coolest occupation in the world ; but the cherries were
there, everything was ready, and it was not to be evaded.
How hot it was, even in my thinnest muslin frock, as
I finished, and wondered if I could ever again find
fascination in cherry jam. Our anchoring place was to
be under ^fakirs garden, we were told, famed for its fruit;
but as we turned a corner — below the ruins of a Moghul
summer-house — we came upon another doonga, its occu-
pant a man in his shirt-sleeves, who seemed to be pursu-
ing coolness on his front deck. There was no room for
our boat, so we had to seek another harbour further on.
The little lake is very lovely ; its waters of a most
translucent clearness, so that the boat seems to float in
mid-air, there is so intangible a line between the elements.
But alas ! there was never a lotus. They said the
reason of this was that in the scarcity which followed the
flood of the previous year, the starving people had eaten
the roots when all else failed. We had meant to spend
some days here, but the heat and airlessness — it was very
shut in — and the clouds of mosquitoes as the sun went
down, defeated us ; so taking advantage of the moonlight,
we went back to the more open river, leaving the tenant
of the other doonga whistling " Kathleen Mavourneen "
undeterred by mosquitoes.
N
246
KASHMIR
To return to April and our journey up the river through
those days of varying loveliness. Everywhere there was
colour. The level fields were gay with golden, quivering
stretches of flowering mustard ; the misty grey of the
willows near the bank contrasted exquisitely with the
delicate vividness of the new greens decking the poplar
trees, and the bronzes and purples of the unfolding leaf-
buds on the great chinars. Beyond were the hills shadowed
deep with wonderful rich tones of violet and azure, and
above their forest-covered slopes towered the whiteness
of the higher ranges and their gleaming fields of snow.
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TO SRI N AGAR
OUR last halting-place before reaching Srinagar
was Shadipore, a small village with beautiful
groves of chinar trees near by and a distant
vista of hills and snows, at the junction of the Sindh
247
248 KASHMIR
river with the Jhelum. There is good fishing near here in
May and June, and the way up the Sindh from here to
Ganderbal (about fourteen miles) is very pretty, with
lovely mountain views. Ganderbal is the first stage on
the road to Leh over the Zoji La Pass, and is besides a
favourite camping-ground in the summer, as it is cooler
than anywhere on the Jhelum.
From Shadipore to Srinagar the scenery is not very
interesting till one gets right up to the beginning of the
city, where the accumulation of suspended traffic and
picturesque life on the banks of the river make a varying
and fascinating scene. The round-limbed, rosy children
playing on the bank, and their smiling, graceful mothers,
whose level brows, beautiful eyes, and finely chiselled
features would be noticeable in any country, make a
succession of charming pictures as they come down to
fetch water or to bathe their babies in the muddy and in-
credibly dirty stream which the Jhelum is at Srinagar.
Behind this foreground of gay humanity are the gable-
roofed, many-windowed houses, projecting balconies, and
delicately carved lattices of the city, with here and there,
rising above the general irregularity of outline, the cone-
shaped dome of a Hindu temple, or the square, pagoda-
like top of a Mahomedan ziarat (shrine of a saint), covered
with turf and gay with the flowers of iris or red lilies,
TO SRINAGAR 251
while in places fruit trees or groups of poplars mark
where gardens are.
Going up the river one passes first under the seventh
bridge, the Saif Kadal, the bridge of Saif Khan, who
built the original one here in 1664 in the days of the
great Moghuls. Since then all the bridges have been
destroyed more than once by floods or fires, but the new
ones seem always to have been built at the same places.
We reached the Saif Kadal about 3 p.m., and sat
on the deck absorbed in watching the spectacle of the
banks and the passing boats, as our doonga made its
leisurely way up the river. Our skipper was evidently
well known, and hailed with many greetings from the
banks and the bridges covered with loungers. We felt
we were being examined with great interest, while no
doubt our tempers, manners, and customs, and above
all our finances, were discussed and commented upon.
