently come to an
orchard in which I am fain to pause and gather a handful of cherries. For
" the cherry," wrote the Emperor Jahangir in his memoirs, " is a fruit of
pleasant flavour, and one can eat more of it than of other fruits. I have in a
day eaten up a hundred and fifty of them " ; an example that I am willing to
emulate upon this fine Summer morning. And again, " There was an
abundance of Cherries on the trees each of which looked as it were a round
ruby, hanging like globes upon the branches " ; which seemed to me a just
observation.

At the Chasma Shahi Shah Jahan built a Pavilion, and laid out a little
Persian garden with fountains and water-falls, in terraces lifted high
above each other ; and here one may still pass a day of enjoyment,
and drink of the spring which gushes forth with the same purity and un-
failing abundance as it did in his day. The old buildings with their Mogul

62 THE CHARM OF KASHMIR

grace have passed away beyond recognition, and newer and less worthy
ones built by the Maharajas of Kashmir have taken their place ; but the
beauty and seclusion of the spot survive. Here was never any pomp or
ceremonial, but a place of exquisite repose ; and so it continues to this day,
haunted as of old by the Divinity of the Spring, and overlooked by moun-
tains whose plumes are as the iridescent sheen of a peacock. Yet the
place has a wistfulness, for the memories it holds of departed Kings.

Outside upon the rough hill-side the wild-rose blooms, the ploughman
calls as of yore to his toiling steers ; but for the Great, a glory has departed,
and you feel this at the little garden in its loneliness on the hill-side.

Some way from it and very near the splendour of the Nishat Bagh,
there is another such called the Chashma Hussain. It also has its spring
and pool of pellucid water ; its traces of old water courses and fretted stones,
half buried in the fields ; but no one seems to know who Hussain was.
Some say he was a merchant from Ispahan, and others that he was a noble
of the Court. It matters little. The water is there, and the green grass,
and the wind blows as of old in the boughs of the great chinars that shadow
it by the road.

Towards evening I left for the Nasim Bagh, the sun blazing on the
Lake. Boats in its light glowing like brass and doubled in the water, stole
away, their colours fading with the sun, into violet shadows ; while
others moved like black velvet hearses carrying some dead man to his grave.
The sun at last sank behind the yellow gilt-edged hills, and the whole circle
of the lake gleamed with prismatic colours. The high crests of the Pir Pantsal
had that remote and crystal air, as of great jewels beyond human attain-
ment ; and the benediction of evening settled upon the water, like the
Peace which comes when life is over and passion is stilled.

Subha dar Bdgh-i-Nishit Morning at the Nishat Bagh

0 Sham dar Bdgh-i-Ndsim. And Evening at the Nasim.

CHAPTER XI

THE NASm BAGH

Az bihistUe 'Adan Naaim dmad.

The Nasim is the antithesis of the Nishat Bagh, not only as the couplet
suggests but in its sentiment. For while the Nishat, with its rushing
waters and sparkling fountains is still in the pride of life, the Nasim is a
place overtaken by serene yet extreme old age. Its air is as of an Indian
Summer, and an old red ox I saw there basking and dozing in the sun at
the foot of an aged chinar seemed to me to embody its character. The
spirit of the garden had entered into him and taken form.

Often described as the first of the Mogul gardens of Kashmir, and attri-
buted to Akbar, it was actually laid out by Shah Jahan, within reach of his
new city and castle of Nagar-nagar. It is now no more a garden ; but a
beautiful old Park, with deep glades through which the sunlight and shadow
fall upon its velvet sward. It has in its grand way a touch of Magdalen
deer-park ; but it is less a work of Art. For one can measure its proportions
and see right through it to the mauve waters of the I^ake, and to the snow-
spangled mountains beyond. The trees still beautiful are old and dying.
Most of them are hollow, and their central trunks, if you look upward into
the green majesty of their boughs, are black and withered, their life pro-
longing itself for a space in the great lateral branches — like the Empire in
its decline. But in their youth it is said they were nourished with draughts
of milk !

Its old containing walls that shut out the vulgar world have all but
disappeared. You can trace them here and there, and their great founda-
tions by the lake. Its fountains and conduits, its pavilions and belvederes,
its gardens of roses, narcissus and lilac, have passed into soft swelling

mounds and grassy hollows.

I es

66 THE CHARM OF KASHMIR

The Park lies open, a beautiful and ancient woodland, through which
the lake breezes blow, making it the very abode of serene and tranquil
peace, while its white iris clusters lend it an almost feminine charm.
Nightingales sing in it, and doves murmur ; rooks make their homes
in its hollow trees, and the little sparrows feed undisturbed upon its lawns.
Kites wheel above it in the blue bays and estuaries of sky. The cattle
of the countryside wander through its glades, and sheep browse upon
its herbage ; while upon days of festival, and since it has long ceased to be
the exclusive haunt of an Emperor which it were death to trespass upon,
long files of the village people drift across it to the neighbouring ziarat of
Hazrat Bal.

It is become a place to idle in, to ruminate in on the passing show and
vanity of life. It makes no active claim upon one's senses, or upon the
wells of one's surprise. It is a place of Benedictions, chanting softly in
undertones its Nunc Dimittis ; a place for those who have turned the sunny
side of the hill, and see before them the long shadowy vale of evening with
its quiet joys and subdued enjoyments ; a beautiful mellow old place such
as one might come upon in an ancient corner of England. Hence much
loved by the English.

May it rest in peace.

NASIM

t/i;

.^»f

CHAPTER XII

HAZRAT BAL

How different is the scene at Hazrat Bal, when the people are gathered
together there for the festival of the Prophet's hair ! Far as one can see
across the waters the boats are gathering ; and every vantage point along
the shore, where willows and chinars yield shelter from the blinding sun, is
closely packed with the prows of their boats, each laden with its pilgrims
and holiday-makers from the City. Many are bedecked with embroidered
rugs and cushions, upon which friends sit together in harmony, with silver
hiiquahs and musical instruments, and samovars and little cups of tea. The
boats are bright with the faces of children, and in the humbler ones there
are women to add their charm ; while here and there a courtezan with her
brazen glance and red lips makes way in her boat through the assembled
crowd. The women of the upper classes stay sadly at home.

Before the Ziarat, in its great court under the chinar trees, a dense
crowd is gathered for prayer, and there is scarcely room to stir. It is a
quiet and orderly congregation which falls automatically into serried lines
which culminate in those who are assembled upon the platform of the shrine,
about the gilded litter in which is visible the person of the High Priest.
Within, there are lights gleaming amidst the stately columns of Cedar
that support the roof of the Ziarat. At intervals of space amidst the
kneeling multitude, there stand eloquent preachers, whose purpose it is to
address them in the articles of their faith, and to lead them in song.

The climax is reached when the whole mass of people rises and bends
its head to the dust. In wonderful unison these waves of humanity rise
and faU, as though inspired by but one volition. It is a strange and stirring
sight, here, in the hot sunlight, and under the whispering shade of the great

68 THE CHARM OF KASHMIR

chinar trees. And when the service is over and the Prophet's hair is held
aloft, a milk-white dust ascends like incense from the soles of those who
strain forward for a glimpse of the priceless relic, hiding the multitude from
sight.

At six o'clock in the evening I moved with the people across the silver-
grey water to the Shalimar. There were countless boats upon the lake, and
there was the sound of plashing oars, of voices singing, and of a people out
for a holiday. The bright colours of the shikaras, with their pink and red
and orange awnings, were reflected in the water, and the scene was one of
the brightest animation. Our approach lay through shallow marshy waters,
lined with pollard willows and covered with green scum, and it seemed an
ignoble one to an Imperial garden ; markedly inferior to that which takes
one to the threshold of the Nishat Bagh. Its effect was of concealment, as
if from fear. This cannot have been so in the days of Jahangir.

The Canal became gradually well-defined and bordered by stately
chinars as we neared the garden ; but here again the rice-fields of the
peasantry had encroached upon its dignity. In by-gone days this narrow
water must have been the scene of many a splendid ceremonial, and many
a nobleman must have come slowly up it in his barge, with a superb equip-
ment, but fear at his heart, lest he should fail in the presence of Majesty.

Even now something might be done to restore the beauty of this
approach, by extending the avenue, sweeping the canal of its weeds, and
restoring its brick foundations. The grass track beside might be laid afresh,
and flowers planted beside it, while weeping willows might be made to take
the place of the ugly pollards at the marshy junction of the canal with the
waters of the lake. The outer walls and gates of the garden might be
renewed. ...

It was not till I reached the Diwan-i-Khas of Shah Jahan that the
dignity of the garden fell upon me, and I ceased to question its fame. Here
the black and green marbles were superb ; and even in the dusk I could
trace the amphitheatre of crags and mcftintains, and the snow-capped peak
of Mahadev, which carry its beauty to a triumphant conclusion. Yet

HAZRAT BAL 69

withal, this garden, this far-famed ShaUmar, suggested to me a Pleasance,
rather than an Imperial residence ; which at one time it was. Its terraces,
I could see, rose gently and almost imperceptibly above each other. It
was a place, I thought, for a king to be happy in, to walk in with some lovely
woman, to feast in of summer nights with his intimate friends, even to
receive in with some state and splendour when his obligations made it
imperative that his leisure should be invaded ; but it did not give me the
impression of a stately garden like the Nishat.

Its past seemed to linger in all that I saw before me ; and the Shalimar
I thought revealed the life of Jahangir and Nur Mahal — his Light of the
Palace — of the indolent artistic and pleasure-loving Emperor, who would
have given up the whole of his mighty empire were Kashmir but left to
him ; who placed the keys of his majesty in the fair hands of a woman ;
who wrote couplets upon a sudden inspiration, and fell into ecstasies over
the glow and beauty of a cherry given to him to eat ; who became intoxicated
with wine o' nights, and went to bed in tears ; yet was withal a King. Here
as it seemed to me was not the Versailles of a Louis Quatorze ; but the
garden of a Prince who was above all a Lover, and of a man through whose
temperament there ran the thread of an ineffective genius.

"I ordered a stream to be diverted, so that a garden might be made,

such that in beauty and sweetness there should not be in the inhabited

world another like it."

Memoirs of Jahangir.

THE SHALIMAR

CHAPTER XIII

THE SHALIMAR

Un des plus beaux jours de ma vie, as old Marbot would have said ; for
upon this day I saw the Shalimar at its best. The garden was thronged
with the holiday-folk from yesterday's festival, the fountains were playing,
and its stream, " like a river of Paradise," was here as tranquil as a summer's
noon, there a cascade of silver quivering with light and animation as it fell
in thunderous music into the shining pools.

The garden was indeed full of music this day ; music of waters, music of
doves, music of the little skylarks singing in the cages brought with them by
the city people, music of the free nightingale high up in the green-gold tracery
of the chinar trees, music of children's voices, and of those of the artistic
pleasure-loving crowd who know so well how to enjoy so exquisite a place.

What perfect groups they made here by the silvery waters and under
the shady trees ! Here was one, a circle of friends playing cards upon the
edge of the pool that surrounds the black marble of Shah Jahan's Pavilion,
and upon the fringe of a lawn that was snow-white with daisies. They were
so careful not to impinge upon its beauty.

Upon the flagged edge of the soft canal, resting their arms upon a
carved pedestal of imperial days, were two little girls in blue and green,
with the grace in miniature of grown women, poetic, with the unconscious-
ness of childhood in their forms and attitudes, gazing wistfully into the
deeps where the waters spring into the pool below. Upon the corner of a
terrace that was hung with roses, and shaded by a dark cypress tree, sat one
who might have been old Omar himself, so tranquil and meditative was his
figure, as of one who would see in the flowing stream, the passing of life,
and in the roses as their petals fell and died, its brief conclusion.

72 THE CHARM OF KASHMIR

Here upon the enamelled grass a rare group of women sat, with their
babes about them, the rich colours of their garments reflected in the olive
water with a thousand scintillations ; here friends and associates climbed
the garden stairs hand-in-hand, as in some picture of an old Persian garden ;
here one sat alone under the swaying boughs of a plane tree ineffably happy
in the singing of his bird above him. A look of sympathetic delight lay
upon his face ; and when to test him I asked him if he would sell it, he
replied, "O never Sir! it is my Love, my Ashik, the joy of my heart."
So it was, and when he took it away an hour later he enveloped its cage
in yet another cover of flowered chintz, while he drew a third from under
his robe, to show me the extent of his solicitude.

Here were groups like Abraham and his posterity about the base of a
great chinar that had seen three hundred years of life.

If trees could speak what might these superb creatures, whose hospitality
we enjoy and pass on, tell us of the wonders of this garden,' and of the passions
it has known !

For there are some here that knew the Mogul Empire in its prime ;
that grew here in the days of Jahangir and Nur Mahal, and lent their shade
to the magnificent Shah Jahan. Every yard of this garden is filled with
memories of some of the mightiest and the loveliest of this earth. Their
names and their fame remain ; but of their blood only a few survive, some
in exile beyond the seas, and others in poverty amidst the dust of those
sun-tortured plains. ... .

But the humble survive ; and an old gardener told me that as far back
as his family had any recollection they had worked upon the soil of the
Shalimar, drawing no pay ; adscriptes glehae.

" In the days of Shah Jahan the Padishah," he said, " nine hundred
gardeners were employed at the Shalimar, but now we are only twenty
one."

This old man was full of wisdom and a sort of gentle philosophy. In
the course of his ministrations he swept away a whole field of daisies that
blossomed before me.

" You deserve to be hanged," I suggested.

He smiled benevolently and replied, "So be it, Huzoor ; but you will

THE SHALIMAR 73

have to bring me back to life again, for in ten days they will be more plentiful
than ever.". . .

The City folk who come here for a holiday deeply appreciate the beauty
and charm of the Shalimar. None ever commits an offence against good
taste, and hence it comes that there are no " Verboten." Trespassers are
not warned to keep off the grass, and there is no head-gardener with a sour
face, or policeman to keep the law.

So it came that I was at liberty to bring my books and a chair,
and sit all day in the garden, even to the extent of having my meals served
there from the boat beyond the walls ; as if it were my own.

These things are possible here in this Garden of a dead Emperor, because
the people who use it from generation to generation, have the priceless gift
of refinement in the intercourse of life. When they come here they become
a part of the garden ; and when they have gone, the garden smiles, on
as if they had never been. Think of Hampstead after a bank holiday !

Evening at the Shalimar. Evening had now come, and the last ray of
sunlight had gone with the last of the pleasure-seekers. A wonderful peace
descended upon the Shalimar. Its fountains were stilled, and its great
cascades no longer filled the pavilions with their music as of the sea. But
the birds still sang on, the murmuring doves and the ecstatic nightingale,
and the after-glow of the sunset flushed the mountain crags that overlook
the garden with indescribable madder and rose, while Mahadev soared up
with the lustre of a Dolomite peak. The waters still lingered in the pools
about Shah Jahan's pavilion, still as a mirror ; and in their shallow depths
were reflected the black marble and finished grace of a by-gone day, and
the drooping foliage of this season's chinars.

I passed out by a wicket beyond the garden walls, where is the little
stream to which it owes its life. The high aqueduct of Imperial days which
bore it loftily across the countryside, is no longer used, and the present
channel fittingly follows a more lowly course through the fields and hamlets
of the people, which it waters when not required at the Shalimar. Here

74 THE CHARM OF KASHMIR

the hereditary gardeners have their freeholds, and in the twilight across
their acres, under the willow trees, I could see their burying places white
with iris. Heref, as ever in the East, I found that sharp contrast between
the common world that lies open to the eye, and the splendid seclusion of the
Great — on one side of the garden wall, Nature, brutal and harsh as in the
plains of India, gentle and unadorned as here ; on the other. Art, inspired
by the enthusiasm and splendour of an Imperial race.

Long after the darkness had fallen, and the birds had ceased to sing,
and the stars had begun to shine, I found the hereditary gardeners at work,
by lamplight, transplanting their flowers in the cool night and irrigating
the grassy spaces. The waters of the canal continued also to run, though
the stream was cut off, and the cascades in the lower garden to murmur ;
for the great reservoirs take several hours to empty themselves.

I dined in the south colonnade of Shah Jahan's pavilion, whose marble
still retained the warm and vital glow of the sunlight that had beaten upon
it, long after the chill of night had fallen ; and for an hour after that I sat
by the pool's edge under the green marble pillars of the northern colonnade,
facing the serrated mountains and the white peaks. So bright was the
starlight that the mountain-wall was almost luminous, and the snow-fields
of Mahadev were clearly visible as such, yet wrapped in the mystery of the
night, and set as it were with the stars for jewels. I could see reflected in
the waters the dark forms of the cypresses and the hosts of Heaven, and as
I looked the earth moved and the constellations rose in the vault above me,
and new stars emerged from moment to moment into vision.

Afar off, outside the garden walls, I could hear the rippling music of
the stream, and the voices of the night, in such undertones as commonly
pass for stillness ; and when a light passed at the far end of the garden, a
small thing flickering like a glow-worm, its reflections lit up the beautiful
tracery on the pedestals of the marble columns, so polished was their
surface.

The mystery of the Night enveloped me, and the life of Shah Jahan
rose up before my eyes, so that I saw in the darkness the gleam of his tents,
the silken awnings over this his summer pavilion, the light in his inner
chamber ; a frail boat upon the canal below the pavilion, rich carpets upon

HAHy.t HiMi aom'tUA 3«iT-5IAttiJAH8 MHT TA THOIK

NIGHT AT THE SHALIMAR-THE EMPEROR SHAH JAHAN

-■ *

-«r-»'-','2B''?;

-SJ^IS.'-.

THE SHALIMAR 75

the floor, and heavy curtains of velvet between the side rooms and the
central chamber. I saw the magnificent Emperor rise from his couch and
look out upon the jewelled night, his mind vexed by some political anxiety
though his soul rejoiced in the splendour of the firmament above him. His
face was the face of an Emperor, but also of an Artist ; as sensitive as it was
proud and imperious, and lit with the high vision of the creative mind. He
had made more exquisite his father's Shalimar, he was yet to accomplish,
through the gateways of sorrow, the masterpiece of the world.

T .

' Alas, how fares my pleasure-house to-night ?
Sway Zahi's waters to the warm night breeze ?
And do the soft doves with their old delight
Miunmur dear mysteries in the olive trees ? "

Mutamid, King of Seville,

CHAPTER XIV

THE ISLE OF CHINARS

I WOKE at dawn at the Isle of Chinars. The sun was long in rising above
the eleven thousand feet of Mahadev ; but his advent was heralded by
shafts of light which shot upward through the white puffs of cloud, and
bathed in a golden glamour the opposite castle of Hara Parbat and the
snow-white Pir Pantsal. The lake was like a burnished mirror in which
all things were imaged, from these luminous wonders to the dark olive
shadows of the mountains that frown above the Nishat Bagh.

The Isle offers a beautiful vantage point for a survey of the entire lake,
but it is sad with memories of departed glories. Of its four chinars, one
has long since gone, another lifts its maimed trunk in the last stages of its
dissolution, a third still soars magnificently up above the tranquil waters,
though decay has seized its vitals, the fourth alone is yet in its vigorous
prime, having apparently been planted on the death of its forerunner.
Lovely as is the scene that awaits one here at dawn, when the whole of this
secluded comer of the world is bathed in the radiance of a new day, the
impression it conveys is one of profound melancholy ; so lone is the little
island, so shattered are all its human associations.

