;V
THE END
53
till its bow almost reaches the first of the tiny islands,
where the green bank curves in a miniature harbour just
large enough for your boat, and there you may anchor,
secure in the reflection that no one can be before you on
the river.
wJBifc
AMONG THE WILLOWS
Instead of other boats with chattering servants and
loud-voiced manjis, you have a wide curve of the river
absolutely to yourself; and, over and above this, a nice
bit of land, an apple orchard, with one enormous chinar-
tree.
Sweet peace and deep, the chequered sward
Beneath the ancient mulberry-trees.
54 KASHMIR
A world of vivid green, streaked and dappled with
a sunlight so golden in this wonderful soft air, that it lies
on the velvet turf like a solid thing. From your boat
you look out on the soft grey-green foliage of the willows
rising into a sky faintly blue or flushed at sunset to palest
rose ; beyond the willows is a dark wall of Lombardy
poplars, marking the Vernag road, and for a background
the hills, slopes of pale emerald-green merging into a
haze of blue below the ultimate line of snows.
Between the islands runs the river, purple where dark
rocks rise in its way, running with bronze and golden
gleams over the sand and lighter pebbles, deep blue where
it reflects the sky. Here its clear waters and little rapids
make you realise at last that it is a mountain stream. The
low murmur of the current where it runs deep and strong
by the opposite bank, the merry ripples dancing over the
frequent shallows, the lapping of its wavelets against the
side of your boat speak a most enchanting language,
blotting out all the world you have left behind you and
luring you on to follow further the road by which it has
come.
But it is a most elusive river, and it comes by a
thousand roads — ten thousand, said the ancients.
Some of them — the nearer and more obvious ones, to
the springs of Achebal and Bawan and Vernag, where
THE END 55
Jehangir's Queen wrote, " This fountain has come from
the springs of Paradise " — have been favourite paths of
pleasure for the rulers of the Valley from the time of the
Moghuls, with the magnificence of their summer courts,
to the English tripper of the present day. By short
and easy marches, along good roads, you may go to
these famous springs surrounded by temples and the
ruins of palaces and pleasure-grounds, where the captive
OUT OF THE BEATEN TRACK
water is led by artificial channels and confined in
masonry tanks, swarming with the shamelessly greedy
sacred carp.
But charming as these famous roads may be, it is
never of them that the dancing ripples sing. If you
listen to their eager, swift beguiling, they will lead you
very far, by ways of exquisite beauty and utter desolation,
till from the splendid silence of shining slopes of snow
you look on the white grandeur of the inaccessible heights
dividing the watersheds of the Indus and Jhelum, and
56
KASHMIR
you may even "think scorn of that pleasant land," the
easy, much-frequented ways of the Valley.
At first, perhaps, you will be led through dewy
pasture land, where the pine trees are wreathed with
wild climbing roses, whose white and pink blossoms
overhang the stream, such a stream as the Spanish poet
wrote of —
A MOUNTAIN STREAM
Laugh of the mountain, lyre of bird and tree,
Pomp of the meadow, mirror of the morn,
The soul of April, unto whom are born
The Rose and Hyacinth, leaps wild in thee.
Later you will go through the deep "green glooms"
of the still fir forests, opening out sometimes into sunny
p
<
o
X
a
X
H
Z
c
THE END
59
glades, where, over the fallen tree-trunks, breaks a wave
of forget-me-nots of the palest blue, and here the stream
flashes down in a spray of silver, or lies deep in swirling,
jade-green pools, its voice no longer the whisper in which
first it breathed the secrets of its distant source, but a
THE END OF THE RIVER-ROAD
triumphant chant of rejoicing, filling the lonely forest
and drowning all lesser music.
It will lead you higher, to where, above the level of
the birch trees, lie silver meadows, frosted thick with
small white anemones, where the stream flows through
rocky gorges, swept always by an icy wind, which adds
its voice to the torrent, grown almost too awe-inspiring
in these desolate heights for mere human understanding.
6o KASHMIR
Higher still it will lead you, till, under the deep
sapphire sky, you stand in a vast snowy silence, where
even the voice of the water is hushed. Far down under
the snow it listens, perhaps, to a music too rare and
exquisite for mortal ears, to translate afterwards some
syllables of its magic to the world below.