One can see that this small and solitary place was designed for pleasure,
for the reception of singers and dancers, of an outer multitude of guests
upon the water ; or, it might be, for the retreat of lovers, who would be of
the world, but would have it solely to themselves. But its last human
tenant half a century ago was an ascetic, who sat brooding on the emptiness
of life in the hollow of the dying chinar, and even he has gone, and the
hooded crows alone find a habitation where Jahangir and Nur Mahal dallied
with life, and nightingales are reputed to have sung. Even the marble

78 THE CHARM OF KASHMIR

pavilion with its white colonnades that graced the island in the days of our
own early travellers, the practical Vigne and the sentimental Hugel, has
gone, and the harsh ruins of the terraced platform from which it rose, only
detract from what might otherwise be a happy little pastoral island, or soft
meadow of daisies scattered amidst the grass. Nowhere else upon the
shores of this lake, where the transitoriness of Power is so strikingly yet
beautifully portrayed, does one feel its tragedy as here. The character of
the exquisite isle has vanished as completely as that Viceroy of Kashmir,
who at the height of a festival upon the island, and in the midst of all that
could please his sense and flatter his pride, was summoned away by the voice
of a royal messenger, to meet his fate at the hands of his enemies.

It was not till Night had fallen that the painful emotions that brood
about the island became stilled, and that I was able to enter into its loveli-
ness. Then there came as it were a renascence of its earlier life. The sky
became jewelled with stars, a young crescent moon hung over the Nasim
Bagh, and the surface of the lake was calm as Nirvana itself. The moun-
tains beyond Til Bal were of so diaphanous a blue, where they projected
like some headland into the Ocean, that they seemed divested of all that
was material save their form alone ; and the white summits and vast barrier
of the Pir Pantsal were yet fainter, like the visions of a dream. Lights
burnt under the dark water-line of the Nasim, where some boats lay at
anchor, and a twinkling came from the shrine of the Prophet's Hair, with
the sound of plaintive voices, intoning some litany of the night.

Solomon's Throne stood up like a shadow in the starry night, and the
high ramparts of Hara Parbat strung their battlements against the gloom,
but of the city of a hundred and thirty thousand souls that lay between
them — ^the Capital of Kashmir — ^there was no hint, neither in light nor
soimd. The City was as completely veiled as though it had never been.

The Island stands in the deepest and most open part of the lake, and
the clear waters encompass it like a sea. A tense silence engulfs it and
broods over it in these dark hours, and this night there was not so much as
the rustle of a leaf in the trees overhead.

Yet the stars shone with an amazing brilliance, and the imiverse moved
upon its appointed course.

FATE AND THE PLEASURE-LOVER

■J J i^i •

CHAPTER XV

HABBAK

The terraces of Habbak catch the eye from afar, and when one arrives at
the garden one realizes that this was in plan and purpose the most stately
of all the old Mogul gardens on the lake. Its ruined walls and outer bastions,
its far-flung terraces and steep waterfalls, its carved waterways and sunk
pools, still linger in all the sadness of failure to remind one of those departed
days. Here more than elsewhere upon the borders of this Elysian lake one
is struck with the Havoc that is the twin of Splendour in the East.
All the old buildings have gone ; the graven stones that lent their
aid to the music of falling waters are shattered beyond repair, and the
channels in which the waters of the garden glided as they still do at the
Shalimar, are choked with weeds.

Yet in their midst the Roses of a past age still struggle to live ; yet are
there beautifvd places in this Garden of Desolation. If you place yourself
at its centre, upon its loftiest terrace where two dark and aged Cypresses
still stand sentinel, you will see about you fields of scarlet poppies — -loved
flowers of life — the far lake shining below, and the snow-spangled mass of
Mahadev rising like an Alp into the mist of the morning sunlight.

Who made this garden and when ? and why has Death overtaken it,
in defiance of all its pride of place, 'of its high walls and princely terraces ?

The story as told me by Pundit Anand Kaul of Kashmir is as
follows :

In the years 1665 to 1668, in the days of the Emperor Aurangzeb, there
ruled in Kashmir as Governor for the Mogul Empire, one Saif Khan, a great
nobleman who was seized with a passion for creating here a garden that would
excel in beauty and grandeur even the Shalimar and the Nishat Bagh. He

8o THE CHARM OF KASHMIR

brought from the Sindh Valley a stream to water his garden, after the
Persian manner, and to give its life to its fountains, its grottos and its
cascades. But before his design was fully accomplished, one greater than
he, his master the Emperor, recalled him to Delhi. The groves of chinar
trees, and the alleys of Cypress that were to have graced it, remained un-
planted, or languished from the lack of sustenance. The garden having
thus remained shadowless, a Poet wrote of it in irony

Sayih gar nist Saifdbdd rk
Mitwan paighambare bdghdt guft,

which being interpreted means

Saifabad has got no shade

Let Its call it the Prophet amongst Gardens.

After Aurangzeb the Empire waned and died, and there was no one
who took any account of Saifabad till in the year 1870, the Maharajah
Ranbir Singh of Kashmir in one of those fits of commercial endeavour to
which Indian Princes are liable, started here, where a garden was to have
bloomed, flour and rice-pounding mills worked by water power and prisoners
from the jail, for a profit. Then came an abortive Silk Factory ; and in
the end Peace once more descended upon the ruins of the garden of Saif Khan.

CHAPTER XVI
TYL BAL

From the ruined pleasaunces of Saifabad, with all their emotional appeal,
I passed in a shikara up the Arrah river, and found my House-boat that
had come slowly away from the Isle of Chinars, moored in a shady corner
under willow trees. Here I passed the day amidst the quiet surroundings
of rural life, upon a secluded water that is the abode of tranquillity and
unconditional peace. On either bank there is a footpath shaded by close
lines of young willow trees, through whose light and shadow the people
pass ; one with a hoe to his labour in the fields, another with his pipe and
a companion to beguile the way, another a woman with her infant seated,
bright-eyed, upon her shoulders and observant of the world. Along the
stream which flows at so gentle a pace that it suggests eternity as available
for the accomplishment of a life's purpose, a boat now and then passes laden
with grass and fuel or bricks from the City, whose owner with a placid joy
upon his face sings some Kashmiri love-song in an undertone that matches
his mood and the sentiment of the little river. Along the banks under the
green and gold of the willows, a black cow moves a few yards every hour,
grazing the rich herbage by the water, a hen with her brood struts up and
down, and a family of geese cackle contentedly, their white beauty imaged
in the river's green surfaee. Away in the fields beyond the countless stems
of the willow trees a man's head with a white cap on it bobs up and down
as he plies his hoe, and under the shade of a mulberry by a cottage wall,
his children are busily and happily at work, the lad plying his needle— for it
is a man's occupation in these parts— the little giri at a spinning-wheel, and
the baby gazing with large eyes at the footpath upon which strange things

82 THE CHARM OF KASHMIR

happen. Hoopoos of King Solomon and Golden Orioles flash amongst the
willows, and doves croon all through the summer hours.

Forgotten here are memories of departed greatness, the swing and
purpose of the world. For here is a little corner, such as you might look
for by an English river or a Dutch Canal, with the impress on it of infinite
quiet and leisure and unnumbered days.

Late in the evening of this day, when the shadows were lengthening
and the sunlight was sweeping in great waves over the valley, I followed
the little river up towards its source. It runs but a brief course from its
snowy sources to the lake edge, and at each step it becomes more delicious,
its green waters more transparent, its temperature nearly as cold as that of ice.
Upon its banks I found many a charming homestead, with cows about, and
silky goats, and pretty children, and bare-legged women husking rice ; and at
one secluded corner I came upon a Ziarat, a sort of religious idyll, hidden
by the river's brink under the shelter of the noblest trees of the valley.
Within, in the cloistral silence and peace of the enclosure, there were the
shrines of dead saints, like little doUs'-houses, with jasmine growing through
the roof, and coloured threads at the lattice marking the vows of women
eager for a babe, and little chirags, the earthen lamps of the humble, with a
pebble in each to save the oil — an economy that might amount to the hun-
dredth part of a penny. There was here also a mosque with wild roses,
irises and fritillaries growing about it, and a chain before its door,
which those who wish to be understood as speaking the truth, in a land in
which lies trip so easily off the tongue, hold fast while they call upon their
Prophet to witness to their veracity. Even in this humble place the soul
strives dimly after the perfection of which it knows, and makes its unceasing
appeal for union with its God.

Leaving the shikara, which could travel no further by reason of the
increasing speed of the water as it swept over the pebbly shallows, I crossed
the bordering rice-fields to the village of Burzihama, and the high uplands
above, where I could see that I had reached an earlier age in the life of the
valley. And here appropriately were great monoliths, like Druid altars,
relics of that distant time. Looking down upon the lake spread before me,
and the river-levels of the Jhilam, and then to these intermediate lands

TYL BAL ^ 83

that lie between mountain and valley, I realized that man must have been
here long before the lake of Kashmir swept over the impeding gorge at Bara-
mulla. I had a vision of the landscape as he saw it in those remote days ;
the Great Lake spreading like a greater Leman from mountain foot to moun-
tain foot, and rough hamlets upon its fringe and upon the fan-shaped spaces
where the side-valleys broadened to the lake ; while Solomon's Throne and
Hara Parbat rose like islands above its surface. So versatile is this vale of
Kashmir; so swiftly does one pass from impression to impression, from
waters as still as glass to rushing streams and rapids, from green and gold
haunts by secret margins, to these open uplands, where the sun blazes, and
cattle pasture in the open day !

Nor was the feast of variety at an end, for turning away from here
I followed the stream to its junction with the waters that passing from it
inspire the Shalimar and still give it life. These waters that once they enter
the garden are bent to the will of an Emperor, and are made to play over
marble, and fall in cascades over compartments of light, here run with a
joyous exuberance in and out amongst the willow trees, flush with green
margins, grinding the wheels of flour-mills, bordered with wild roses and the
white iris that blooms above the bones of dead men.

At Harwan still higher up they have been trapped to fiU a lake of drink-
ing water which now supplies the City; a work as characteristic in its
purpose and execution of the British temperament as the Shalimar was of
that of the splendid Mogul. The hamlets that once filled this valley of
Dachigam have been removed, and a natural Park is now growing up under
the superb heights of Mahadev, where the brown bear and the great Kashmir
stag are protected, as well as other lesser creatures of the wild. Here now
is a superb amphitheatre, with the lake as its arena, wrapt in the stillness
of a place that is forbidden to men.

CHAPTER XVII

NAGINA BAGH

The Nagina Bagh lies upon a secret water, which is like a lake within a
lake, and I came upon it by hazard one afternoon when the sun, blazing
over the Dal, compelled an escape to some quieter and more sheltered spot.
A canal by the bridge of Kraliyar carried the shikara into this side water
and landed us at the stairs under two aged chinars, which mark the entrance
to the Nagina Bagh. Here we enjoyed the reflections of mountain and
woodland in the still deep waters ; and in the evening cool walked up the
main thoroughfare of the old garden, through its avenue of chinars, and its
fields of poppied com, to the far containing-wall half-hidden under scented
acacias.

A slumberous stillness, broken only by the murmuring of doves, lies
upon this secluded garden, far as it is from the frequented highways of the
lake. Its old buildings, its pavilions and water-courses and flagged ways
have all departed, its terraces lie hidden under grass, its formal beauties
under the waving com ; yet it retains the sentiment of vanished days. One
knows that the half-finished villa, and the patch of garden by the water
which mark its present ownership, form no part of its inherent character.
For the spirit that dwells here in this quiet place is the spirit of some old
Mogul whose body long since ceased from being, and now lies mingled, it
may be, with the dust of some distant burying-place in the plains of India.

The world that encloses it is of entrancing beauty and peculiar to itself.
It faces the Takht-i-Sulaiman, whose image dreams at its feet in the tranquil
waters. Upon its right, as one looks upon this beautiful reflection, there
is the castled hill of Hara Parbat, and beyond it the whole majesty and
Arctic splendour of the Pir Pantsal. The garden runs parallel as it were

86 THE CHARM OF KASHMIR

to this line of marvellous peaks and snowy spaces, which even in the dazzling
glare and glow of the May sunlight look cold and pitiless as ice. On its
left there is the sun- warmed peak of Mahadev and the whole line of mountains
which over-hang the Nishat Bagh and the Shalimar, and brood in their
splendour over the northern and eastern shores of the Dal lake.
Late in the evening, when the sun is nearly gone, they are seized with a
passionate glow of colour, that is of crystalline red or crimson, peculiar to
them at this transitory moment ; and it is here in the cool deeps of this
inner water about the Nagina Bagh that one may look to perfection upon
their motionless reflections.

The startling colours fade, as if the glow which animates them were too
ardent to last for more than a few rapturous moments ; the stars shine out,
and Hara Parbat, outlined against the sky, ceases for one instant to be the
proud citadel of a kingdom, and becomes in its amethystine loveliness the
gossamer castle of some Faery Queen.

These wonders may be seen even by careless eyes, on a summer night,
as one's boat passes slowly over the waters, on its homeward course from
the Nagina Bagh to the exit of the Dal Lake.

Not far from here, and secluded from observation, there may still be
traced the canal along which Jahangir and Nur Jahan travelled o' moon-lit
nights to their garden named the lUahi Bagh. Jahangir was a man of
fancies like Ludvig of Bavaria, and there is a legend that his gilded pleasure
barge was towed upon these occasions by a bevy of damsels of the Harem,
the bells upon whose ankles made a music in the night.

CHAPTER XVIII

SOLOMON'S THRONE

At early dawn in the month of May, when the birds were just beginning
to sing, I came along the shadowy poplar avenues to the foot of this hill ;
which from the earliest times of which there is record has been a symbol
of piety to the people of the City. It was here, as is generally believed,
that Jalauka, the son of Asoka,

" Who by the white stucco of his fame made spotless the Universe,"

built the shrine of Jyestharudra over twenty centuries ago. Men have
prayed here, and fought here with their backs to the great hill and in
the shadow of the shrine in all these intervening years : and it remains
to this hour the great land-mark of the City, and a magnet of the Soul.
It is the place in all the valley from which to see Kashmir. I had not
climbed far when the snowy peaks which engirdle the valley broke upon
my vision ; yet faintly in the exquisite and elusive tints of morning. The
main incidents of the valley itself were also to be seen, the river and
the meadows and the trees, the roof-tops of the homes and the habitations
of men. I climbed on, resisting the fascination of the view till I should
reach the summit. Here and there a chikor broke from cover, one standing
defiantly against the sky-line issuing his challenge to his peers, while
another at my approach flung himself with intrepid wing upon the abysses
which fall to the level of the plain. The grace and daring of his flight
obsessed my mind as I toiled slowly, foot by foot, and inch by inch, upwards
to Solomon's Throne.

The opposite Peaks were now a-glitter with unmistakeable sunlight,
and the long waves of gold came descending towards me from their majestic

88 THE CHARM OF KASHMIR

heights, first past the uplands and forests of far Gulmarg, then to the level
shores of the ancient lake which once filled the valley, and so from moment
to moment, subtly, as if driven by some zephyr of the Gods, over the lucent
pools and marsh lands, the rice-fields in whose humble surface the glory
of the snows was mirrored, the lines of poplars which marched like a serried
army across the plain ; and so to that which is the soul and impulse of the
valley, the River, winding in voluptuous coils of beauty, here brooding
in violet shadows, there radiant and shining in the amber and gold of
the sun.

By the time I had reached the summit of the hill and the foot of the
Temple, whose superb foundations of cut and fashioned stone were laid
here in days when the shadows that precede civilisation still lay heavy
over Northern Europe, the sun was topping the Eastern Mountains that
contain the valley, and the temple of Jyestharudra glowing as if born
anew in his warmth was sending its shadow with that of the thousand feet
of rock upon which it stands visibly across the plain.

There in the sunlight clustered the red and tawny house-tops of Srina-
gar, reaching away to Akbar's Castle and the fortress of Hara Parbat in
serried masses, and feeling their way in more scattered echelon across the
shallows and water-ways, to the floating gardens and purple spaces of
the Dal. Here the sunlight had not yet reached, and I looked upon a
fragment of the world that was yet asleep. On the River, life had begun ;
the life of Man — for the procession of Nature, the images of heaven and
the stars, sunlight and moonlight, are never absent from its fellowship.
Boats were creeping down its tranquil waters, here gliding without a trace
upon its current, there fretting it for a moment in transit across its surface
from shore to shore. The poplar avenues, the great chinars, the apple trees
and orchards, each formed their image in its surface, and a lone tree by
its banks was doubled as in a dream.

From these humble lights my eyes passed once more to the circum-
ambient glory of the mountains, and in the clear radiance which enshrines
them at this early hour, I could trace each snowy peak and summit and
white-shrouded pass from Tatakuti at the far eastern end of the girdle to
Nanga Parbat the high summit of a world, and nearer at hand, at the very

SOLOMON'S THRONE 89

threshold of the risen sun, to stately Haramukh, veined and splashed with
silver. And while I was yet lost in the beauty of the morning, and the
splendour of the world, the slow chanting voice of the priest of the Temple
issued from within its precincts, and in the golden sunlight I saw assembled
a party of pilgrims, gathered from distant corners of the earth, about this
shrine of immemorial years.

" Oh, comrade, fall aside
And think a little moment of the pride
Of yonder sun, think of the twilight's net."

Abu'l-Ala.

CHAPTER XIX

ASOKA'S CITY

The little temple of Pandrethan stands by the wayside, a mile or two up
the river, where it curves in wide beauty at the foot of the Takht-i-Sulai-
man. One might easily pass it by unnoticed, for it is sheltered from the
high-road by a woodland of slim trees, through which the evening sun glows
each day in bars of green and gold. A little stream meanders through this
grove, and so falls murmuring into the river, as it has done since the days of
Asoka the king ; more lasting in its frailness than all the mighty works of man.

This stream has its birth in a clear spring in the court of the Temple,
about which it is now suffered to wander at will, filling its interior. Frag-
ments and outlines of the old containing walls of the Temple enclosure can
still be traced ; but no longer do they serve their purpose of keeping intruders
at bay, and the water-logged soil about the altar is pitted with the hoof-
prints of the cattle that wander in here unchecked.

Amidst these surroundings the little temple stands forlornly beautiful,
with the benediction of time upon it, and the soft glow of each evening's
sunlight to warm it into momentary life. The columns and capitals of the
temple are dulled in their old chiselled beauty by the usury of centuries
of wind and weather ; but the stone blocks of which the roof is composed,
though shaken from their appointed place, and awaiting the hour of their
dissolution, are still as smooth and sharply cut and perfect as upon the day
they left the hand of their maker. Yet how softened in their colours by '
the passage of a thousand years !

Within, the roof retains its pristine forms, its circular lotus or wheel,
which four figures at each corner sustain in its swift revolution, and its
bold presentment of Vishnu, instinct with life and power. How many

Last loneliest loveliest exquisite apart.'

HiM>rp#L>{ •/! ?.^'A:u:r/ Kiit

TRAVELLERS IN KASHMIR

CHAPTER XX

MANAS BAL

I HAD seen Manas Bal at evening on my journey up the river. I desired
to look upon its beauty once more before leaving the Valley, to sleep by
its side, and enter into the intimacy of its companionship. I drove out to
it therefore on the evening of my last day but one at the Capital, and the
memory of this visit is one that I would willingly retain. My road lay at
first along the great highway of the valley, with its serried lines of poplars
on either hand, its lane of blue sky above these mighty walls of foliage that
closed in the distant vista like the nave of a gothic cathedral, and its bars
of light and shadow that lay across it like a weaver's pattern. Even in
France and Lombardy there is nothing more symmetrically perfect than
this.

There were many other travellers abroad, some bound for India, urgent
and speeding along in carts and tongas, others the slow quiet people of the
country-side to whom this is the highway of their lives, stately women
moving towards the City from the fields, and men behind their cattle with
the stained implements of their toil. In the branches of the meeting poplars
there was now and then the murmur of a dove ; now and then the sudden
flight of an oriole, like living gold. It was a world in itself.

And then we left it abruptly for a soft open road of the country, lined
for miles with the small purple iris of Kashmir, and bordered on either
hand by spreading fields. Here as we approached the river there were
shrines and ziarats, and women filling their water-pots in the flush of the
evening sunlight, and the sunset flaming down like the light from a great
reflector out of the marshalled pearl and opal of the clouds. Here were
flocks of sheep and long silky-haired goats in the meadows by the rice-

96 THE CHARM OF KASHMIR

fields, and so at length we came to the rambling wooden bridge at Sambal,
where the river rushes between the piers and the laden cargo boats fight
for a passage-way.

At Nanni-nara on the further shore, a storm which had been gathering
all the afternoon overtook us with thunder and lightning ; the winds of
Heaven were let loose, and night closed in with pomp and majesty of sound.

Rapidi fremitiis et murmura magna minarum. Large drops of rain
fell, and the storm circled with superb and sweeping dominion over the
dark mountains, the white head of Haramukh, and the cowering city.

In the deadly stillness and tense silence which followed this passionate
outburst, as though Nature had seized upon all the vital forces and swept
theiyi along in the storm, I decided to sleep out under the stars, upon a
ledge under a great chinar that overlooked the shimmering waters of the
lake. Here I was presently joined by the Headman of an adjoining hamlet,
the Village Watchman and a Shikari from Nanni-nara. These good people
spoke of their several avocations, of flocks and herds and the spring crops,
of the peace and confidence that had settled upon the country side since
" Laren " came — (Sir Walter Lawrence who made the Revenue settlement
and for the first time in history perhaps gave the unfortunate peasant of
this valley his rights) — of their perception of the ill of untruth, and of their
sins which in the past they said had rightly brought upon them misfortune ;
of their dependence upon the will and clemency of God.

One can tell that this is a sad people, who have borne for centuries
with grief ; who have learnt to bend their heads to the storm, and have
grown twisted and crooked in the process ; yet in whose hearts there survives
a perception of the purposes of God, and an increasing desire to rise once
more into the sunlight of nobler men.

I endeavoured to induce the Headman and his Watchman to return
to their homes ; but they assured me that they could not do so while I slept
in the open ; so in somewhat singular company, for the son of a deceased
Fakir and a Bartimaeus from the vicinity had surreptitiously joined the
party, I passed the night under the stars.

I awoke to find the night accomplished and day at hand. The birds
were astir, and the stars in their altitudes aware of the coming of the Sun

MANAS BAL 97

were withdrawing into the luminous mysteries of space. Venus alone
burnt clear over the gateways of the Dawn, chosen for her excelling beauty
to meet the Sun upon the threshold of the morning.

Soon even her loveliness waned and was lost in the triumphant coming
of the God. The far snows flushed and flamed with Flamingo pink, most
lovely at this the earliest hour of light. The swinging world accomplished
its mighty evolution with the serene and perfect poise that comes from a
master-hand ; and in silence the great drama of the opening day was
carried to its superb conclusion.

Life now became vocal in the singing of the birds, and their amours
graced the idyllic hours. The sun appeared over the rim of the green hills
that border the lake, and flashes of his light fell with a sudden beauty upon
the tranquil surface of its waters. The boatmen rose up, and turning with
a profound spiritual impulse, such as has almost gone out of our modern
life, performed the solemn act of worship.

It had been a perfect night, windless and star-lit, and shining in its
earlier hours with the radiance of the waxing moon. Once when I woke
to sleep again I saw her riding serenely in the clear firmament above me,
her dark shadows falling upon the turf. A deep stillness lay at that hour
upon the waters and the mountains and the trees ; yet was there some
mystic influence abroad, as of the world's heart beating in the night watches.
When I looked about me in the morning light and surveyed my sleep-
ing-place, I found that it was one of a series of green terraces that had once
marked the beauty of an Imperial Garden. I had slept here in the midst
of these remnants of departed glory, and a cut in the hill-side that I had
vaguely noticed in the dark as a place to be avoided, was now disclosed
as the ruin of a water-fall that had once gleamed and murmured for an
Emperor's pleasure.

The stream that once animated it I found still flowing swiftly and
silently on its way above the topmost terrace, under the sheer rocky walls
of a mountain of Mediterranean hues. Here scattered over its surface,
as I have so often seen them on the shores of the Inland sea, was a flock
of goats moving to the barking of a dog and the cries of the goat-herds,
while somewhat in the rear came the young kids, and the wounded and

98 THE CHARM OF KASHMIR

sickly members of the flock, limping over the rocks. Yet here I felt as I
never feel out of the East, that all these creatures were one, the herd and
its owners ; that they were all of kin, and that but one soul beat through
them all.

By the lake edge in the yellow sunlight stood an old stone temple of
classical form that was almost submerged, and the waters gleaming about
it were as clear as glass. In those bygone days in which it was built, it
must have stood upon the shore, and at morning and at evening some priest
must have laid his flowers upon its altar, and chanted his litany. That
it has survived the iconoclasm of subsequent ages may be due to its seclu-
sion here, upon the rim of this secluded water; or to its very smallness,
which left it as it were beneath contempt.

We crossed the Lake, and as I looked down into its tranquil depths,
in which the form and outline of the boat were mirrored, I saw that we
but skimmed for a passing instant the surface of a world of hidden and
secret beauty that lives on its own undisturbed life regardless of such tran-
sitory incidents. From the bottom of the lake, where it was shallow, a
forest of weeds like Firs in form and outline, rose up through the lucent
waters, and in this strange country the fish glanced and darted about
the business of their lives.

Along the surface glided the canoes of the Fish-spearers, who stood erect
at their prows gazing into the clear waters with a deadly gaze and inten-
sity of purpose. A swift sudden plunge of the spear, and the hapless fish
who was basking in the warm sunlight was borne aloft with six barbed
prongs through his body, the victim of an incredil^e Fate. For a moment
he gleamed there gasping and squirming in their terrible grip, and the next
he was torn by a careless hand from the barbed points and flung with in-
difference into the boat. His pain was mute ; but it must have been shatter-
ing in its kind.

In the centre of the Lake the waters are so deep that one can see nothing
but the crystal image of the boat.

So we came to the old-time garden on its western shore that is known
as The Garden of Lalla Rookh. Its high walls and bastions speak of im-
perial days, and the lake-folk say it was built by a King's Daughter. One

MANAS BAL 99

can see at least that it was in its time a very stately and magnificent garden,
with its pleasaunce by the water and its stream falling swiftly from the upper
terrace. A squatter has possessed himself of it now, and his fruit trees and
poplars clothe its ruins and lend them the semblance of life ; but it needs
the care of the State. It commands the loveliest view of this lovely water,
facing as it does the misty snow-crowned valley of the Sind and its im-
memorial highway into Central Asia.

As we left the seclusion of the Lake there opened before us the marvel
of the Pir Pantsal, its tented fields of snow and shining peaks, and its arrow-
heads of white and blue, which mark Apharwat and the uplands of Gulmarg.

Secluded, profound, and silent ; touched by the magic of Imperial
times ; a vision of loveliness ; a haunt of peace ; a mirror of mighty peaks
and ancient highways, Manasbal deserves all that has been said of it by
travellers in its praise.

BOOK II

THE MOUNTAINS

" Infinitely varied in form and colour, the Kashmir mountains are such as
an artist might picture in his dreams."

Sir Walter Lawrence.

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THE LIDAR VALLEY NEAR BLATKOL

CHAPTER I
FLOATING DOWN THE RIVER

I LEAVE Srinagar in the early dawn, on the first stage of a journey that
will carry me into the heart of those mountains that from the first day of
my coming into the Valley have called me by their spiritual beauty to a
more intimate approach. But for the first day of this new adventure my
course still lies amidst the voluptuous scenes and the soft repose of the valley.
The wooden bridges, the clustering houses of the city, one by one are left
behind us, and the fuJl sunlight of morning finds us in the heart of the country-
side through which the river upon which we move, wanders as if Time
were naught. It is difficult to convey the sense of silken ease with which
this journey is made ; for now even the current is with us, and the boat
moves without an effort. The towing cord lies idle in loops by the prow ;
the punting poles are gathered in a row upon the roof, the oars are silent,
the crew recline at ease. A lad at the helm alone guides the progress of the
boat. The satin river, full from shore to shore, moves without a sound, and
through the windless hours there is scarcely a ripple to disturb its harmony.
The landscape is of green fields and pasture lands, meadows and villages
and trees. Beyond these there are the silver-crested mountains, misty
and half asleep ; their splendour veiled and softened in the lustre of the
river. Upon the lush pastures cattle graze, and ponies whisk their tails,
and the air is filled with the song of the skylark, whose little body, rising
with exaltation above the iris-fields, trembles afar in the summer haze.
Boats go by, thatched with mouse-like straw and laden with the produce
of the valley, and in the midst of such company we arrive at the marriage
of the waters at Shadipur, where the lovely Sind runs into the arms of the
Jhilam. Their union imparts an air of space and of rejoicing to the scene,

103

I04

THE CHARM OF KASHMIR

and we tie up here where a little island shrine marks the meeting of the
Gods, for the noon-day rest.

Here upon the grassy shore there is a glade of chinar trees, and deep
shade, and relief from the glare of the river. One's body, which has ac-
complished so little, yields itself with a primitive content and relaxation
to the joy of the place and its dream-Uke sentient peace.

Towards the afternoon I take the shikara and explore the lower courses,
turning aside into meres of blue water, and clusters of reeds, under the
uplands which swell here above the general level ; and it is thus that I
come, with a feeling of enterprise rewarded, upon the remnants of an old
Mogul Garden whose long grey wall with its comer towers faces the blue-
ness of the pool. Here in truth is a fit place for a secluded pleasaunce,
to which one whose life was engrossed with the intrigues of a court and
the bustle of the world could retire for an interval of enjoyment or repose.
So well was it chosen that one might pass it by upon many a journey down
the river, which is but a short way from the mere's edge, without discover-
ing its existence. Yet, hidden itself, it looks upon a world of far-spread
beauty : the shimmer and splendour of the Pir Pantsal, and the valley
brooding at its feet.

Grey and old here in the flaming sun, these sad old towers and crumb-
ling walls speak of one who sought after pleasure in a transitory life.

Leaving the main river we passed up the Sind in the evening cool
into an amphibious land where marsh and river were scarcely to be dis-
tinguished from each other ; and circling about this, and sometimes losing
our way, we found anchor for the night by a grassy shore. The
swiftly moving river was about us, and upon its surface the moonbeams
played and whirls and eddies raced ; symptoms of its secret life and passion.
But the scene as I turned to sleep was one of deep calm, culled from some
nameless world, upon which no human incident had left its trace. The
blue mountains, with here and there a splash of snow, rose mistily above
us, but vague and reticent as though they took no part in our lot or
being.

FLOATING DOWN THE RIVER 105

I was not however the only new-comer to this recondite world. Beside
me on the river's edge was another boat, in which two Englishwomen were
travelling, and a little earlier in the evening I had seen them seated by a
table on the grass, dining by the light of a lamp. They retired early, with
the instinctive caution of women who are alone, and their boat lay silent
and dark upon the waters; but long after they had withdrawn to its
shelter their men-servants sat on about a fire in the open, talking in
subdued voices.

CHAPTER II

MORNING AT GUNDERBAL

My boat was astir in the early dawn, and when I rose and looked out upon
the world the scene was changed. The river, grey with molten snow and
cold with the memory of its birth, was rushing on its way, the very symbol
of prolific life, branching into numberless streams, hastening to unite itself
again, curving and sweeping along; vital, multitudinous, one, like a pack
of hounds in cry.

About us were golden meadows of buttercups, and the dense thickets
of a young plantation, in which willows, poplars, mulberries, walnuts,
and chinars were straining after life. It was early in the morning and the
full orb of the sun had not yet ascended into the open sky, but great shafts
of light were streaming through the passes in the violet hills, and far across
the valley, the white snows, remote and unearthly, were flushing pink. A
soft mist trembled upon the face of the waters, lifting and vanishing as
the Sim rose, and the dew-drops lay like silver on the grass. The banks
of the river were scarce a foot above its waters, and along them the trackers
struggled and fought their way, while the boat, filling the whole width of
the river where it swept round from curve to curve, made its slow upward
journey.

Once more upon this journey I was impressed with the wonderful
variety of this Happy Valley ; its gifts of infinity and space, mingled with
the most homely and confiding charm ; and even as I write we have left
the diverging waters, the struggle for place, for a stream wide and placid
as the Vetasta itself; for open fields, and cattle by the home-steads, and
yotmg lambs skipping on the grass, and the crooning of doves in imme-
morial trees.

107

CHAPTER III

GUNDERBAL

At Gunderbal I was content to pass an idle day, preparatory to the journey
into the mountains. It is a pleasant spot to do nothing in towards the
end of May, for the ice-cold water that flows through it freshens the summer
air, and under the heavy shade of the chinars there is shelter from the sun.
The river is spanned by a light wooden bridge, and below it there are the
ruins of a brick bridge with Mahomedan arches, built in a by-gone day.
A lovely camping ground spreads here, with its wide sweep of close turf,
its groves of umbrageous trees, and its secret canals and waters, in the coils
of which the house-boats lie ensconced. One is here upon the threshold
of the' mountains, whose great blue walls rise above the river, and at night
under the full moon, these mighty forms look frail as the fictions of one's
sleep.

As I sat here by the high-way, while my tents were displayed, and the
pack-ponies were collected for the morrow's journey, and my servants
were busy with their preparations, the world took its customary way, foUow-
. ing here some impulse of the soul, there some humbler purpose of life. Under
a great tree a Travelling Saint was established, and about him his followers
were assembled, in devout attitudes of attention. The Saint with his white
beard sat with his back to the tree, and addressed them at intervals in
parables and sententious words, and when he ceased from speaking there
were murmurs of applause and there was the refrain of low music from some
instrument.

" God," he ended, " was one God ; and Mahomed was the prophet
of God."

Upon the road the Brahmin Pandits, who entertain other views, passed

100

no THE CHARM OF KASHMIR

to a neighbouring village, while their women in gay robes of blue and pink
and green coloured the landscape like pictures out of a German Bible.
Here was the East with all its simplicity and dramatic appeal.

In the centre of the road, busy over some deep purpose and regardless
of the show and vanity of life, there crouched three men, sifting the fine
dust, sweeping their hands over the road's surface as a man does when
moving in a dark chamber. Patiently they toiled, with tense features
and an anxious air that slowly passed from confidence to despair ; until at
last they sat disconsolate in the cloud of white dust they had raised by their
labours, while the world passed on unheeding. At length they rose and
approached me, their leader, a giant in proportions, coming forward with
hands folded as we fold them in prayer.

" Sir," he said, " we are three boatmen who were paid a day's wage
this morning, and passing here by your presence one of us dropped a four-
penny piece in that dust, and it has vanished. But we are poor people
and this is a great calamity."

" Well," I said, " if you had been more careful it would not have been
lost ! "

" Huzur," he replied, with tears upon the rims of his great eyes, while
his fellows looked the picture of gloom — " it was our fate ; it was Kismet. Be-
hold it was the will of God."

It appeared to me that for once I could lift the burden of an unrelent-
ing fate from predestined shoulders ; so I said,

" Well, here is four pence ; go in peace,"

and they took it with many salutations and went off mightily relieved;
yet reflecting it may be that had they been born under a happier star they
would have had the sense to make it eight pence.

It was while returning from this good deed done in a naughty world,
that I slipped on the gang-way of my boat and fell into the ice-cold water.
I remember feeling, as the water gave under my confiding feet, a sense of
the abiding treachery of life.

CHAPTER IV

FIRST MARCH

I ROSE at five with many good intentions ; but in the East no one hurries,
and the sun was well up before my caravan was afoot. Our track lay up
the Sind Valley, passing at first through villages, embowered in the shade
of the old walnut trees and chinars, watered by running streams taken
from the main river, and made beautiful by the wild rose. But the village
folk were afflicted with goitre and dreadful to look at. By the way-side
I came upon a party of Baltis, fresh from their bleak uplands, with their yaks
and ponies, engaged in feeding greedily off the piles of half-ripe mulberries
they had shaken from the trees. Here already was a people different from
the Kashmiri of the Vale, and as I looked upon them and their felt-coats,
their goat-hair girdles, their travel-worn air, the diversity and charm of way-
faring suddenly came upon me.

Further, where a bridge crossed the river and great boulders brought
down a side valley made a shelving fan of chaos, there were the rem-
nants of some old city, the carved pediments of a temple. And soon I
was in the midst of a Bakarwal camp by the way-side, in which the whole
tribe was gathered together, from the new-born babe to the aged and infirm
Patriarch, in the midst of goats and sheep, and jars of milk, and unleavened
bread upon the platter. Upon the road marched the multitudinous herd
of the tribe. The vast convoy of sheep and goats and dogs and shepherds
moved as one, yet with an infinite diversity ; the herdsmen whistling through
their fingers, calling, gesticulating, pelting the wandering goats with stones,
and whipping up the lagging ; the dogs running to and fro, and the sheep
keeping humbly to the road, while the goats, with their silken hair swaying,

moved with an independence and character that were almost human. Some

111

112 THE CHARM OF KASHMIR

knelt by the water's edge to drink, others rose upon their legs to reach

the mulberry-shoots, and even climbed twenty feet up into the trees. They

nibbled at the wild briars and the shrubs, investigated all that lay upon

their path with an insatiate curiosity, rushed at the blackened stones of

cooking places and licked them with avidity ; and withal moved in the

distance like a wave dappled with light and shade, at a pace that rapidly

consumed the miles. The sires of the flock, with their great curved noses

and tasselled hair, bore a striking resemblance to the patriarchs of the tribe ;

and in the milch goats, with their slender forms and swaying fluttering

motion, there was an affinity that was irresistible, with the Bakarwal

women. It was a singular community that was thus upon its travels ;

and it was thus that Abraham marched when he came with his flocks out

of Ur in the Chaldees.

Beside these wanderers, here one hour and gone the next, were the

people of the soil, ploughing and planting their rice-fields with the infinite

patience and hope of the long-settled peasant. A little way off sat a group

of travellers from the fastnesses of Dras and Baltistan, mongoloid of feature,

shy and unobtrusive, as strangers in a strange land. Through all these

diverse peoples ran the unifying bond of the white high road, the electric

wire, the steel Suspension bridge of the British engineers ; and thus were

the centuries commingled ; the nomad pursuing his immemorial mode

of life, unmoved by the stability of his neighbours. But the wild rose was

here before the first footfall of man was heard; and she seemed to me,

as I rode, the most perfect thing in the valley.

* *
*

My noon-day halt is called by a way-side spring, over which a Calender,
I am told, built his home some fiftj- years since, and ministered to the
spiritual needs of the traveller. But the Saint has joined his forefathers, and
the roof of his house has long since fallen in. Yet the spring lives on, and
those who are afoot stay here to partake of its bounty, and of the shade
of the walnut trees it waters. A little brook flows away from it, and beside
it there shimmers a nursery of young rice, of a green that is more vivid than
any other in Nature.