Those who have followed up one of the mountain
streams which lead you into the heart of this " Abode of
snow," will understand how like treachery it would seem
to disclose an exact route, to measure and map and lay
out marches through all that loveliness which was for
you alone, and into which you wandered almost by
accident. If your Fate is good and you can face the
difficulty, you will find for yourself the end of the
river-road.
P% o
3 == ="■«*.'
4*s
A ROAD OF THE NORTH
Our noisy years seem moments in the being
Of the eternal silence. — Wordsworth.
THE Gilgit road is one about which there is no
uncertainty. In this it is unlike most other
roads of Kashmir, which have a habit of mas-
querading in many disguises. Sometimes the road is
the bed of a mountain torrent ; wet or dry, it is all one ;
you follow it about on slippery stepping-stones, or fallen
tree-trunks, or hang on to a projecting cliff, or, tout
63
64 KASHMIR
simplement, wade through the water, as necessity or
inclination may dictate. Sometimes it is a wide, upland
meadow, flower-starred, lovely. Sometimes, you would
say, the moraine of a glacier, for you scramble with
difficulty up a slope of sixty degrees, over rocks so large
and so hard to manage that you are reminded of pictures
of people ascending the Pyramids, but a reassuring
tiffin-coolie tells you, "This is the pony-road." The
coolie-road, which he also points out, is a toboggan-slide,
down which it is correct to glissade, and up which
nobody goes if they can help it. Sometimes it is a dark
fir forest, sometimes a much-crevassed glacier, sometimes
a trackless snow-slope ; all these, and many more, varied,
and lovely, and only the more enchanting for their
difficulty, are known as roads in Kashmir.
But the Gilgit road has no compromises nor dis-
guises, no trifling nor turning aside. There is a solidity
and directness, a plain straightforwardness about it, that
is brusque and British, and typical of its builders.
It is persistently unaware of all other possible inter-
pretations of the word "road." It is a Road, and no
more ; and never less. Scenery and sentiment are foreign
to its nature ; if it were possible to do so it would no
doubt avoid both. It is sternly and simply a means of
getting from one place to another, and it is a most excel-
A TRACK THROUGH
THE FOREST
A ROAD OF THE NORTH 67
lent means ; a military road which has overcome such
difficulties in its making as no other road in the world
has had to contend with. For besides the great forces of
Nature arrayed against it, impregnable cliffs, rivers in
flood, avalanches of snow in winter, and of rocks the
rest of the year, snowstorms and freezing winds meaning
certain death to those overtaken by them, with famine
ever in waiting to swoop down on the workers should
CAMEL TRANSPORT
any one blunder or delay in sending up the long caravans
of grain from the far-distant base : — besides all this, the
first rough outline of the road had to be laid by armed
labourers in the face of hostile tribesmen, a brave, if
cruel enemy, posted on the heights above, and only kept
from annihilating the workmen by the fire of the little
mountain-guns which have helped so well to keep the
road. Such is the new road, now, I believe, about twelve
years old.
68 KASHMIR
But even the Gilgit road cannot entirely escape the
charm of Kashmir ; and it is, in spite of itself, beautiful.
A stern and awful beauty, of serried ranks of enormous
mountain masses, of vistas of gigantic snows, of the
sources of great rivers, and of a wonderful purity of
atmosphere ; while from the first hestitating whisper of
spring to the final glowing triumph of autumn it knows
the gentler beauty of flowers, a most lavish profusion of
colour and fragrance on all the mountain slopes.
The Gilgit road has never been a road of pleasure
like the Pir Panjal, but always a road of war, or the fear
of war. It is a road with a past — a long and tragic past
of oppression and tyranny, of treachery and murder, of
suffering and horror, of the forced labour of the slave, the
misery and torture of heat and thirst and hunger on
worn and exhausted humanity; of pitiless cold and storm;
of the unavailing strife of man against the silent, relent-
less denials of Nature.
It is a road which, in the old days, took a tremendous
toll of the lives of men. "The first time I went on it,"
an old Kashmiri transport driver told me, " when I was
a boy of sixteen, I wept much, because on both sides
of the road lay so many dead men."
Even now, in the days of the new road, should a
sudden snowstorm sweep through the passes, the road
g
X
en
<
O
o
<
o
en
o
A ROAD OF THE NORTH 71
over them will be strewn with the corpses of ponies and
camels ; while in winter the post-runners always go at
the risk of their lives ; the snow keeps its own secrets,
but in the spring it is not the bodies of animals only that
are found under the drifts on the road.