,*;'.,

FIRST MARCH 113

As I repose here the wind ruffling its surface fills it with indescribable
joys, dragon-flies glitter and flit across it with startling speed, a pair of doves
descend in its midst, and a Hoopoe trails his pied wings over its brilliant
surface. The little brook in its meanderings divides me from a party of
Baltis who like myself have come here to pass the noon and eat a way-
side meal. I see them come slowly up the dappled road and make for
this spot, and in a twinkling the yaks and ponies are at grass, the pack-
saddles unloaded, the travellers at ease ; one lighting a fire, another filling
a pot with water from the spring, while the rest of the company spread
their limbs with undisguised relief. Presently they eat and talk and slumber
under the walnut shade, while the brook runs on, and the scene with all
its humble charm, is such as this valley must have known for a thousand
years. All about us are the blue and ever-green mountains, some deeply-
wooded and others spangled with snow ; the willows by the water silver
in the wind, and the air is laden with the murmur of the Sind, as it foams
and rushes in the distance on its way.

I confess that when I left the silken ease of the valley and the comfort
of my boat it was not without a touch of reluctance, and for a mile or
two as I came along the stony road I regretted all that I had left ; but
now, as I sit here and pass the noon till it is time to move again, the old
joy of wayfaring steals upon me, and I am glad to be of a world in which
men march and halt, and take their rest by the wayside, till it is time to
march again.

The Wanderer

" Round us everywhere the leaves fall
You can hear the winds gaily call
For them to fly —

And the birds are lured from the nest.
Wanderer, for you there will be rest,
To-morrow you will die."

Abd-Rebbehi.

CHAPTER V

KANGAN

I MOVED on in the afternoon to Kangan, crossing a bridge over the foaming
Kankanai which comes straight down here from the heights of Haramukh
veined with silver and noble of outline, far above this lateral valley. The
breeze as I stood here in the hot sunlight was cold and fresh from its passage
over the snow-fed stream.

At Kangan my tents were pitched in a walnut grove, beside a village
embosomed amidst fine trees, and vivid with the rice nurseries, in which
the women, and here and there an old patriarch, were at work. The sky
was misty, and the beauty of the mountains was dimmed, till at sunset
the light came with a sudden gleam upon the peaks of the valley, and they
shone like silver before the night overtook them.

I rose at five to find a man, sick unto death, lying prostrate in the
shelter of the serai near my tent. He had been there, my near neighbour,
all night, and I had not known it. He lay almost naked, moaning, and
unconscious of the world, but still at issue with Death. His eyes were closed.
His uncovered state, his abject condition ; these were nothing to him.
Yet his vital forces still struggled with the terrible shadow that encompassed
him. His tense fingers, his deep breathing at long intervals, told of the
awful conflict.

But one could see that Death must win. His son, a Balti lad of sixteen,
stood beside him, afflicted with grief, but mute. Now and then only he shook
his head, or leaned forward to cover the dying man's face. Eight days,
he said, his father had lain here ; he would eat no bread, and there was
nothing he could do for him. He was poor ; he had no money. . . .

I could see that the people of this wayfaring place : the sergeant,

116

ii6 THE CHARM OF KASHMIR

the shop-keeper, the post-man, paid no heed. They were evidently callous ;
a traveller, a Balti, what was he to them ? His hour had come. He must
die. Others of his race were encamped under a walnut tree a little way
off, their fires lighted, busy about their food. The dying man was placed
under the charity of an official roof at the mercy of the world. The village
next door was indifferent. If men travel they must be willing to die away
from home. Such is the sentiment of those who stay with their own. Even
in England, where they would have carried him to hospital and tried to
save his life, the feeling would have been the same. There would have been
some pity, but little understanding of the stranger from foreign parts
who had come away from his own home. Yet in truth does it matter
where a man dies ? This man, fighting his last fight, was concerned with
nothing but its issue ; unconscious of those who looked upon his agony.

Upon the road the sun was shining, and day was abroad. Lofty pin-
nacles of snow rose into the summer haze, and woods of dark cedar climbed
the higher slopes. Lower down in the valley there were walnut trees,
with waters sparkling and running over at their feet. The world took its
way. Here was a shepherd carrying a young lamb, its legs in his hands,
its body about his neck, as in the Bible pictures. Upon the road a trader
from Ladakh was returning home with his veiled wife ; a man of substance
with a following of pack animals, and ponies for himself and the lady of
his choice to ride upon, harnessed with brave trappings and scarlet saddle
cloths that took the eye. The lady, hidden within the white flowing folds
of her Burqua, was an object of mystery and potential beauty. She might
have been a prize from the shores of Bayukdere or the Golden Horn. But
Mahamdoo, the man who carries my baggage and beguiles the way with
his knowledge (for he is a great traveller and feels like choking, he says,
after he has been confined at home for a month) relates her history.

" Behind that veil. Sir ! there is naught but the face of a Ladakhi
girl, a round face with small eyes. I know, because I saw her coming down
the valley with Yaqub, when he descended with his felts to Srinagar. She
was then unveiled, and a person of no importance, like the rest of her people.
But at Srinagar she learnt about Burquas ; and behold ! she returns to
Leh a veiled personage " —

A BKAUTY OP THE VALLEY

KANGAN 117

He spoke as one who scorns a recent patent of nobility ; but the lady
shut up within her cage was doubtless filled with aristocratic emotion.

By the way-side I met another group of the wandering herdsmen,
and I could not fail to be impressed with the handsome air of the men, the
erect and flowing shapes of the women, and the gypsy beauty in their eyes.
One of these was perhaps the prettiest woman I saw in Kashmir. As I
approached the encampment I could see her running towards me down
the road, but unaware of my approach. And there she sat with tears
about her lashes, a picture of beauty in distress, while the older and plainer
women of the tribe gathered about her and scoffed at her misfortunes.
What was her story ? Was she rebellious about the husband selected for
her ? or was she too proud, for their taste, of her manifest and excelling
beauty ? I could not enquire, yet was I curious to know.

The men of the tribe told me they came to the foot hills of Jammu
some forty years ago, from the North- West, and they reckoned themselves
of kin with the Pathan of whose language they spoke a dialect. They
migrate here each summer to escape the heat and fever of the low country,
and find pasturage for their flocks. The lands they hold they leave to
others to cultivate for them for a share of the harvest. They are a sort
of wandering aristocracy in their way, with their ancestral herds and fine
patriarchal air.

" The region which Kailasa Hghts up with his dazzling snow, and which the
tossing Ganga clothes with a soft garment."

Kalhana.

CHAPTER VI

THE BEAUTY OF THE SIND VALLEY

The next day the Sind Valley realised expectations. I had been told much
of its beauty ; but this beauty is of a minor order till one nears the high
gorges that usher in the charms of Sonamarg.

I rose while the Moon still shone in the west, and the snows beneath
her were bright under her gleam. I saw her pale, and the earliest rays of
sunlight glow with a brighter fire upon those snows, and then I saw the
day break over the valley as I took the road. But there were deep violet
shadows still under the right bank and the cold was sharp and keen.

My camping-place for the night had been on a grassy slope that fell
gently to the river, and a clear mountain stream ran beside my tent, the
roots of a walnut tree that sheltered it reaching bare and gnarled to its
rushing waters. The green grass about me was marked with the weals of a
hundred previous encampments, the scene was one of beauty and life ;
yet I perceived in the clearer light of day that it was the burying place of
many generations of men upon which I had encamped ; and in the
shelter of the lilac-flowered scrub I came even upon a new-made grave.
It is thus in the East, where life and death go strangely together,
hand in hand.

The night had been grey and over-laden ; but in the morning the
valley seemed re-bom, and as I walked in the shadows a beautiful picture
lay at my feet, the river curving like a bow under the cliffs, pale green
and foam white, while beyond it there spread a level vale patterned with
heavy trees, whose shadows in the early light lay like velvet upon the meadows
and the fields. Here had nature or man, in their dim out-reachings, fashioned
something that was near of kin to an English park. Yet above this park

119

I20 THE CHARM OF KASHMIR

there rose to soaring heights, and snow-starred summits, the dark fir-woods
and chmbing walls of the valley.

At Koolan I crossed the river, at a point whence a track leads over
the mountains, past ice-floed lakes and under the glacial fields of Kolahoi
to the Lidar Valley. Here the tributary waters came falling in joyous
beauty, past mills and homesteads, and flocks of sheep that grazed in peace
upon the edge of the thundering river.

Near Gaggangir these minor yet exquisite incidents reached a sudden
climax of might and power, where a cataract of snow, laden with drift and
scented with the resin of the shattered firs, spread like a lava-flow across the
Valley. I could trace its beginning high up on the gleaming face of the
mountain, its swift descent and overwhelming flood as it breasted the river
and rose to the opposite steep. My path lay across this tumult of frozen
snow and drift, whose consuming might impressed me, though I could see
that the hour of its dissolution was already at hand.

Everywhere from beneath the snow, which a few months before had
held the valley in fee, streams of water were bursting through, great
caves in the sheeted ice were dripping under the stress of sunlight, and mid-
way, the river, fiercely triumphant, was rolling with an irresistible momentum,
between the walls of ice and ice-like snow, through which it had cloven
its path. From these walls, cut as with the stroke of a sword, there pro-
jected the trunks of trees and withered boughs and fragments of stone,
while their face was a dappled sea-green, and brown, and marked like the
skin of a leopard. I knew as I stood there with the roar of the river in my
ears, its green waves dashing and foaming at my feet, that I stood in the
presence of passion and life.

We think of Nature, with our customary arrogance, as of something
inanimate, yet here was she surprised in the very transports of emotion.
I felt like one who looks upon the closing scene of a great battle, upon the
shattered remnants of the defeated army in flight, upon the exultant pursuit
of the victor. And such it was. For with the passing of Summer the
Snow had eome and had conquered the valley, burying the green wood-
lands, shattering the great trees, engulfing the very river itself. But now
with Spring and the returning Sun its power was broken, and the Spirit

THE BEAUTY OF THE SIND VALLEY 121

of Life with her conquering banners and music of rushing waters was once
more abroad. The Cuckoo knew it, for she was calhng from the deep thickets,
and the sheep knew it as they came by in their thousands, bleating, fiUing
the air with their cries of rejoicing, the rams and the young lambs and the
uddered ewes, on their way to the upland pastures. Here they swarmed
over the drift-wood and the brown ice, and with them there came the shep-
herds and their women and their young daughters, and as the herd moved
their children ran laughing amongst them, seizing the ewes, while with
swift skilful fingers they drew the milk into their wooden bowls.

At Minimoy the scenery of the valley began to absorb all my attention,
for at each step it seemed to increase in sublimity and variety of beauty.
On the left bank the mountains rose up like the very pinnacles of Heaven
to a dark blue sky, across whose void, gigantic clouds, white and luminous
in the sunlight, sailed upon their aerial course. The peaks shone like sword
blades, and were uplifted with a majesty of architecture that dazzled the
imagination, so far did they surpass any human conception. From their
high altitudes the snow drifts fell with, an almost perpendicular descent
many thousands of feet to the brink of the green foaming river. My path
lay upon the right bank, facing these wonders, and as we crossed the face of
a snow-slide one of my ponies slipped and wavered, and my tent was carried
upon the instant like an avalanche into the furious river.^

My next impression was of a gorge opening out into an amphitheatre,
where soft meadows lay grey and green like the necks of wood-pigeons,
and flowers bloomed, and glaciers came falling in cataracts from a snowy
world upon a valley that smiled in serene security at their feet. This was
Sonamarg.

* " It was at this point which Mirza Haidar calls the * narrow defile of L^,' that the Kashmir
chiefs vainly attempted to stop the brave Turks of the invader's advance guard ; and Kalhana's
Chronicle shows that this defile had witnessed fighting already at an earlier period." — Raja-
Tarangini.

CHAPTER VII

SONAMARG

My tent having vanished into the roaring Sind, I sought the shelter of the Cara-
van Serai, and was thus in the midst of a varied company of traveUing men
and beasts. It was not a Swiss hotel, and dirt was plentiful. Yet I reflected
that I was better off than in Andorra ; and the weather being uncertain,
I had the luxury of a floor and a roof over head. As the rain came down,
strange visitors drifted in through the Serai gate, furtively, as if seeking
shelter, yet doubtful whether it would be safe to enter : men from Dras
and Ladakh, in long grey woollen coats and felt boots, with seamed and
weather-wrinkled faces ; pack-ponies and flocks of long-haired goats.
One by one they all defiled into this democratic shelter. The goats sniffed
and wandered into the inner rooms, whence they were evicted with loud
cries and the beating of sticks ; the men made fires upon the earthen floors,
striking their lights from flint and steel, the evening meal was cooked, and
long pipes were filled and passed from hand to hand. At one end of this
primitive place there, was a room reserved for travellers of a somewhat
better class, a rough and uninviting chamber ; yet so soon does one get
used to one's surroundings and make them a part of one's self, that when I
woke in the morning to find the sun shining in, my bed looking warm and
comfortable, and my possessions spread about me, I felt as if the place
were my own, and I was almost reluctant to leave it. I had slept well ;
I had been warmer than in a tent, and I repaid its hospitality by passing a
delicious hour in it, long after the sun had risen and the world was afoot.
About nine I went forth into the splendour of the morning, to find
cattle pasturing by a stream that was starred with ranunculi, deep wood-
lands, and grey Alpine summits glittering with snow under a sunlit sky.

123

124 THE CHARM OF KASHMIR

It was the first of June.

Here also were horses whisking their tails, and sheep taking cover
from the pouring sun ; and peasants ploughing up the rich dark soil, calling
to their cattle in loud admonishing tones.

Picture the black cattle straining at the yoke, their muscles a-quiver
in the light, the ploughman pressing them forward, the green meadows,
the mighty mountains, the dark blue sky with navies of white clouds full sail
across it, the vivid sunlight. Listen to the cuckoo calling from the
woods, the sudden song of the skylark, the bleating of lambs, the lowing
of the milch cattle on the pasture lands, the music of the river on its way
to sea. Add to these a strip of white road like a child's ribbon, a road of
immemorial days along which life has moved for unnumbered centuries,
from India into Central Asia, from Central Asia back to India ; upon it
men and cattle and horses — and you have the scene before you.

Happily for me I was not content even with these sights, but passed
on till I turned the shoulder of the dark wooded hills which define the left
bank of the Sind, and so came with a startling transition into the presence
of the mighty peaks and rolling glaciers which are the wonder of Thajwaz.
I had already observed their loftiest pinnacles and sharply descending
streams of snow on my way up the valley the previous day ; but I was
now to find myself unexpectedly in their midst. For it is here at Thajwaz
that a tributary water of the Sind enters the greater river, and it is fed by
the glaciers that pour their frozen masses down the eastern face of these
mountains. I followed the little river up its lustrous valley, and in its
short course of a mile or two found it environed by a beauty that is, I
suppose, unsurpassed in the world. Here in the midst of dark sentinel
firs, and silver birches clothed in the infantile green of spring, the stream
bursts from its snowy matrix, and falls in green cascades over rocks and
fallen trees. One sees it thus at the moment of its birth.

It is a wild valley, the haunt of Nature unadorned : yet, whether by
design or chance, its waters where they fall smoothly over the prostrate
trees, are the image of those at the Shalimar.

Higher up the brief valley, the clustering birch trees make a pattern
against the snow, and beyond them the steep walls that shut it off from

THE GLACIERS Or THAJWAZ.

SONAMARG 125

the outer world rise in great masses and stainless fields of snow. Here
upon either side of the river are sharply contrasted the northern and southern
slopes of the mountains ; the one ice-bound, glittering in all the panoplies
of winter; the other green with dark fir-trees, and grassy meads, and
enamelled with spring flowers that blow upon the very edge of the ice.
The sky is of the deepest blue, and the whole valley is filled with light ;
brilliant, shining, wonderful light. In this medium the great cliff summits,
grey and silver, rise like the fabrics of a dream ; and far upon their lofty
pinnacles, upheld in the empyrean like an oblation to the gods, are folds of
the whitest softest snow. One wonders how so far up, under the very eye
of the Sun, they retain their frail existence.

Between these summits lie the glaciers, frozen and motionless, yet
like things, alive ; for they present the very image of action in their mighty
descending folds and curves and involute masses.

Perhaps one of the loveliest things in this valley of loveliness is a pool
of crystal water, in whose gem-like depths every pebble is depicted. It
lives its own life fed by secret springs from the mountains, hard by the
foaming rushing river ; tranquil as sleep, untouched by any influence other
than the passing breeze. Here I am under the impression the Goddesses
of the valley bathe before the sun is risen, in the incomparable stillness
of the dawn.

At Thajwaz I passed the day ; while the eagles soared over the valley,
sweeping across it with majestic wing ; while the waters murmured on
their way, and curious pine-martins came loping over the stones, their
black and yellow velvet rich against the silver landscape ; while the
flowers bloomed by the snow's edge, and herds of black buffaloes looked out
at me from under the fringe of the shadowy woods, and the cuckoo's music
announced that summer was coming in. Hard by me under the dark shelter
of a stone a great moth, in the robe of an Emperor, was laying her golden
eggs, fulfilling her debt to life.

But for these creatures I was alone ; the only occupant of the
valley.

These deep solitudes, these hanging woods, with the wind whispering
through them like the hidden voice of the world ; these superb mountains

126 THE CHARM OF KASHMIR

raised up against the portals of Heaven ; how different they were to the lovely
sensuous valley I had left behind me, its silken waters and gardens of
amours, and its people moving to and fro in boats. There, was life, humanity,
ease ; here, was Nature, beautiful and dangerous. What wonder that my
man when he came up to join me, fell in his humble way into a fear of the
place ? These glacial peaks and foaming waters which to me appeared so
wonderful, to him were horrible ugly. He would be glad he said to see the
last of them, and be back safe in his own home.

As if to add to his terrors, and confirm the horrific character in which
he regarded this lovely valley, a storm blew up over the mountains ; the
grey peaks and glaciers were veiled in lowering mists, a roar of thunder
bellowed through the gorges, and rain fell.

But in due course the sun stole out again with a welcome glow, and I
took my way back to the shelter of the Serai and the hamlet of Sonamarg.
My path lay through the deep woods which fringe the meadows, and I
walked upon the soft surface of last year's dead maple leaves, upon a carpet
of a million violets, across rivulets that raced and scattered and mingled
with the joy of their release from the grip of winter, while their edges were
embroidered with creamy ranunculi. As I emerged from the woods the
scene before me was bathed in the mild effulgence of evening, and I sat
for a while in the glow and warmth of the fading sunlight to enjoy it.

It was the close of day, and all Nature seemed conscious of the wondrous
event. The plough cattle released from their toil were slowly drifting
homewards, the blue smoke was rising from the fires of a nomad camp,
the murmuring river was lit here and there with shafts of light, and the
dove-grey masses of Nilnai were luminous, with deep shadows to add to
its great beauty. Far above me in a world of their own the swallows were
flying against the grey sky, and the last message of the setting sun was
borne from cliff to cliff, from velvet green slopes to grey Sierras, to the
ultimate white encampments of the snows, unblemished in their loveliness
and far above the world.

Opposite me a little mountain-river came foaming down to join the
Sind, and at their junction lay the hamlet of Sonamarg, a cluster of frail
wooden huts. High above it a waterfall was visible, but unheard. From

SONAMARG 127

the upland meadows the sheep of the hamlet were slowly descending to their
pens, and one by one I could see them, as they passed in at the narrow ways
under the shepherd's eye. Here and there a light shone through the low-
browed doors of the houses, in whose rooms, half underground, the simple
folk with their wives and dark-eyed children live closely packed for nearly
half the year, while the world is white and snow-shrouded about them.

And Night had already fallen and the stars were shining in the dusk,
when down the road came the mail-runners from Ladakh, hastening on by
the rushing Sind towards the dark and- difficult defile which constrains
its waters to Gaggangir. These men, and the soft humming of the wires
in the night's stillness, spoke to me of a far-flung Empire, and of the links
that bind this secluded hamlet to the majestic world.

" Allah is One Alone !
Look on the Universe and find the proof;
Within the House of Life are many rooms,
Above them all the one o'er-sheltering Roof."

Diwan of Inayat Khan.

CHAPTER VIII

BALTAL

I LEFT Sonamarg as the sun was rising, and rode along and up the valley
in the early light, rejoicing with the river in the freedom and beauty of the
morning. In a deep shadow-laden gorge on the right bank I found a recent
settlement of Baltis, and in the humble fields, one, a tired-looking old man,
was at work piling up stones to make a wall. His labour was the labour of
one beaten in the conflict of life, and was childish and ephemeral in its
character. These are people who have been broken on the wheel, and in
their gait and bearing they suggest centuries of inferiority to stronger men,
and subjection to an inclement Nature.

It were hard to find a more striking contrast than that between the
squalor of this hamlet and the beauty of its site. Its inhabitants have been
here now for seven years, having left their homes in the bleak uplands of
Baltistan for want of land, and they have in that time raised up a number
of children and a mass of filth. They have also built some primitive houses
of stone and wood, and are slowly tilling the fields, which owing to the long
winter, yield but one uncertain crop of millet in the year. But the deep
woods, the stream falling in cascades through the sheltered valley, the dove-
grey beauty of Nilnai, whose organ-like pinnacles and white gleaming spaces
rise above the hamlet up to Heaven, would make the fortunes of a host of
people in another land.

While I was still occupied with the old man building his feeble wall,
there passed me on the road a person of quite another mould. A white
beard flowed upon his breast to his girdle, and a green turban rose above
his clear-cut features. He had the grand air of a person of spiritual as
well as of material consequence ; and he might have stepped out here from

B 129

I30 THE CHARM OF KASHMIR

amidst the pillars of Solomon's temple, with the Urim and Thummim on his
breast.

"A Haji from Mecca," whispered Mahamdoo, "and returning to his
home in Yarkand."

He gave me a brief nod of salutation, as from one who is busy about
his own affairs, and as he passed a lark in a cage twittered before him for
his consolation. Behind him there followed humbly three ponies laden
with varieties, the fruits of his wonderful pilgrimage ; amongst them an
illuminated copy of the Koran.

Here, indeed, I reflected, was prosperity, the rounded fulness of a life.
For what can be more fitting when your worldly affairs have prospered,
than to go when you are old but yet vigorovis, across the buzzing world
to the shrine of the prophet of Heaven ; there to pray, — where one prayer
avails as much as an hundred thousand in your own home, — and so to return,
assured of Paradise hereafter and of the respect of your friends in the
evening of your life. We have nothing to equal it ; for though we can
raise a man to the Peerage, and cover his breast with stars, we know not
how to furnish him with a title in the world to come.

The valley-road lay smooth before me, devoid of stirring incident.
Yet as I went, the river hastening by snowy shores, the flocks of sheep
upon the velvet hills, the flowers by the way-side, made soothing company.
Fresh snow lay upon the nearer summits, brown and silver ; while at
intervals, the turning of the road or the lifting of a cloud yielded an
entrancing view of some Dolomite peak or sword-like pinnacle of ice. For a
few moments also in the early mist of the morning I saw that rare
phenomenon, the sun in the centre of a great circle, with images of himself
at each pole. As I approached Baltal the mountains stood up in a great
encompassing circle, and the valley came visibly to an end at the foot of the
Zogi-la.

Here in this- great company a sky-lark rose from the earth, and
carried her song into the sun-mist, and taught me the unity of life. For
she moved and felt and sang in this lone valley where the snow lies heavy
for half the year, and man has scarcely left an impress, even as she might
have done over •an English acre. And when I spoke to the old caretaker

THE HAJI,

BALTAL t3i

of the house at Baltal, who shares with her the soHtude of the valley, I
learnt that he was one whose words and mind exactly fitted my own, so
that in the spaee of half an hour I learnt all he had to tell me of his lone
winters here, and of the solitude that overtakes him, so that he has to resort
for human fellowship to the post-runners as they hasten on their way over
the Zogi-la. He is content to live here alone for a payment of six shillings
a month, and for what he can get as he says from " the English sahibs and
the Missies and the Mems " who come in summer to look at this far corner
of the world.

He had much to tell me also of the game in the neighbourhood, and of the
care to be taken in travelling over snow with a river swirling into life below.
The Maple woods by the house were thronged with a herd of buffaloes that
had arrived over night, the first herd of the year ; and the previous day he
said the first Bakarwal had crossed the Dachinpara with a flock of five
hundred goats. " For lo ! " he said, " the days of snow are passing and
the Sun is once more King."

" He went up and up into the mountain till he caine to the mouth of a
lonely cave at the foot of a mighty cliff. Above the cliff the snow-wreaths
hung, dripping and cracking in the sun ; but at its foot around the cave's
mouth grew all fair flowers and herbs, as if in a garden, ranged in order.
Then Aeson whispered. Fear not, but go in, and whomsoever you shall find
lay your hands upon his knees and say, ' In the name of Zeus, the father of
Gods and men, I am your guest from this day forth.' "

The Argonauts.

CHAPTER rx
AMAR NATH

A.«« N-.„H is the most s^red place i„ Kashmir, the abode of the God Shiva

who Uves here meamate in an ieicle. and it is visited by piWims from the

■uthe^ sho^ of India. What Meeca is to the Model H^ W k1^

IS m Its wav to the ffood HinHn i?«, ^ *u , j . *" x^^ulu

. u LUC gooa Hindu. For months each year it is bunVH

to the ascendn^ pUgnn,s, who come to it in a great multitude, ledl

Zt^^rfl"^ '^"" ''"">• * "^ ""^ -J--*^. kappy ii
the fulflhnent of theu- purpose.

" Its scenerj," wrote one, an EngUshman who visited it, "is wild
grand and more imposing than anything I have seen in Kashmir. I shall'
never orget ,t. One felt the,, in the presence of the Maker of the Unive^;

The approach to it Ues, in summer, up the Lidar vaUey ; but in winter
and spnng. while the sacred waters of the Amravati Ue bur,>d ^dcTm^ L
of snow, one may ascend to it with an effort from Baltal. The early davs

tz,": V" "" "'^'"- "- "■' -"*- - aireadrbi^r

.UH! through, and once they have done so this narrow g„„e becomes
^passable. , could not tell whether I should find it open, t'wheTl 1"
out on my journey no human fooutep had passed before me for a year

I started eariy. for there were some twenty miles to accomplish before

butTd " "f^" " "^^ "'°"^'' '"'■ ^' ■^'■' '««"-' -r

bume dawn was fiawless. and the waning m«,n rode high in the blue la„
Of sky above us as we left Baltal.

There was light to travel by. and the birds in the vaUey had begun to

me, I caught the fir^ gleams of stmlight on the loftiest pe^.

i34 THE CHARM OF KASHMIR

It is a commonplace perhaps, this swing of the world that carries one
fraction of it from darkness into light at the dawn of a new day ; yet to
one who travels and is thrown upon his thoughts and reflections it comes
each time with something of a sense of wonder, as of a miracle that is wrought
for the first time. The majestic words of Lucretius insensibly revert
to one's mind —

" Principio caeli clarum punimque colorem,
quaeque in sc cohibit, palantia sidera passim,
lunamque et solis pracclara luce nitorcm ;
omnia quae nunc si primum mortalibus csscnt,
ex improvise si nunc obiecta repente,
quid magis his rebus poterat mirabile dici ? "

How beautiful, silent, and pervasive is the advance of light at this
exquisite hour, and how one's body responds to it with the instinctive
memory of ages quite as much as one's tutored mind !

We took our way for a mile or so, through birch woods and meadows
wet with dew, to where the Amravati, along whose frozen course we were
to travel to Amar Nath, runs into the Dachinpara river. All up to this was
gladsome and joyous, with the music of birds and the coming of sunlight
on snowy heights ; but the gorge of the Amravati met us, sombre and dark
and silent, its snow soiled with the blackness of the long winter and the
shattered drift.

Up this dark side-valley we took our way in silence, overwhelmed by
the sombre horror and deathly stillness that lay upon it. No ray of
sunlight had yet reached it ; no voice of bird or creature was heard. We
had passed as it were into the corridor of an infernal world. Slowly we
climbed over the sullied snow, unconscious of the life that moved beneath
it ; slowly we plodded over the dark hummocks, the shattered trunks of
dead trees. Here a man slipped, there a man paused with labouring breath.
It was a sullen and hard beginning to a memorable day.

At last the voice of a cuckoo broke with a sudden music upon this
strange valley in which nothing had life, and its advent seemed to change
the scene as if by magic. I turned to look about me, and there beyond
the dark canyon up which we had come, shone the marvellous lustre of
day breaking upon the distant cliffs wc had left behind us. The sight must

AMAR NATH 135

have gladdened any one, so bright was it with hope, so briUiant by contrast
with the dark shadows in which we were engulfed. The cuckoo bore us
company far up on our way, until the ascending path took us up into
regions where even its music was stilled.

But now the stir and murmur of the river were about us. Here and there
it had burst through the superincumbent masses of snow with an incredible
ilan, and the roar of its passage filled the valley so that we could scarcely
hear each other speak. And then again the river was imprisoned, and its
music was stilled, and there was a deadly silence, and we marched step by
step up the hills of frozen snow ; until in the distance a faint murmur arose,
like the vague murmur of a distant city, and grew and grew like the sound
of an army approaching, until once more we stood upon the brink of the
foaming waters, and saw the river raging with a frenzy of action under
the dead counterpoise and heavy burden of snow.

Our journey was in the main one of toilsome ascent and descent over
billows of frozen snow, and therefore called for little more than endur-
ance ; but there were occasional passages fraught with some little risk to
a party like ours, unequipped for mountaineering, and these lent an added
zest to our travels. For where the river had burst a gap in its snow
incubus, there our path narrowed from the whole width of the valley
to bare foothold. The very circumstance that had forced an opening
in the snow made for a dangerous passage, for it was at these points that
streams or avalanches of snow coming into lateral contact with the river
had caused a violent impact, under stress of which the snow cover had
given way.

There were two or three such places of which I retain a recollection.
At one, the first we encountered, a snow-slide ending abruptly in a wall
of ice, under which the river plunged, made progress on the left bank im-
possible. On the right an avalanche of loose shale had torn away the whole
face of a mountain to a height of five hundred feet. Far above us we
could see the lowest trees hanging by their roots upon the verge of dis-
solution ; and along the whole surface of the shale, a tumult of rocks and
stones retained its foothold as it were by a miracle. But these also were
doomed to continue their journey to the river, and indeed we had barely

136 THE CHARM OF KASHMIR

passed along this treacherous surface when a mass of rock rushed down
the slope and closed the narrow path behind us.

At another the sharp descent oi the right bank made any attempt along
it impossible ; but on the left a snow-slide offered a precipitous passage.
Here there was no path, for no one had gone before us. Twenty feet below
our footsteps the river plunged in an access of fury, flinging its spray up into
our faces and its mist into the air with a deafening roar.

At one point also where there was neither sound nor murmur of moving
water, the dead mass of snow under our feet was riven across the valley, and
through this narrow and deep crevasse we could faintly discern the green
glint of the silent water sweeping along its course. It lay there, beneath
a thousand tons of snow ; and at places this intolerable burden was piled
up above it to a height of a hundred and twenty feet. It was here that
we moved with the utmost confidence, for the floor beneath us would have
sustained an army.

Of life we saw little ; but as the day advanced, birds sang, and upon
the snow there were inscribed the recent hoof-prints of the ibex, the musk-
deer, and the barasingh, the great stag of Kashmir. Once we heard the
shrill cry of the marmot, and saw these curious little creatures peering at us
and darting into their holes. Once, also, I saw a bird — a little black bird with
a snowy head — tripping happily across the foaming water, heedless of its
wrath. And every now and then there was carried to our ears, like the
sound of a mystery, the distant explosion of an avalanche upon its way.

We had reached within a mile of the Sangam or sacred union of the
Amravati and the Panjtarni, when our eyes were gladdened with a view
of almost heavenly beauty. At our feet, as we emerged from the darkness
upon the crest of a great snow billow and looked upon this sudden vision,
lay a tranquil reach of open water of a turquoise hue, but clear as ice, while
from its surface rose miniature bergs in strange life-like forms. Sheer walls
of frozen snow stood up about its banks, of the colour and texture of
sun-warmed marble, and cut as if with a knife. Below the great snow
roof upon which we stood the river glided without a sound.

It was lovely enough, yet the glory and wonder of the scene lay in the
vision ahead of us of the five-pointed peak of Panjtarni, a dazzling citadel

AMAR NATH 137

of snow, faceted like a jewel, and brilliant as a God. Beside it rose another
double-pointed peak of almost equal grandeur and beauty. I had
not in my life seen anything more beautiful, or anything which more per-
fectly depicted in these mountain fastnesses the scenes of an Arctic world.
It was a symphony of the purest coloiu-s, turquoise by the river, white,
dazzling, and blue-shadowed as a diamond, where the peaks rose up into
a heaven of incomparable blue.

In this scene there was no trace of conflict, nothing that spoke of passion.
Its character was of that which is flawless in its perfection, of that which
is eternal and beyond vicissitude. I think that if a man opened his eyes
from sleep or some long oblivion upon this spectacle, he might well imagine
himself to have been carried up to heaven, or at the least to have been
offered a glimpse of Paradise. I conclude that it was this vision, and
not that curious emblem in the cave at Amar Nath, which first led some
transcendental Aryan mind to interpret this as the abode of God.

This for me was the real climax of the journey, but its customary pur-
pose being to attain the cave itself, I continued on my way. We presently
arrived at the Sangam, or meeting of the waters. Above their junction,
in the midst of an amphitheatre of snow-covered mountains, there is a
grassy knoll enlivened with the most vivid flowers, upon which I reposed,
and in vain endeavotired to induce my followers to accompany me to Pahl-
gam ; for before me spread the radiant vision I had first seen in its most
perfect manifestation some moments earlier, and it beckoned me with a
fascination I could not resist ; but they would see me no farther on that
road. They had come, they said, from Sonamarg, they were ill-equipped
for so arduous an undertaking, and they begged to be excused. So we
turned up the narrow gorge of the Amravati, and the sun bore down upon
us with a fierce heat, which made this the hardest part of our journey.
The increasing altitude also told upon every member of the party.

The cave was now clearly visible on the right bank of the river, with
several thousand feet of snowy roof and gleaming pinnacle above it. Oppo-
site it rose a precipitous wall crowned with snow, and straight before us
shone with a radiant beauty the snow-fields which marked the culmination
of the valley.

138 THE CHARM OF KASHMIR

Flowers blossomed at the mouth of the cave, and swallows flew from
its shadow into the blinding sun. No pigeon flew out upon us, to mark
as it sometimes does for the pilgrims The Living God; but his emblem
shone like silver within the recesses of the cave. Its character was unmis-
takeable and a little curious. To an unbelieving eye it was no more than
a fountain or jet of water, which owing to the altitude and the cold within
the cave — for the sun's rays do not reach these innermost recesses — appears
an icicle. Yet to the Hindu, ever seeking in his worship after the Life-
force of the Universe, it is the very symbol of the Creator.

Here to this block of ice, to the recesses of this cave, devout pilgrims,
from the Princes of the land to the humblest of the lowly, from accomplished
scholars to those who have no letters, come in their thousands, braving
all the toils and the dangers of long journeys across the Indian Continent,
to bestow their garlands and offer up their prayers. Here it may be is but
an idle superstition, yet the impulse which sends them out of their ordinary
lives into the midst of these splendours of ice and snow, where the hand of
a great Architect is visible in the fulness of his power, cannot fail to illumine
their hearts and lift up their souls.

At the time of my visit the world here was white with snow and un-
marked by any human footprint ; but about the mouth of the cave there
still lay the shoes of the departed pilgrims, and here and there the
faded petals of their last year's garlands.

Descending from the cave, we passed once more along the valleys,
resting our eyes upon all the beauties we had marked upon our upward way ;
but the sun no longer shone in a clear heaven above us, clouds gathered
in mighty forms, and this journey that had begun in the moonlight and
the brightening dawn closed in to all the thunders of the firmament.
The rain-clouds and the white mists came rushing down the gorge from the
summits of the peaks, like an army that would punish and destroy. We
made good our exit, however, before the swirl and the darkness of rain had
completely enveloped the narrow defile of the Amravati ; and as we reached
the edge of the Sind and its wider outlook, my eyes were charmed by the
sight of a great herd of goats that had come through that morning from
Dachinpara. There were hundreds of them assembled under the birch-

THE MAHARAJA A3 A PII.GIIIM.

THOU imiVLAfi airi

THE WANING LIGHT

AMAR NATH 139

trees and upon the grassy slopes, and in the midst of them stood the Bakr-
wals, with their blankets wrapped about them and their staves in their hands.
These men are amongst the earliest visitants to the mountains, their flocks
pass over the high passes when the rivers are yet frozen and the grip of
winter is scarcely yet relaxed, and these we looked upon were the first comers
of the year.

A few minutes later, I was enjoying the delights of warmth and comfort
in my room within the Rest House while the thunder roared and the rain
plashed without. There is no greater pleasure in life for the tranquil
mind.

CHAPTER X
THE ZOGI-LA

The Zogi-la — a pass 11,300 feet above sea-level and twenty miles
in length — ^is the link between Kashmir and the uplands of Baltistan. The
traveller to Central Asia regards it but as the beginning of his long and arduous
way-faring, but he who is returning, as the lintel of an earthly Paradise.
It soars high above Baltal, and one climbs to it as to a fifth-floor window
to see what there is of the world beyond. The modern road climbs con-
tinuously to the summit of the pass, and it repays one's labours by the
striking contrasts it offers by its daring and by the beauty of its outlook.
As one ascends, the view looking back, develops, till with a rise of a few
hundred feet there are disclosed all the features of Baltal and the meeting
of the waters under its promontory. One can see the Sind making its way
through green meadows and under the mighty hills to its exquisite passage
at Sonamarg, and one can see its union with the little river that has come
to meet it from the Zogi-la. This the people call the Bhot-Sind.

But when one has climbed a thousand feet one's eyes rest with delight
upon the Upper vale towards Dachinpara, which is almost at right angles
to the course it has followed as far as Baltal. Here is a scene that owes
nothing to man. No road enters it, and there is no habitation within its
compass. Yet it might be a little Italian Valley, so ordered and perfect
is its beauty, so soft and peaceful is its character, here at the foot of the snow-
laden mountains. Through it winds the blue-green river, and upon its
southern edge, where the sharp cliffs and mighty walls of the mountains
give way to easy meadows — ^the very site for an Alpine hamlet — there
are dark erect Fir trees, as slim and brooding as Cypresses ; some alone, as
though their shadows were meant to fall upon the sward of a country villa,

141

142 THE CHARM OF KASHMIR

others in clusters and groups with interspaces of green lawn. There are
masses too of heavy-foliaged maples and silver-barked Birch trees. The
prevailing colour of the valley is dark blue and green, with its turquoise
ribbon of river running through it ; and light and shadow, as the white-
puffed clouds move across its vaults of sea-blue sky, lend it — what otherwise
it might seem to lack — the sentiment of life. Far above these beauties of
colour, one's eyes travel to the dark Sierras and the incomparable whiteness
of the snow-fields that lie in the glacial valleys of that up-lifted world.