At the best of times one comes to places where the
THE WATCHERS (A BIRD'S-EYE VIEW OF A LINE OF LADEN BAGGAGE-PONIES)
wheeling vultures gather over a baggage-pony which has
succumbed to the hardships of the road. And there are
still terrible bits near Gilgit where all the resources of
science are powerless ; after any great storm the road is
carried away, and can never be mended without loss of
life.
It is a jealously guarded road. Armed sentries keep
72
KASHMIR
its costly bridges, while to travel on it at all a passport
from a very high authority indeed is necessary, and much
of it is irrevocably closed to travellers.
Over it, white and gigantic, towers Nanga Parbat, or
Deomir, " the Home of the gods" as the people call it
who live near by, 26,629 f eet °f snow.
You see it from the top of every pass ; and at the end
THE LAST TREES
of the steep, high-walled gorges of the road it looms up,
a white barrier, so incredibly high that it seems the
mirage of a snow mountain floating in the air. Every-
thing on this road is on so stupendous a scale that, as one
rides day after day through these mountains, one is dazed
by their vastness and beauty, their solemn desolation and
NANGA PARBAT, THE FOURTH HIGHEST MOUNTAIN IN THE WORLD
A ROAD OF THE NORTH 77
silence, everything in one that feels is steeped in the sense
of it, while
the fretful stir
Unprofitable, and the fever of the world,
are forgotten as if they had never been, and nothing
seems real that does not match their greatness and
simplicity.
Below the first part of the road, flowing north to join
the Astor, runs the Kamri River. It has some of the
strength, the resistless power of the sea. Rising in foun-
tains of clear green, breaking into snowy spray round the
base of an enormous boulder, it might be the surf on
a rocky coast. But no breaking wave of the sea, even in
mid-ocean, has the delicate transparency of colour of this
mountain stream.
There are pale, lovely blues, so clear that even the
bluest sky seems dull and opaque beside their delicate
brilliance. There are exquisite greens merging into blue on
one side and violet on the other, so transparent, so cool, so
edged and inlaid with the silver of the dancing foam that
they are quite unapproachable in any medium. There are
all the subtle, varying shades of colour made by the
shadows of clouds and hills, which can be painted only
by the sun on water crystal-clear, in an air as crystalline.
And all this colour is vibrating with life and motion ;
7& KASHMIR
for ever hastening forward with the force born of a
descent of five thousand feet in about thirty miles.
It talks, too, with the voice of the sea. Near it you
can hear no other sound but the thunder of breaking
waves, the rush of the onward-flowing water. It speaks
of power and of great content, a sure, unswerving pur-
pose, an absolute certainty of achievement, underlying all
its mad haste and uncurbed riot. It is resonant with
rejoicing, the joy of a beautiful thing that comes from the
beauty of the mountains and goes to the beauty of the
sea. And it is deep with tragedy, the tragedy of sever-
ance and isolation, for its language is not for men to
understand. The clue to it is lost ; for surely once men
knew, and it is this that draws one so irresistibly to
listen to it ; and it may be that some day men will know
again, and this is why one is haunted by the sense of
being on the verge of understanding while yet it ever
escapes one, like a forgotten name which your lips just
miss pronouncing.
But a day comes when one must leave the road, and
go back to the ordinary, everyday world. The last camp
is between two lakes. There is a gorgeous sunset and a
golden western sky. But in the north is storm, a dark
pall of cloud pierced with gleams of orange and scarlet,
like a dome of smoke and flame. Behind the clouds, up
THE FORT AT ASTOR
A ROAD OF THE NORTH
81
there on that northern road, you know the great hills are
whitening in the snowstorms which for six long months
of winter will close the road.
„i:!j : ' iswi
,,,
UNITS OF THE IMPERIAL SERVICE CORPS CROSSING A PASS
ON THE GILGIT ROAD IN OCTOBER
The outline of the hills is gradually merged in the
piled clouds above them till they become a towering, fan-
tastic outline of grey against a clear evening sky. Over-
head comes a sound at first like rustling paper, turning
to the long vibration of a violin string ; a flight of duck
82
KASHMIR
going to their night's resting-place on the lake. The
sound is often repeated ; there must be thousands of them.
At first you can see them, far up, long wavering lines
against the sky, till at last in the fitful moonlight, veiled
by clouds, they are a sound and no more.