One sees this picture, it may be, from a vantage-point on the road,
where a young birch in her silver bark and light green foliage, stands dream-
ing of her own slim loveliness upon the edge of a profound abyss, down
which it is not well to look too long.

And here is the first of the striking contrasts that awaits one on this
bit of road, some three miles in length, that carries the traveller to the
summit of the Pass. For, while the Valley smiles in its peaceful beauty,
the Road marches along the most dangerous precipices. In places it is
carved out of the solid rock, in others it is built up with walls which overhang
the deeps, and at some points at this season it does not exist at all. At
these a great avalanche of snow descends, almost vertically, the entire
face of the mountain from peak to river. Across this white slide a track
is cut about ten inches in width, along which the yaks and ponies from Ladakh
and Baltistan make their way. If you stop when you are half way across
this exiguous thoroughfare to survey the scene, you perceive that you are
clinging to a wall of snow some four thousand feet from top to bottom,
and that should you exceed your narrow foot-hold, you would find
no resting-place other than the river some thousand feet below you. Such
a place as this is terrifying to the imagination, but in practice it is safe
enough, as the long lines of laden yaks and ponies testify. One's foot-hold
may be narrow, but one stands upon a high-way of the world.

More impressive than the avalanche is the span of the telegraph wire.
Far above one, clear against the sky-line on a rocky summit, stands the
tall mast from which it makes its flight ; and thence in one mighty curve
it sweeps across the abysmal depths of the valley to some far invisible point
beyond it. I tried to follow its course, but even had my eyes permitted

THE ZOai-LA PASS

THE ZOGI-LA 143

this, I think that I must have abandoned my purpose, so over-powering
was the impression it gave me of a headlong fall. The wire seemed a
thing alive.

I turned from it with relief to the sweet beauty of the Birch trees beside
me, and the strange people who frequent this road. One party of them
consisted of five men in long woollen coats, with seamed and wrinkled faces ;
of five ponies laden with dried apricots ; a pair of yaks which looked the
very image of melancholy as they came shambling down the road ; a donkey,
and a sheep with a Iamb that was travel-stained and weary with its hard
way-faring. I passed many such parties, some preceded by a yak, whose
furtive gloomy head came stealing round the corner of rock, like a phantom
from Hades ; others by a Ladakhi who upon seeing me came to a dead
stop, threw up his hands, and then hastened to occupy the safest corner
of the road, while calling in a loud voice to those who were coming after
him. I sometimes wonder if I made the same impression upon his bleared
vision, as he made upon me !

Presently I reached the climax of the ascent ; the road became more
level, and I travelled far enough upon it, to look into a snow-laden valley
across which minute black creatures were moving at a pace that was less
than funereal, and there was scarcely a tree in sight. So might Dante have
pictured the transit of the dead to another world.

Yet how beautiful also was this valley 11,000 feet above the sea, with its
snow-white encompassing mountains, upon which the sun was shining
with the brilliance of a June day, while the white clouds sailed with a serene
grace across the blue sky !

I knew, as I stood here, that I was looking upon one of those passages
that divide one land from another ; one of those highways upon which
history is made. Through this gut in the mountains I knew that men had
marched from time immemorial, one a Conqueror, another a Saint, another a
Traveller who would see the world ; and besides these, the great army of those
who must live, who would sell that which they have for that which another
has to offer in exchange. It was here I reflected that some four hundred
years ago there rode upon a great adventure a near kinsman of the Emperor
Babar. He had with him an escort of four himdred and fifty cavalry, and

144 THE CHARM OF KASHMIR

his purpose, in which he succeeded, was to win Kashmir for the Mogul
Empire. It was after him that there came from the opulent south, to
mingle their names for ever with the fame of Kashmir, the great Akbar,
the indulgent Jahangir, the magnificent Shah Jahan, the lovely Nur Mahal,
and all the galaxy of splendid men and women of the most splendid court

the world has known.

Here my journey came to an end. Before me lay that which for me
at least was forbidden. Behind me lay Kashmir and the lovely valley
I had left but a half-hour since. And at my feet lay the Zogi-la water,
silent, and buried under masses of soiled and discoloured snow.

NANGA PARBAT : ACROSS THE VALLEY

CHAPTER XI

TOWARDS HARAMUKH

Returning down the Sind, I left the valley at Kangan for a visit to Hara-
mukh and the lakes that lie about it, frozen for the greater part of each
year. Here as at Amar Nath is one of the sacred places of the Hindu world ;
and up these toilsome ways the pilgrims come, carrying the bones of their
dead to their last resting-place in the waters of Gungabal. The summit of
the great mountain is declared to be the favourite abode of Shiva, inviolable
by human feet. Below it, in the gorge of the Kankanai, is the shrine of
Bhutesvara, whose classic ruins date back to a time when Christ had not
yet been proclaimed in the world.

My first march was a short one from Kangan to a little place that bore
the name of Panzin. Of late, the luxury of a long morning under the
flap of my tent, the comfort of a warm bed, had led me into evening marches ;
but here I returned to the only right hour for the traveller.

For the world is fresh at this hour, the flowers so happy for the night's
repose, and the cool dews of the morning. And this is the time to see sights ;
for all good travellers march at dawn. And then there is the long day of
enjoyment before one, the leisure of noon and light slumber under the trees,
the knowledge that for many hours of rest and physical satisfaction, to
which all yield, there need be no further claim upon one's energy.

My camp was pitched in a grove of four chinar trees whose resplendent
boughs yielded a mighty shade. All through the hours and into the
shadows of evening they sheltered me completely from the sun. The colonies
of chaffering rooks and hooded crows which frequent these trees, stole in
and out of the hoUows in their trunks ; and as I lay there at their feet and
looked up through their green-gold foliage past the silken-grey of their

T 14S

146 THE CHARM OF KASHMIR

boughs to the tracery of blue sky far above me, I passed for a season from
all other preoccupations into this other world.

Yet about me the quiet scenes and normal incidents of the country-
side might well have engrossed my attention. In and out making deli-
cious curves amidst the trees was a little stream, whose purpose in life it is
to water the village acres, and at this season they drink deep of its bounty ;
for the young rice— green as an emerald— needs all that the stream can give
it. Wherever the waters meandered there were Pollard Willows, and at
intervals miniature glades and grassy spaces where the young cattle found
pasture. There was thus a touch of infancy about this corner. In the
glade nearest to me, the calves and the little black kids browsed in the care
of the village children, and at noon I found them all dozing together in a
group under a Mulberry tree, which had taken up its abode here in the

company of the willows.

There were hills and mountains too, some of them veined and splashed
with snow ; but they seemed afar off in the summer haze and made no
claim upon my attention. Yet upon one I traced the outlines of a Marg,*
which might appeal by its seclusion and loveliness to one who had work
to accompHsh, or merely a desire to be alone. It was uplifted upon the
summit of a hill that was difficult of access, and I presently learnt from
Mahamdoo that it was known as Mohan Marg.

The name is familiar to every one who has read Kailhana's Chronicle
of the Kings of Kas'mir, in the version of Sir Aurel Stein. For it was here
upon this upland meadow, over the space of a dozen years, that he accom-
plished his translation of the Raja-Tarangini with a romantic thoroughness.
When you think of that strikingly interesting record of events in Kashmir,
from the days when Asoka hved and Alexander's fame and influence were
still bright in Northern India, of its tales of those who fought for the posses-
sion of this jewelled valley, and of those who " full of ambition set out from
it for the conquest of the world," of the pride of the craftsman that fills it
as of one conscious, like the old Roman poet, that Immortality is for him
alone to bestow ; and then turn as I did by the way-side chance of a tra-

* " The Margs are beautifiU stretches of turf which ringed round with great Forests lie at
an elevation of from 7000 to 9000 feet above the sea."

TOWARDS HARAMUKH 147

veUer passing the sultry noon, to that lonely meadow high up in the hills,
where a quiet scholar with the same pride in his craft, laboured upon this
old Sanskrit record and presented it with such perfection of attainment to
the European world, you cannot help knowing that there is romance in
such things as well as in Love and Adventure and in the stirring
things of Life.

For " We pay reverence," so runs the chronicle " to that naturally
sublime craft of poets without whose favour even mighty kings are not
remembered, though the earth, encircled by the oceans, was sheltered under the
shadow of their arms as in the shade of forest trees.

" Without thee, O brother composer of true poetry, this world does not even
in its dreams know of the existence of those Ornaments of the Earth who once
rested their feet on the temples of elephants, who possessed wealth, and in whose
palaces maidens dwelt, moons of the day.

" Without thee the Universe is blind."

But the man who was content to spend so many summers in the seclu-
sion of this upland Marg, whence, as he writes, almost the whole of Kashmir
lay before him " from the ice-capped peaks of the Northern Range to the
long snowy line of the Pir Pantsal," became something more than a
scholar, and it may be that the restraint and the outlook helped to carry
him on to those greater adventures which have since placed him amongst
the men of action of our time.

By a singular coincidence, this chance halting-place under the chinars
of Panzin, brought me also across the foot-prints of another man whose
name is engraved upon the history of Kashmir. For as the evening grew
the VUlage Headman came and sat by the brook, and conversed about
his fields.

"Sir," he said, "since Laren we have had great peace. He came
walking along this very road on his way to Wangat, and I stood before him.
thus, with folded hands, and said :

'"Huzoor, here is great zulm; yon field is mine, but another from the
next village, who has friends at court, has stolen it from me ' ;

" and Laren said, 'What is your name ? '. and I said Sobhana the son
of Futto. and he put it down in his note book ; and then he said.

148 THE CHARM OF KASHMIR

" • What is the name of your field ? '

" and I laughed and said, ' Huzoor, they call my field Bamjoo,'

" And he put that also in his book, but said no more and took his way ;
and lo ! in the fullness of days when the Settlement was accomplished, my
field was given back to me, a-nd Justice was done."

" And who was Laren ? " I enquired —

" Laren," he replied, " was the great Sahib who made the Settlement ;
the friend of all Zemindars. Since his time a deep confidence has settled
upon our hearts. It was he who said ' O Wise Ones do not part with your
lands for they will one day become gold.' "

Some of the other farmers of the neighbourhood had by now quietly
joined our party. When the Headman had finished his tale, they echoed it
with evident sincerity.

"It is true," they said, " Laren was our great benefactor and our
children's children will remember his name."

" Sir," they added with the grace of humility, " we know well that we
have many faults. We perceive that the evil of untruth is in our hearts ;
and in the past our sins and our shortcomings have brought upon us heavy
misfortunes ; but we rely upon the clemency of God. What is written is
written."

The Kashmiri is much abused as an altogether vile and worthless fellow,
and he has been treated in the past by his hard task-masters as of less account
than a dog. But here were gratitude and admission of sin, and that abiding
faith in the compassion and mercy of God which is written so deeply upon
the Moslem mind.

Night fell, balmy and warm after the sharp cold of Baltal, and I sat
in the open under the sky, speculating upon the careers of these two
men, who have won fame beyond all other white men in Kashmir, and
wondering which of them would survive the longer. The written thing
remains ; yet is the verbal memory of the East a wonderful thing, and the
name of Lawrence, who gave the unfortunate Kashmiri peasant his rights,
is written imperishably upon their hearts.

It was a starry night, and the great Northern Stars shone directly over
my lamp. Upon the hill-sides gleamed like fire-flies the encampments of

TOWARDS HARAMUKH 149

the herdsmen moving to the upland pastures, and even in the darkness of
night were visible the mountains, darker than the sky, while the far snow-
touched Dolomites were a pale sapphire scarcely distinguishable from the
firmament overhead. The cicadas beat their drums across the rice-fields,
the night wind murmured in the branches of the chinar trees above me
(" planted by some Wali or Badshah of by-gone days ") — ^the little brook
more vocal than in the day purled in musical cadences before the door of
my tent.

the bones of their dead." sir Aurel Stein.

CHAPTER XII

THE TEMPLES OF VANGAT

For two or three miles beyond Panzin my way lay through the village
lanes, amidst walnut trees and willows and hazels, with a great forest of
pine and spruce rising high above it on the mountain slopes. This was no
high-road, but a little by-way of the people, rough and uneven, a
natural part of the hill-side. The wild briar and the white jasmine scented
it, and pink roses, yellow jasmines, and wild honey-suckle, with the lilac
tints of some common brushwood, lent it colour. Every now and then
it crossed a brook which came babbling over moss-green boulders the
very image of unfettered life, while by its side there ran an olive-hued canal,
secret and silent, the tutored servant of man.

Presently the path crossed over to the other side of the valley of the
Kankanai by a rough bridge made by the villagers, and there became part
of the ancient track that has been followed for upwards of two thousand
years by the pilgrims of Haramukh. But time has not softened its asperi-
ties. It is possible indeed that the pilgrim likes an arduous path. The
sun glared on it, and there were no deep woods to yield it shade.

So, ever ascending the valley above the white foaming river, we passed
through Vangat the last Kashmiri hamlet, where the Bakarwals with
their slim pretty women on horseback were collected about the village
fountain in the course of their own way-faring.

Beyond this point there spreads a wilderness of dark woods and moun-
tains, the haunt of migratory shepherds and herdsmen, and of a few half-
nomad Gujars whose mighty buffaloes crowd the foot- way, while here and
there a field of Indian corn planted by them, marks the beginning of their
recent settlements. Here in the shelter of the pines I found a flock

151

152 THE CHARM OF KASHMIR

of two thousand sheep in the care of the chaupans or professional shepherds,
while their anxious owners who had ridden up on ponies from the distant
vale, with salt for their sheep and rice for the shepherds, hovered about on
the outskirts. About their new fields the Gujars were assembled with
staves, ready to inflict punishment upon trespassers from the flock, and
of these foreign men the Kashmiri Chaupans were visibly afraid.

In the midst of these patriarchal scenes as of a world that was yet
barely emerging from its pastoral state, I came as if by a miracle upon the
classic walls and time-softened harmonies of one of the ancient temples
of Kashmir. The passing of many centuries and the cruel fanaticism of a
people who with each change of religion strove to destroy all traces of their
own storied past, had wrought their will upon the temple and its courts,
its enclosing walls and secret altars. The Gujars were extending their
fields into its innermost precincts ; and within the sanctuary I found a group
of Bakarwals passing the noon-tide, cooking a meal. Tlie domed roof of
the temple was black and scorched with the flames of many such bivouacs,
and the Gujars who in their turn hate and fear the Bakarwals, complained
that they insisted, in violation of the orders of the State, in treating it as
a way-side sarai.

Every trace of carving and relief, every outline of a God, had vanished
from the temple. Its walls were shaken and disjointed, its roof was bare of
the carved stone that once graced it, and young trees and shrubs were
sprouting from its interstices.

Yet how beautiful it still looked with its half Doric grace, and classic
purity of line, in the midst of all these symptoms of decay ; and how its
grey-blue stones still dominated as with the intellect of man, the forests and
the mountains and the valleys !

Hard by it in a grove of pines that soughed and whispered in the wind,
my camp was pitched within sound of the hastening river, and within sight
of blue-green glades and vistas of fir trees, and mountain tops still splashed
with snow.

This temple is the loftiest of the group which in by-gone days made
their appeal to the reverent pilgrim, seeking amongst these wilds to pene-
trate the Mystery of God. Below it upon a lower level there spreads a

SHEEP IN THE ANCIENT TEMPLES.

THE TEMPLES OF VANGAT 153

wide extent of buildings now involved in hopeless decay. The roofs of these
lower temples have fallen in, and of other buildings little but the mighty
bases of pillars and columns remains.

One of these suggests an open Forum or pillared Hall. The colossal
character of the stone-work is evident in the blocks of granite which lie
scattered about, and at one place there is a water-trough some fifteen feet
long and half as broad, which is cut from a single stone. The surface of
the granite on the temple walls where the rain drips and water lodges is
worn like the soft stone of an Oxford College, and crumbles to the touch.
Scarcely a trace of ornament survives ; but here and there upon a stone,
built in by later hands into the court-yard wall, there is the design of the
sacred goose and scroll, which in almost an exact counterpart I have seen
upon the walls of Manuha's palace at Pagan three thousand miles from
Kashmir.

The precincts of the temple are bright with the pale yellow bloom of
a species of elder, whose faint perfume pervades the air, while the pink
wild-rose droops in her beauty over the shattered domes ; destroyer and
beautifier in one.

Beside these lower buildings and across the strip of road upon which
the wandering herdsmen pass with their multitudinous flocks, there is the
spring of pure water, the Naran-Nag, which first gave this place its being
Its waters are collected in a wide four-square pool of cut and fashioned
stone, and they are of that pellucid and exquisite tint which belongs only
to such pools in the mountain arcana of India. Part of the pool's surplus
flows down to the grassy valley and so to the white foaming river; part
emerges soundless from under the massive walls, and flows on beneath the
altars and foundations of the temples.

Who can doubt that it was this natural fountain, itself the home of a
God, which first appealed to the builders of the temples ? The place is
stamped with antiquity, and breathes the sentiment of classic times. Its
beauty appeals to all, and the wonders of the massive architecture make a
profound impression upon the minds of the wandering herdsmen.

" Were these Men, Sir, or Gods, who built these wonderful monuments ? "
more than one of them has enquired of me.

154 THE CHARM OF KASHMIR

But we know very well that they were men, for the chronicle of Kailhana,
less perishable than granite, bears record of their origin, and of the Kings
and Princes who visited them in their prime. From it we learn that the
Greeks having been driven from the land by the Emperor Jalauka, Asoka's
son, erected the first of these stone temples by the sacred pool and the waters
of the Kankanai. His successors lavished upon the spot their liberality
and their devotion. Thus the king Lalitaditya, " returning from the con-
quest of the world," presented it with a fabulous sum as an expiatory offering
for having left his favoured Kashmir for the lands of the impure barbarians,
and built here a lofty temple of stone. And here a more terrible event
occurred by the edge of the sacred pool in the days of Avantivarman the
King. For when he came to worship at the shrine of Shiva he saw that the
temple-priests had placed upon the altar of the God, the base offering of a
wild herb of bitter taste. When he turned, indignant, upon them to ask
the reason for this offence, they threw themselves on the ground and spoke

with hands folded.

" 7n the Lahara distnct, O King, there lives a powerful Damara, Dhanva
by name, who is attached to your minister Sura, and treated by him like a son.

" This Damara whose power is unrestrained, has taken away the villages
that belong to the shrine, and it is thus that we can offer to Bhutesa only this

oblation."

The king left in the midst of the ritual as though he had not heard
what he had heard, but his Minister the crafty Sura was quick to perceive
the gravity of the matter. Hastening to the temple of Bhairava, which
still survives half buried in the earth beside the pool, he sent messenger
after messenger to bring up his favourite Dhanva, and

" When that fierce Damara came at last before Sura, he made the earth
shake with the tramp of his host of foot-soldiers, and did not bend his

back.

" As soon as he had entered, armed men, at the order of Sura, cut off his

head while he was yet alive, in front of the image of Bhairava.

" The wise Sura, who had thus removed the king's displeasure, then went
out after having the body from which the blood was pouring forth, thrown into
the tank close by" —

THE TEMPLES OF VANGAT 155

The king then rose from his couch and completed his worship.

Perhaps the most beautiful hour in which to look upon these relics
of a by-gone day, — amidst which for so many centuries men fought and
slew each other, now with the keen edge of the sword, now with the subtler
blade of the tongue ; amidst which they dreamt and meditated and wor-
shipped, seeking their Unknown God — is at evening when a great peace
falls upon the valley, and the last rays of sunlight still linger on the distant
mountains, bathing their green and purple in harmonies of pale gold, and
lifting their snow-touched summits, like altars up to the threshold of Heaven.
The place is then wrapped in a sort of benediction, as though the souls of
all these erring creatures had been finally taken to rest.

" Whose head in wintry grandeur towers
And whitens with eternal sleet
While summer in a vale of flowers
Is sleeping rosy at his feet."

Lalla Bookh.

Jskk]L\

CHAPTER XIII
TRONKHAL BY HARAilUKH

I LEFT Naran-nag for the long climb to Tronkhal by Haramukh at an early
hour, scarce after four. The valley of the Kankanai lay wrapped in sleep,
yet lightsome with the first faint traces of the coming dawn. Road there
was none, but there was the moimtain-side abrupt and precipitous, up which
the pilgrims cUmb with the patient ardour and zeal of those in pursuit of
an ideal.

It is a hard road ; yet it offers an ever-widening view of the Vangat
valley, of the ruins which still grace it, and of the high world of shining
peaks and ice-laden gorges, that expand before the pilgrim as he draws up
to a level that consorts with their majesty. Here the serrated Dolomites
look down upon the snowy sources of the valley, here is the Matterhorn-
like peak of Kolahoi with its glaciers beyond the far valley of the Sind,
here in mighty array are the snowy peaks and glaciers and sierras which
people this upland worid. Yet again as he climbs, the view spreads far
across the vale of Kashmir to the white emblems and standards of the Pir
Pantsal. And then, a turn of the road, and this passmg vision is concealed
behind the shoulder of the grass-clad mountain up which it climbs,
and the view looking down upon the Kankanai and its tributaries is one
of intense colour, the deepest blues and greens and violets, such as are
never seen in the outer Himalaya. Far down in this mist of peacock
loveliness, the stream foams white as silver, its roar coming up to the summits
only as the vague and distant murmur of some great city.

But there is neither city nor hamlet in this deep valley. It is the abode
of solitude, and the haunt of the great eagles, whose gliding pinions lend
it its only symptom of life.

167

158 THE CHARM OF KASHMIR

Upon the upland meadows along which the track wanders, there are
ponies at grass and mares with their whinnying foals, and soon now there
will be flocks of white sheep by the thousand, established here for the hot
summer that follows close upon the heels of winter. Already the snow has nearly
gone, lying here and there only in drifts, and in its place there are fields of
flowers of the brightest hues ; Primulas of violet, pink, and rose ; Anemones,
white and violet black ; Gentians and other coloured beauties, while in
their midst the butterflies flit more lovely than the flowers. Soon there
will be here the blue Himalayan Poppy that blooms only at these great
altitudes.

And then one turns the corner, and there is the visible majesty of
Haramukh, grey and snow-white and austere, with his blue gleaming glaciers
falling in tumult towards Gungabal. Here at his feet, the world is stem
and worn with the stress of Winter. The snow still lies upon the higher
Downs, and from these, vast cataracts of stone descend with no touch of
earth to lend them grace. Yet the listening ear may hear beneath their
chaos the murmur of water hastening on its way to the forests and the
meadows and the sea. Here amidst sentinel firs and twisted birch trees,
in the company of birds and flowers and upon the lush teeming grass, we
make our camp under a sky of stainless blue, while far above the summit
of Haramukh, the great eagles and the vultures wing their leisured and
lordly flight.

*. *
*

Towards evening the scene is changed. A storm blows up, the sky
becomes dark with a great army of flying clouds, and the thunder roars
like a battle about the majesty of Haramukh. Snow falls upon all the
adjacent mountains, and Haramukh withdraws behind a veil of snow and
mist. An old Roman here would have heard in the tumult the angry voice
of the God, invaded in the privacy of his innermost retreats ; and it is indeed
in this light that the pilgrims who toil up here from the thoroughfares of
distant cities, regard the superb and invincible mountain. None to this
day believe that his summit is approachable by human feet.

TRONKHAL BY HARAMUKH 159

Alone in the company of the great mountain and of the dark over-
shadowing woods, one can enter with sympathy into such beliefs ; and
there must be times in mid-winter when no human voice is heard in these
precincts, and the great Peak is the nexus of terrible storms, when they
must acquire a terrific reality.

But at this season of early summer one is not long alone even here.
Over the sky-line this forenoon, as I looked for my struggling coolies and
baggage, there came a small horde of Bakarwals, with their flocks and
their ponies, their tents, their women, and their children, and presently
established themselves in the woods below me. I was glad to see them
arrive ; but when, as is customary, I sent my man over to their camp for
some goat's milk, they gave him harsh words and sent him back discomfited.

" The milk we have here to-day," they said with loud exclamations,
" we require for ourselves and our women and our children, and if the
Maharajah himself sent for some we should refuse to let him have it; go
to, and tell this to your Sahib."

In such circumstances a personal interview is desirable, so I went out
into the rain to the Bakarwal camp. Their fires were lit, some tents were
already up, and the men gathered about me under the dripping firs, while
the large-eyed women looked on, and the children wedged themselves in
wherever there was space.

" I have come to you," I said, " for a cup of milk."

" Sir," they said, " it is impossible ; the great herd has gone on a
day's march, and all there is we keep for ourselves — we can give you
none."

" Nevertheless," I replied, " I claim a cup of it," They looked at me
with a frank interest. It was clear that someone must give way. They
looked at one another ; their eyes wandered to my encampment, to the
grey sky above, to the'falling rain. They gave way.

" Go, Sir," said the spokesman of the tribe, " return to your tent ;
stand here no longer in the rain ; and when our goats come in you shall
have the milk you desire. Is not all that we have yours ? "

A few minutes later the light before my tent door was darkened by a
rough figure, who might have been Abraham himself with his flowing robes

i6o THE CHARM OF KASHMIR

and blankets of sheep's wool, and in his two hands there was a foaming
bowl of two quarts of milk.

Thereupon he sat before me and conversed for an hour, telling
me of his homestead in Rampur, and his love for the free wandering life
on the mountains, the zest of changes of scene and water.

" Only one thing is there that we fear, Sir," he said, " and that is your
Law " ; and he spoke with a grave earnestness, as one who felt himself up
against a mysterious and invisible force.

" Do not think. Sir," he went on, " that we are wild people, careless
of comfort. We carry tents and sleep upon warm blankets. Our lives are
precious to us. And we are not alone — ^like you. We carry our wives
and children with us, even the 'Nikka-shukas,' the little ones. This is our
Home," and he swept a glance at the blue smoke and the tents of his people
under the trees.

He would take no payment, and he moved off with the air of a freeman,
who had been a guest. When he had gone some way, the cook called
after him to return and take payment ; but he waved him off.

" Thy Master," he said, " is a Sahib, and for the milk I have offered
him from my heart, I take no price. See to it, O cook ! that thou dost not
enter it in thy account, and so cheat him and dishonour me."

The night fell darkly, and long after the stars had issued I could see
the fires of the Bakarwal encampment, and hear the faint cries of their
children. Nearer about me my own followers were gathered about a fire
of great blazing logs, warming their hands, happy after the day's toil, and
heedless of the cold and rain.

How can one be ungrateful to any of these people, who do so much for
one, and are so willing to follow where they are led ? I know how much they
are abused, but for my part let it be said here that I like these people, and
would willingly forget their faults.

CHAPTER XIV

NUND KOL

This was a great day for me, the memory of which must long survive in
my recollection. As I left my camp at Tronkhal, I found a party of Gujars
with their wives, children, ponies, and a herd of slate-hued buffaloes
assembled on a hillock, to which they had come over night from the Vangat
Valley. Crowded here together under the birch trees, the snow lying all
about them and Haramukh resplendent beyond, they looked the very type
of the nomad, seeking each day a new home. A stream flowing through
great boulders lay across my path. From the green hill beyond it I took
a last view of my camp below in the midst of the dark-pointing fir trees,
of the Bakarwals moving slowly across the scene, and of the mighty world
beyond, blue and snow-white, pinnacle after pinnacle, in a vast arc that
culminated in the noble outlines of Kolahoi. And as I looked upon this
great scene, a horseman came pricking across the downs at a good speed,
and climbing up to the height upon which I stood revealed the features of
the fine fellow I had talked with before my tent. He was in search he said
of a pony that had strayed, and seeing me he had come to say farewell. —
His tall form seated well in the saddle, while with one hand he sheltered his
eyes as he searched the horizon for his missing animal, — ^the whole bulk
and grandeur of Haramukh behind him — made a superb picture, as of
some Bedawin who had migrated from his desert sands to this world of
glaciers and fields of snow.

He bade me adieu and galloped off upon his quest.

Once more the horizon was void of life, as climbing a massive down that
was like a whale with a white dorsal fin of snow, I descended to the bed of
the stream that flowed between it and its neighbour across the valley. There,

X 161

i62 THE CHARM OF KASHMIR

were no trees here and the landscape was grey and forlorn, with barren
mountains splashed with snow encircling it in the direction of my advance.
It may be as we are told that all impressions of nature are illusive, and that
we project the thoughts of our own minds upon the world about us ; yet
the woodlands always seem to me as much alive, as this grey world about
the slopes of Haramukh seemed to me dead and miserable ; the scene of
some great tragedy.

The ' Morne plaine ' of Victor Hugo kept coming to my lips. . . .

The scene was changed with dramatic swiftness as I reached the summit
of the next ridge, for from there under its dorsal line of snow, I found a
thousand sheep, moving as one across the sunlit grass to the shouts and cries
of the shepherds and their wives ; while below them shimmering in the
breeze there spread a forest of birch trees, green with the splendour of the
spring. Far down at the bottom of the valley murmured a silver stream,
spanned at intervals by a still surviving arch of snow, and as I followed
its winding course, I saw that it came swiftly down from the heights beyond
me, and passed under the beauty of the Birch woods to the shadowy velvet
of the valley below. It was the Kankanai. And here again the splendour
of Haramulch rose up with an almost conscious arrogance far above the
world of detailed beauty at his feet.

The Head-shepherd upon seeing me came hastening to where I stood,
and lifting his voice high in lamentation threw himself prostrate at my feet.

" Justice ! Justice ! " he called out, " Woe ! Woe ! ; the Gujars
have beaten me, they have carried off my blankets by force, and the bridles
of my ponies," and with this he set to and began beating himself violently
about the face, while the tears streamed down his unwashed cheeks.

Thus I learnt that in these far uplands might is right, that here as the
saying goes ' The Mountain is the magistrate and the Pine is the policeman,'
and that in the battle for these pasture lands the weaker or the less brave go
to the wall. According to the Gujar who has recently built a summer hut
in the forests, all these grazing grounds are his, and the Chaupan is a tres-
passer to be beaten and evicted by violent means. According to the Chaupan,

NUND KOL 163

the Gujar is a foreign intruder upon his ancestral pastures, and a brute who
resorts to force in defiance of what is right. The White Man who appears
over the rim of the horizon, is thus .converted upon the instant into a Court
of Appeal,

From these scenes of rivalry and theatrical despair, I came once more
to the deep soUtudes of Nature ; but here enwrapped in loveliness, for at
the next rise the little lake of Nund Kol lay before me, translucent, edged
with flowers, and flecked with ice-floes ; yet a mirror for the splendour of
Haramukh and his superb descending cataracts of ice.

And here my tent was pitched, its very floor carpeted with flowers,
upon which it had been unfeeling — ' be dardi ' as the Emperor Jahangir
observed upon a like occasion — ^to have spread a carpet.

The Lake is a long narrow water shaped like an hour-glass. Upon
the south it is bordered by one of those great dorsal fins which reach out
from the base of Haramukh into the valley, and is here enveloped in snow,
save where the lateral ribs of rock descending to the lake show black against
its whiteness. At the Lake's back there is the whole stupendous mass of
Haramukh and his falling glaciers. Its northern bounds are free from snow,
and of a velvet green where the young grass is shooting forth. Upon the
east the surplus of the lake finds an exit over a bar into the stream of the

Kankanai.

* *

It is while sitting here absorbed in this view that spreads before me
from under the flap of my tent, that I am invited by the God of
Travel to look upon a scene of astonishing charm and originality ; some-
thing that I have never seen before ; for as the day advances, the shepherds
and their flocks driven by the wrath of their enemies embark upon an exodus,
and I am to witness their passage of the waters. They have come slowly
after me over the great ridges, their sheep bleating, their lambs filling the
air with cries, their dogs barking, and their women afoot ; and they have
travelled so far without mishap. But here they are stayed by the shining
waters of the Lake, and the violence and depth of the stream that leaves it
to fall into the roaring valley. One by one they come to a pause and assemble

i64 THE CHARM OF KASHMIR

in distress upon a bare promontory, uncertain how to proceed. The shep-
herds decide that the stream cannot be forded, and that the only course is
to make the wide circuit of the lake. And thus for the space of three hours
the scene is enacted before me.

Slowly the flock moves forward in single file, ever lengthening across
the white lustre of the snow, furrowing its smooth surface ; the picture of
a beaten and evicted people. Where the grass grows under the ribs of rock
and the birch trees cluster, there they wait and cluster together, the bolder
complacent, the more timid with their necks bent low, and their noses
laid in dejection against the wall of snow. The shepherds coming up induce
them with many cries to move forward, and so they pass on once more in
a single line across the snow fans which fall from the glacier's edge to the
waters of the Lake. They look here like ants upon a white surface, and so
numerous are they that their leading files have accomplished the circuit
before the last of the flock where it took shelter by the birch trees have begun
to move.

Above these humble creatures, which seem conscious of trespassing
into the midst of cold and terrible arcana, there towers up into heaven a
mountain seventeen thousand feet in height, the home of a God, whose
majestic head is crowned with perpetual snow. One breath of his wrath
would scatter them and fling them into the ice-cold waters, upon whose
calm the floes and bergs sail with a serene indifference. Every incident
— ^the moving flock, the falling cataracts of ice — is faithfully mirrored in
the surface of the Lake.

The flock had passed in safety and were at grass upon the lush meadows
where the primulas and the buttercups bloom, when the day turned, and
the sunlit morning became enveloped in the clouds and thunders of evening.
Haramukh above his glaciers was veiled in tragic forms which climbed up
and encompassed him about like an invading army. I felt that here were
epic contests, and the strivings of a world of which I had no more than a
surface impression.

Near at hand a big stream from Gungabal came raging over boulders

THE JTLOCK AT PEACE.

NUND KOL 165

and gigantic rocks, and the sound of its action was like a base under-
tone to which the hfe of this valley was attuned ; while beyond it with a
greater pomp and mystery of sound was heard the blowing of the storm
high up amidst the caverns and pinnacled recesses of the mountain.

The Lake itself was but the humble slave of the God, the reflection of
his moods ; now a sheet of silver in which his grey ribs and sun-clad summits
were imaged ; now an angry water driven by dark and mysterious passions ;
and yet again a leaden and sombre thing, with no ray of joy or life upon

its face

* *

As night approached, I left the shelter of my tent to look about me.
How great was the change from the sunlight and splendour of the morning !
Great gulfs of mist were moving up the valley as from a cauldron, and the
edges of the clouds hung low and brooding over the little lake, hidden almost
completely now from sight. The soil under my feet as I walked towards
Gungabal was spongy with the winter snow and wet with rain, and the
sentiment of what I looked upon from the ridge above my tent, was of a
world that was emerging, but was scarcely yet emerged, from an earlier
state.

Gungabal spread gloomy and dark before me, and at one end his over-
flow formed the stream that was thundering down to the lower water.
The sodden earth was streaked with layers and folds of snow. Under the lea
of a large boulder the shepherds were seated, three men and three women—
the youngest of these a girl of striking and almost classical beauty, in a
faded pink robe that may have been her wedding gown. They sat here
heedless of the rain and the soaking earth beneath their feet. In a large
cauldron a lamb was seething, the property of some anxious farmer in the
vale. Across the stream where it emerged from Gungabal, two more shep-
herds were crossing to collect the flock amidst the snow and mists of the
mountain side. It was a scene of strange and savage desolation.

Cold impenetrable regions, where the snow never nnelts, nor disappears."

Alberuni.

LAKE LAND

CHAPTER XV

THE FROZEN WATERS

The rain made a sad night of it, but at dawn and for a brief hour after, the
little lake of Nund Kol, which I had left wrapped in mystery and a chill
reticent gloom, became a thing of radiant beauty. The morning sunlight
played fitfully on it, and it smiled, a creature of infantile lovelines, radiant
in exquisite harmonies, of white and silver where the glaciers of Haramukh
were mirrored on its surface ; of silk-like greens where the meadows on its
western shore reached down to its waters. Under the impulse of the morn-
ing breeze the ice-floes were sailing across it in a fairy procession ; some of
them like bergs of crystal purified of every taint. The sunlight played
on the snow-fields and cataracts of the mountain with a joyous effect, that
was heightened by the impenetrable gloom of his summits ; and at
my feet as I stood rejoicing at the elfin scene before me, there blossomed
by the edge of the Lake and its moving ships of ice, a small field of the most
vivid flowers, but newly come to birth.

I took my way to Gungabal, and there, upon a promontory, above its
outflowing waters, I found the whole flock of two thousand sheep, whose
exodus and circuit of the little lake had so engrossed my attention the
previous day, assembled, bleating and moving restlessly, as though awaiting
their orders for the day.

Nor were these long in coming. The old shepherd and his pretty
women disengaged themselves from the flock, and forded the river across
to where I was standing ; while the younger shepherds whistling and calling
to their sheep moved off like a cloud to the upland pastures. I knew not
upon which of these groups to bestow my principal attention ; the flock
in its multitudinous beauty moving against the marvellous background

167

i68 THE CHARM OF KASHMIR

of glaciers and the organ-like pillars of the mountain, or the women, followed
by a single ewe, slowly crossing the blue and sparkling river whose waters
circled and played about their knees. For it was as though some one had
given a signal for the scene of almost still life, which met my gaze as I came
over the crest of the hill, to break up into the most lively and enchanting
beauty in movement.

It was with a sigh of regret that I turned away at last on the comple-
tion of these leisured scenes, to the fulfilment of my journey. My path
now lay along the edge of Gungabal, and from there rapidly passed up the
steep side of the mountain, from which the whole circuit and environment
of the lake were visible. It seemed to my fancy like Garda in miniature,
with its low shores at one end and its fiord of deep blue water at the other ;
and more than once as I stopped in my climb to look down upon the end
of the lake, I was reminded of that incomparable Italian water. Yet how great
were the differences which marked this similarity ; one, a little mountain
tarn, white upon its floor with dead men's bones, and wrapped in solitudes
that weigh almost painfully upon the spirit ; the other endeared to one by
so many human and cherished associations, the home of Catullus and of
Vergil ; one, for all its littleness, ennobled by the overshadowing majesty
of one of the great mountains of the world, the dread home of a God ; the
other, for all its sea-like expanse and tumult of waters, bordered by heights
which however beautiful and inspiring, rise to little more than a thousand
feet ! I could not help wishing — since it is in such desires that Art is born
— that I could rearrange some of these natural scenes ; by adding to the
Italian lake the splendours of Haramukh, and to this secret Himalayan
water some touch of human emotion.