They, too, have come from the North, though none
but themselves know the secrets of their road.
â– ;C- ^.^^"X-
A MASTER OF HORSE
A MASTER OF HORSE
HE carries his commission in a small book, some-
thing like an account-book, covered with brown
paper. On its first page is printed a sort of oath
of allegiance.
The idea of that gorgeous coronation in the Abbey, on
which the eyes of the world were turned so few years ago,
seemed incredibly remote and unreal here, north of one
85
86 KASHMIR
of the great passes leading to Gilgit, one of the gates
to " the highest mountain system in the world."
But for splendour even the Abbey, ablaze with all
the magnificence of that proud ritual, could scarcely have
rivalled these great mountain gorges, hushed and solemn
in the wonderful stillness which is at the heart of the
higher hills. Autumn had passed in flame along the hill-
sides, hurrying before the icy breath of swift-following
winter, and so one walked in a world of gold and rose
over which towered Titanic pinnacles, white and dazzling
with the first heavy snowfall of the year.
It was here that he showed me his commission. After
the oath of allegiance came his name — written by some
one else — with below it his thumb-mark, for he could no
more write his own name than the Barons of Runnymede.
In this way he bound himself to be a loyal subject of the
King across the water ; the King whom neither he nor his
have ever seen, but of whose greatness they have heard
dim rumours, and whose name is a very real and sufficient
symbol of Power, and, above all, of Justice — the insaf
(justice) which he loves and longs for.
Further on in his book are other facts about him, the
setting down of which has, one feels, a somewhat sinister
meaning, for they will only be needed if an avalanche, or
a sudden blizzard, or a stray shot, or any of the other
A MASTER OF HORSE
89
chances of travel or of war in these wild regions should
send him on his last long journey.
He has many of the qualities of a soldier, blind
obedience to orders, and a fatalistic disregard of danger.
He has also some much-cherished medals gained in
frontier campaigns — Chitral and the Malakand.
THE ROAD IN A STORM
But he is not a soldier. He is only a transport-driver,
a Kashmir merkaban, jemadar of eleven hundred ponies
employed on the Gilgit road. He is a very small unit in
the great scheme of the Imperial Service Corps ; but on
him and his like depends the fitness for an army of that
road which is known as the " key of the Hindu Kush,"
9 o KASHMIR
leading through the grandest mountain scenery in the
world, flanked on one side by the largest glaciers outside
of the Arctic regions, and on the other by the great Nanga
Parbat and other giant snows.
As soon as the northern passes are open he is sent
for to Bandipore on the Wular Lake, where the road
begins. This may be any time from early in June to the
middle of July, as it depends on the amount of the winter
snowfall. From this time till October, when the passes
are again closed by snow, his ponies carry grain up to
Gilgit and the most remote outposts, provisioning them
for a year, for, after the winter sets in, nothing can reach
them.
He knows the road as the palm of his hand, for has
he not gone backwards and forwards on it all his life ? —
even long ago, in the days of what was known as "the
old road," which was no road at all, but often a death-
trap, from which you only escaped if your kismet was
good.
But Doran Sahib (Colonel Algernon Durand, the first
"Warden of the Marches") changed all that, for he went
along here, and made war on the Yaghistanis and ordered
this fine new road to be made.
There are two gods he swears by. The first is "Doran
Sahib," who, he firmly believes, can have no equal any-
A MASTER OF HORSE
9i
'.â– 9. t*
MJid
A GOOD ROAD NEAR GUREZ
where ; and the second is Colonel Yielding, who, many
years after, organised the splendid transport system of
this frontier. Words fail to express his devotion to
92 KASHMIR
Yielding Sahib, for did he not treat the merkabans of
Kashmir as if they were his own sons ? Ponies, says my
friend, were brought from Yarkand and the Punjab and
many distant places to choose from, but of them all
Yielding Sahib said the Kashmiri ponies were the best,
and so none but Kashmir ponies work on this road.
Did he not also make this alternative road, over the
Kamri Pass, so that the ponies might have good grass ?
From above Gurez as far as Gurikote of Astore there
are two roads — one over the Burzil and the other over the
Kamri Pass. The Burzil route is through bare rocky
nullahs, and grass can only be got from the dep6ts at
each stage ; but this route is usually chosen by travellers
and troops, as it is a better road, and there are log-huts at
the stages. The Kamri Pass is higher than the Burzil, and
so the road is not open quite as long as the other, but it
leads over grassy mountain slopes, with nullahs opening
out of it where there is splendid grazing, so the ponymen
always go by it.