As I looked down upon Gungabal and its slate-blue hues, I was charmed
once more by the passage across it of the ice-floes, and I could see from this
vantage point, how, in advance of each floe and berg as it was driven by
the breeze behind it, there was a passage way of calm upon the rippling sur-
face of the lake. My attention was rather drawn to these lesser beauties, from
the fact that the morning was by now heavily overcast with clouds, behind
which I could only faintly discern the superb panorama of icy-peaks
and mountain chains which, upon a more fortunate occasion, must have

THE FROZEN WATERS 169

greeted my eyes. As it was, the mists came drifting down the mountain-
side enveloping me, and my last impression of Gungabal was of a grey
sadness, over which a pair of cuckoos went flying, singing their woodland
notes, till they also were engulfed in the fathomless mist.

Thus might the souls of lovers be swept into the dread mists of Acheron,

I was by now far up the mountain, plodding slowly through the snow
which still lay in masses upon it, when I came upon Lolgool, white, solitary,
and still as death. No bird sang here, no flowers had yet begun to bloom,
no tree nor shrub nor patch of grass graced its borders. No life moved
within its precincts. The snow swept down to its rim in sheets and folds of
Whiteness. Yet the sentiment was not of Death but of life held in suspense ;
the legend of the Sleeping Beauty.

A fortnight earlier there could have been no hint of an awakening ;
but at the moment of my visit, there were visible, when the first impression
had worn away, faint signs and traces of coming life. The central whiteness
of the pool was marked with circles and sweeping curves, where the icy
mass was breaking up, and upon its fringe it was manifest that Winter
was reluctantly yielding his grip. The ice here had broken from its moor-
ings, and the ivory surface of the lake was ringed about with a narrow
border that was half ice, half pale clear water ; while at the far end, where
its surplus seeks an exit in mid-summer, there was an open pool of exquisite
lustre in which I could trace at once the stones and pebbles of its floor, and
the snow-white forms of the mountains that were imaged in it.

The sky was grey and overcast, and the white mists enclosed the arena
of the lake, now blowing down to its edge and half concealing its beauty,
now lifting as though to display it ; while here and there the still, opaque,
sheets and masses of snow gleamed with a sudden and burnished radiance
as of silver, where the light of Day was concentrated for an instant through
the lifting mists.

I turned from this unlooked-for scene, devoid of all human associations,
and climbed up the steep and difficult path to the summit of the hill before
me, to find there a wall that wandered across the Col from crest to crest,
with a manifest fear as of Someone who was seeking to enter from
without.

lyo THE CHARM OF KASHMIR

It would seem in truth that in by-gone days this wall served some
purpose of defence: that men with hearts beating crouched behind it,
looking for those who would come over this roof of the world, to ravage the
smiling vale behind, that men died here, that the crimson and white were
mingled, and that Lolgool carried the burden of the dead.

The view that met me on reaching the crest of the Col was in startling
contrast with that which I had left behind. For at the foot of the great
snow slide that swept a thousand feet below me, there spread a blue-green
valley full of birch trees, with dark enclosing mountains about it, and a
view of peak after peak to the crowning summit of all ; the far-famed Nanga

Parbat.

It seemed as though I had naught to do now but glide upon the snow,
and follow the emerging river into the beauties of the valley. But
I was soon to find that the principal difficulties of my journey still lay

before me.

The Snow lay soft and deep under foot, truculent, engulfing ; and it
all but swallowed for ever the unfortunate pony who accompanied me. It
was with no little difficulty that he was extricated from its toils, only to
fall into them once more, after, with trembling limbs, he had travelled
a short way. This process was continued, until we eventually reached a
grassy knoll where I stopped to rest, but there were moments when he lay
helpless in the snow and unable to move, and when it seemed that his life
must come to an end. He appeared to be unaware however of his escape,
for he fell-to without delay upon the grass.

I passed an hour here upon this island, looking down, on the one hand,
upon Sirbal white with ice, but a week or two nearer his escape from the
rigours of winter than Lolgool ; and upon his pools which mirrored with a crystal
definition the glaciers and masses of rock above him. For a brief space
also I could trace the little stream which bore away his surplus waters,
sparkling over the pebbles, only to fall once more in its descent under the
dominion of the snow. Upon my other hand I could see these waters emerging
and flowing across a small oval plain, that was in its time also a lake ; but
is now become a meadow, marshy in places, beautiful in others with flowers
and the loops and curves of the meandering stream. Here was the Vale of

THE FROZEN WATERS 171

Kashmir in miniature and the winding course of the Vetasta perfectly
exempUfied.

I spent here a bhssful hour of repose after the strivings of the forenoon ;
while a little lark singing above Sirbal was the only creature that had life
in the vast circle of the world about me.

I had fancied when I reached the Col and looked down upon the blue-
green valley below me that all that remained for me was to go down to it
and accompany it on its way ; but I soon found that this was not the case.
For this was not the Erin valley for which I was bound, but another, and my
road lay up a steep and precipitous ascent to another pass some fourteen
thousand feet in height. Far in the distance like flies upon its white
wall I could see my coolies creeping with their loads, and all else about
me was a silent and snow-covered world.

I faced this new climb with reluctance, and I found it best to follow
without looking up towards the summit of the Pass, the footsteps
of those who had gone before me, and were now lost to sight. Yet the
slow plugging toil of the ascent was lightened for me by the exceeding
beauty of the snow, where it came from the great shoulders of Hara-
mukh, tumbling a thousand feet in dome-like cascades and fountains
of perfect form. Its surface was wrought into millions of fine lines
furrowed by the recent rain, and into ridges where the wind and sun
had played. Here also were miniature tarns that still lay helpless in
the grasp of winter, and I wondered if even at the height of summer they
ever saw the sky.

When at length I reached the Col up to which I had climbed for two
hours, and saw before me the straight wall of some twenty feet of snow
which marked its summit, I once more fancied that I should look from it
upon a land of Canaan smiling upon its other side ; but all that I saw was
a grey and bottomless pit of mist that seemed to have its birth in the very
bowels of the world.

The ridge was like a knife, and from it the snow fell almost vertically
down into this misty void. Down this strange place out of which there
came like voices from the nether world, the cries of the coolies, we
descended foot by foot, now down the perilous shaly slope, now upon the

172 THE CHARM OF KASHMIR

sliding snow, until, exhausted by the long day's way-faring we reached the
green and level vale of Chitridur. We had been twelve hours on the march.

Here set about with birch woods that were splashed with snow, and
enclosed upon all sides, save one, by the great heights from which we had
come, spread a scene of pastoral beauty. Across the peaty levels of
the vale, a river wandered in loops and curves, herds of ponies and brood
mares grazed, and flocks of white sheep flecked the grassy slopes. Here
were reproduced for me the sights and scenes of the Pla des Abeillans, that
one-time lake in the high Pyrenees that is now a level of turf, the haunt of
browsing cattle and of a meandering stream. The same causes have pro-
duced here the same result.

CHAPTER XVI

THE ERIN VALLEY

My camp was pitched by some freak of my people, three miles below the
Vale of Chitridur, where there are some Gujar huts, the first habitations of
the valley. But these were not yet occupied, and I had the mountain-side
to myself. Upon the soil where my tent was placed, there grew in abundance
the little but lovely purple flag, and a sort of black tulip. Beyond these
from my tent-door spread the valley, rapidly descending through dark
woods to the Wular lake, of which in the soft evening light, and under the
lifting clouds, I had an enticing vision. Beside me thundered the river,
eager, impetuous, green in its pools, white with foam in its cataracts.
Upon the farther bank there was a multitude of Birch trees, prostrate under
the assaults of winter, and nearer at hand upon a slope that was sheltered
by dark cypress-like firs, was a field of white Rhododendrons, fluttering
in the breeze. An armful of them strung together like a garland was brought
by Mahamdoo and suspended before my tent ; and there they revolved,
displaying their pink and white beauty and their mottled grace.

They were something of a solace too, for the sky overhead was grey with
clouds, and a fine continuous rain, that was worthy of the dear island whose
name the Valley bears, hid its vistas.

The night was dull and wet, and the morning unpromising. We set
out at noon down the valley ; but the rain fell with a deadly obstinacy,
and the footpath down the steep hill-side became all but impracticable.
We slipped and floundered upon its clayey surface, moving patiently foot
by foot; and each moment our burdens became heavier with the mud and
the rain.

Upon the great snowy uplands there was beauty and danger ; and in

173

i74 TME CHARM OF KASHMIR

a snow-storm there is always the possibility of death; but rain — such rain
as this— is like the lesser troubles of life, which wear upon the spirit without
rousing it to battle.

We arrived a sodden and dejected fraternity at Kodoora, the first
hamlet in the Erin valley. But here the sun broke upon us with a splendid
glow, the lane of sky above the valley became blue, and we pursued our
journey to the village of Sunt Mula, to find shelter there, and peace.

With the passing of the rain there came also the added charm of human
associations and human effort. The track which higher up had made our
progress so wearisome, smoothened and widened itself as we went. Ease-
ments in the form of little bridges spanned the brooks we had to cross ;
willows, walnuts, and slim young poplars added their grace to the dark
natural wood-land, and at Kodoora a Ziarat, or place of prayer, spoke of
man's strivings after communion with his God, and by its beauty and grace
of his love of craftsmanship. It had a sweet rural charm of its own, with its
balcony projecting over the millet fields, and its roof of green grass ; yet
by one coming up the valley from great centres, it might have been passed
unnoticed. To us who came upon it from tracts where Nature, cold
and menacing, scarce permits the presence of man, it was touching in its
whisper of the Soul.

Kodoora is the home of Gujars or cattle-herds, who within the past
dozen years have settled at this far end of the valley. At Sunt Mula
one is in Kashmir, and the types of the houses, the faces and forms of the
men and women, the very character of the people, are manifestly unlike
those at Kodoora two miles above. It is more than a surface distinction ;
for centuries of custom and tradition, and differences of race that are many
thousands of years old, , separate these people from each other.

'fr^H?.

THE SHEPHERD

CHAPTER XVII

CONCLUSION OF THE JOURNEY

And now my journey in the mountains is at an end. It is noon, and I am at
peace with the world, in a Mulberry grove whose fruit draws here the Golden
Orioles. Now and then one flies like a billow of gold in the sunlight, from
one tree to another ; now and then the slumberous silence is broken by the
liquid music of his note. From afar off, faintly, like voices from another
land, comes the refrain of the Weeders in the rice-fields as they work and
sing in unison. . . .

A breeze from Paradise blows through the branches of the trees,
tempering the noon

My journey is over, and in the sunlight yonder gleams the Wular, a
purple water. Beyond it my roving eyes can trace green fields and woods,
and the high azure and silver of the Pir Pantsal, which I have scarce
looked upon for a month.

The bees are humming, and half asleep I enjoy the repose of the way-
farer, the tranquil grace of a summer's day.

Now and then the people pass ; a lad with some sheep ; a man upon
his travels. , . . Simulacra of reality. What are they to me ?

Crossing the Wular. The boat moves through symphonies of mauve,
pursuing its placid timeless voyage across the satin water, where clouds
and mountains dream, and ponies wallow amidst lush meadows and marshes,
knee-deep amidst a blaze of flowers. Here is a carpet of gold under the

175

176 THE CHARM OF KASHMIR

purple mountains, and herons lazily flapping their wings as they fly. Here
the lake terns flit in their pied velvet jackets and sweeping tails amidst
the water-lilies, and the carrion eagles loom like islands above the expanse
of water. The surface of the Lake is a mirror, but with a pattern of its
own, where the singaras lie like lace upon its surface. The fishermen, lifting
their shining nets, fling the hapless fish that have been raped from the
shallows, to die in the cruel lustre of the sun. The island of Zain-ul-abi-
Din, with its ruins hidden under the wild vine, speaks of forgotten kings
and days reverted to the womb of time. Somewhere in the deeps there
is a city, like the doomed city of Ys, now lost to the sight of men. . . .

From things like these we pass to open water, and I am led to think that
there is no life like this silken life upon the waters of the valley. Half do I
regret that I ever left my House-boat for the hard road and the upland toil
of the mountains.

For this is Kashmir.

See the clouds, changing from moment to moment as they climb the
stairways of Heaven, throwing their shadows on the sun-lit blue of the
mountains, now white and opalescent as they expand, now grey and sombre
as they fill with rain above the silver crests of Apharwat.

See the long avenues of the far Highway, where the world passes as
in a dream ; the boats laden with people as they cross from shore to shore,
the cattle lowing to the plash of oars, the images of trees upon the shining
fringes of the lake, the patriarchal Chinar and the virginal Willow.

See how the great storms gather and blow upon the mighty uplands,
while here the gentle breeze kisses the up-turned face of the water.

This is the subtle, elusive, silken life of Kashmir.

This it is which makes the Happy Valley " the Paradise of the Indies."
Voluptuous and beautiful, a gliding dream ; a land for lovers ; a land in which
man can be happy, heedless of the hours, of the thronging World ; a land
that is for ever whispering through its zephyrs, its wavelets on the waters,
of love and dalliance and the careless enjoyment of life. Such is Kashmir.

The mountains beckon through the sun-haze, and the silver snows
call the dwellers of the valley to their immortal company as of the Gods
assembled ; but they say

.MUL.M.U.\ I'A.^i Li;

CONCLUSION OF THE JOURNEY 177

"No! our lot is here; here will we live in perpetual ease, in the slumber-
ous passion and enjoyment of life. Neither toil nor striving are for us,
for here is the fulfilment of Desire,"

Finis

Have conversation with the wind that goes
Bearing a pack of loveliness and pain :
The Golden exultation of the grain
And the last, sacred whisper of the Rose.

Abu'l-Ala.

EPILOGUE

In the preceding pages I have tried to describe the beauty and the charm
of Kashmir. I have not aimed at writing a comprehensive account of this
wonderful valley, that is unique in the world ; or of the great mountains
which encircle it ; or of its tragic history and vicissitudes ; or of the people
whose home it has been from immemorial days. Nor have I wished to
depict any more than I saw them, the shadows which darken the picture
of its grace. To some of them I have closed my eyes, as one closes them,
if one is wise, to the infirmities of those one loves. Yet I would not have it
thought that in this paradise there is no grief or sordidness or pain, for
that would be untrue to its life, as to that of all created things.

Alas ! if the record of Kashmir be read aright, it is a moving tale, of
human infirmity, of human sins ; and there are not many races in the world
upon whom the hand of Fate has been laid so heavily as upon those who
inhabit this, perhaps the fairest comer of the earth.

Kashmir in truth has paid the price of beauty, that ' fatal gift ' of which
the poets have sung from early time ; and she has paid it an hundred fold.
Those who have lived here have fallen under her caresses as men fell of old
tmder the wiles of Circe ; and those without, born under a ruder heaven,
have coveted her joys with a fierce desire, and have seized upon her treasuries
with unstinted hand. It is under the stress of such events that the character
of her people has been evolved ; and it is a character that is not noble or
beautiful, though deserving of sympathy and help from those who
have had a happier destiny. There have been times when the life of
a man in this land has been held of little more value than the life of a dog ;
when the fairest of its women — and its women have long been renowned
for their beauty— have been carried off not once or twice but generation

179 '

i8o THE CHARM OF KASHMIR

after generation " to fill the bagnios and the harems " of Hindustan. Neither
their lives, nor their property, nor their honour have been left to this
unfortunate pjeople in the past.

It is only of late, within the present generation and within the past
few years, that the clouds have lifted and that they have begun to raise
their heads from the dust of centuries of oppression ; and though they
know that this change has really come and is like to stay, they cannot yet
in their hearts believe in its duration. Children of light and of a land beauti-
ful beyond the dreams of ordinary men, a profound sadness is visible in
their eyes, and in the workings of their spirit ; and a great fear still lingers
in their hearts. This fear is extraordinary in its manifestations ; it assails
men of gigantic frame and energy, and I have myself wondered to see
such an one tremble all over his body (as a thorough-bred hunter may be
seen quivering by the covert-side when hounds are at work on a winter's
morning ; but with how different an emotion !) at the sound of an angry
voice. Such a fear and such memories, of necessity provoke qualities of
character and temperament upon which those whose past has been happier,
are prone to look down with anger and a measureless contempt ;
but even in these respects, a marked difference is visible even to
a careless eye, between the people of the fields and hamlets, and
those of the city, and between the former in their intercourse with each
other, and in their intercourse with those who are of the State, or who
come with an air of power and authority into their midst.

Beautiful also as is the country, its beauty is marred by some of the
habits of the people, by dirt and physical neglect. Even the beauty of the
women is hidden for the most part under sombre and unattractive garments,
as though experience had taught the race the virtue of concealment. Whether
from this or from other causes, even the existence of this famous beauty
is questioned by many observers.

" It is difficult," as some one has said, " for a woman to be beautiful " ;
and it has been made very difficult for her in Kashmir.

Certainly the men are often strikingly handsome ; and there are no
childiien in the world with brighter eyes or prettier faces than those of the
valley of Kashmir.

EPILOGUE i8i

The farmers and country people, since Sir Walter Lawrence's settle-
ment and the completion of the Gilgit Road — that via dolorosa upon which
so many hearts were broken — have come into the natural prosperity that
awaits any settler upon so bountiful a soil ; but there is still much and even
acute poverty and misery in the City, which in by-gone days battened
upon the country-side. Disease also is yet unevicted ; and from time to
time Cholera sweeps through the valley, and fills the hearts of the people
with gloom. But the day is near at hand when such miseries will have
ceased, as indeed they have already been greatly diminished under the
ministration of unselfish souls.

Happy as my own stay in Kashmir was, it was not without its griefs.
I will record but two, lest the preceding narrative should partake too much
of the colour of the rose. The one was a tragedy — for it affected me in that
way — which befell a way-side place in the interval between my arrival in
the valley and my departure. This place bore the name of Chinari, because
of the beauty of its great Planes, the first the traveller was wont to see in
Kashmir. They stood one upon each side of the road, and under their
shadow there had grown up a small bazaar of little wooden houses, with the
charm of a mountain hamlet, and of a way -side place that had existed from
the leisured age of the Emperors. It was, I thought, the most attractive
stage on the long road into Kashmir. I looked for it eagerly, therefore, upon
my return ; when, as the Motor turned the corner, I found that it had dis-
appeared from existence. The little houses with their oriels and verandahs
were a heap of ashes, and the great chinars, once so stately, rose into the
air, gaunt and lifeless, the very skeletons of departed beauty.

And the other incident — indeed I feel some hesitation in mentioning
it at all — took me at BaramuUa as I was leaving the valley. For there, by the
still face of the river, along its high embankment, there walked a slight figure,
with a black mantilla over her silvery head, and about her like an aureole
the inalienable grace of an English gentle-woman. She walked a little
feebly, resting with her innocent air upon the arm of a native servant, and
as I approached she flushed a little, at the thought I suppose of addressing

i82 THE CHARM OF KASHMIR

a stranger — and I could see that grief was upon her, for with all her high
grace and coiu-age, her lips trembled — and she said : —

" I beg your pardon, sir ; but have you — perhaps — as you come from
Srinagar — seen the last list of Casualties from the Dardanelles ? "

" You see," she added wistfully, " my son — my youngest — is there.
My eldest boy was killed in Flanders. ... I have come up here because I
have been ill, and the Doctors advised the quiet of Kashmir."

PRINTED IN GKBAT BRITAIN BV RORRRT MACLEHOSR AND CO. LTD., AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, GLASGOW.

PLEASE DO NOT REMOVE
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