" Except in my own village, there is no better grass in
the world," he says, with confidence. We are in a nullah
on the Kamri route, where he is resting his ponies, and
feeding them up for a few days. He is on his way to
Gupis, half-way between Gilgit and Chitral, with rice,
and is due to arrive there about the end of September.
Mae
A MASTER OF HORSE
95
He has just been down to Bandipore with a mountain
battery, about which he seems very pleased, as he has
been highly commended by one of the authorities for the
way in which he did his work. The Kashmir Imperial
Service troops are the only ones which have artillery, and
A CAMPING-PLACE
the splendid work these little mountain guns have done
is written in the history of many a frontier campaign.
He evidently thinks it a great distinction to go with the
" tope-khana " (artillery).
His next trip will be with us. The passes will then
be closed, his term of service over, and he will be free for
his private affairs till next year. It is to arrange about
96 KASHMIR
dates that we have stopped here to interview him. For
we are old friends. It is now September, and we made
his acquaintance in May, when we happened to camp
near his village, and he and his sons and his ponies took
us and our belongings up to a snow-bound mountain
lake, about 13,000 feet above sea-level. He is very proud
of his ponies, and justly so, for they are really wonderful
little creatures, and take their loads over ground where
one feels it is only just possible to walk.
My riding pony he is especially proud of. He is not
much to look at, stands 12.0, and is black and furry,
but his paces are the easiest and his intelligence marvel-
lous. In fact, he understands alpine climbing so much
better than I do, that, in the worst places, I close my
eyes and lay the bridle on his neck, while he daintily
picks his way over the slope of a glacier, or the brink of
a worse abyss than usual, up or down a rough flight of
rocky steps, or round an abrupt and slippery corner with
a raging torrent below. He has been, I am told, a
renowned polo pony in his day, and he certainly still has
a great liking for " riding off," and hates to see anything
in front of him. He regarded me at first with deep
suspicion, not being used to " sahibs," but learned to like
apples with all the fervour of an acquired taste, and to
allow his nose to be stroked. They bought him, they
"AFTER POLO"
(Characteristic dress of the people of Astor, all of whom seem to play polo)
A MASTER OF HORSE 99
told me, somewhere on the frontier, after the Tirah cam-
paign, from a man whose name I cannot recall, except
that it began with Sirdar, which is the title of the heir of
a ruling chief in those parts!" My ordinary, everyday
vocabulary is too limited to understand the whole history
of the transaction, which I am sure would be interesting,
but I got the impression that the Sirdar was on the
losing side, and thought it wiser to escape across the
border, turning his belongings into money as far as pos-
sible. This hardly agrees with the horse's alleged age,
which is six, but I could never get them to admit that he
was a day older.
Our friend owns about fifty ponies, but only those
which the Bandipore dep6t have picked and branded go
on transport service ; with the others he does as he
pleases, and since we made his acquaintance a certain
number have been reserved for us. But he is an old
man, he says, and will soon give up the road. And, by
the goodness of God, he has sons who, even now, go
with his ponies for him. Except for the service of the
Sircar, he himself never goes any more with his ponies.
All the rest of the year, even to go to the nearest village,
he rides, he tells us ; he never walks now.
His sons toro, as they call it, always on the road.
They are big, stalwart creatures, who can do a march of
lOO
KASHMIR
twenty-six miles over a high and snowy pass without
losing the elasticity of their stride, their optimistic view
of life or the grave politeness of their manners, and will,
at the end of it, attend to the needs of their ponies and
bring wood from the forest for your camp fire with the
greatest goodwill.
PREPARING FOR THE START
They and their father are all absurdly alike, belonging
to the fair type of Kashmiri, with reddish hair, faces
burned red by the sun, and grey or light brown eyes.
The eldest is a born nomad, never in his village for more
than a week or two at a time, and happiest when he is on
the move with his ponies. He has been all over the
A MASTER OF HORSE
103
frontier, to the Pamirs with some sportsmen, and knows
besides all the passes of the Pir Panjal equally well.
The youngest, who is exceedingly nice-looking, very
like the radiant David of Michelangelo, the shepherd-
boy fresh from his fight with the giant, would prefer, he