Below the fifth bridge we passed the Bulbul Lankar,
a mosque which was built early in the fourteenth century
for a saint named Bulbul Shah, by the first of the
Mahomedan kings of Kashmir. This prince, Rynchan
Shah, was an adventurer, whose father had been king
of Tibet, and his history is the sort of thing which in
one's childhood one always expected of princes who went
out to seek their fortunes. Kashmir was then in great
252 KASHMIR
disorder from weak kings, ambitious subjects, and changes
of faith, for Hinduism and Buddhism were being under-
mined by the preaching of Mahomedans from Central
and Western Asia. Rynchan Shah saw his chance, came
to Kashmir, and won a kingdom, a princess, and a re-
ligion, the religion he selected being that of Bulbul Shah,
whom he admired to the pitch of imitating.
The fourth bridge is named the Zaina Kadal, after
Zain-ul-ab-din, one of the greatest of the kings of Kash-
mir. He was a wise and tolerant monarch, who perse-
cuted no religion, who made great conquests — among
others Tibet — was a patron of art and letters, and built
many magnificent palaces and useful public works.
Near the first bridge, the Amira Kadal, we saw the
great pile of the Maharaja's palace, with its spacious carved
verandas overhanging the river, and the gold-roofed
Sikh temple beside it. Here the banks are lined with
the state barges, most of them at present covered up in
their winter matting.
Near the palace we turned off to the left, up a side
canal, which presently became shaded by enormous over-
hanging chinar trees with, beyond them, stretches of
green turf. Here were moored many doongas and
house-boats, most of them unmistakably occupied. It
looked a delightful spot to spend a few days in, and
TO SRINAGAR 253
a good centre for sight-seeing, so we suggested that
we should tie up here. But our skipper told us that
this attractive spot was reserved for bachelors and
sahibs alone ; and we had to move further on. So we
kept on our way, tying up at last just outside the Dal
Darwaza, the huge lock gates leading into the Dal Lake,
and next day moved to a beautiful camping-ground in the
lake itself.
One can take life in Srinagar in many different ways.
People who go there for "the season" usually live in
a large, well-appointed house-boat, make and return
calls, spend their afternoons on the polo-ground, tennis-
courts, or golf-links, ending up with tea at the club over-
looking the river, or have picnics at one of the delightful
resorts on the Dal Lake. Dinner parties and dances are
also of frequent occurrence, and towards the end of June,
when Srinagar grows too hot to be agreeable, they transfer
themselves to Gulmarg in the mountains, where the same
life goes on in the midst of beautiful scenery and a cool
climate, whose delights are only dashed by the somewhat
frequent rain.
For those who go to Kashmir to shoot, Srinagar is
regarded merely as a base of supplies in which to waste
as little time as possible. They lay in camp equipment
and stores with the utmost dispatch and vanish into the
254 KASHMIR
unknown, to reappear when their leave is up, sun-burned
exceedingly, their baggage unwieldy and protruding with
skins and horns, and a look of utter beatitude on their
faces.
A long stay in Srinagar has a way of reducing you, by
imperceptible degrees, to bankruptcy if you do not put on
the curb early in your career ; there are so many things,
undreamed of before, which suddenly become indispen-
sable to your happiness. You are driven to find safety in
flight and to go on up the river to Islamabad, or to take
to tents and a life of wandering so delightful that one
almost forgets the charm of the valley.
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A MOGHUL GARDEN
THE Emperor Akbar had little time to spare
from his work of making his empire in India
for the fairest of all his conquests, the Valley of
Kashmir. Still, in the course of his three brief visits he
left a lasting impression on it. The revenue settlement of
the province, made by his great finance minister, Raja
Todar Mull, and the fort on the hill of Hart Parbat,
looking down on Srinagar, are emblems of his strong
administration, both military and civil.
257
258 KASHMIR
But the great Akbar had his gentler side, a touch of
the poetic nature so strong in his grandfather Baber, and
it is to him that Srinagar owes the Garden of the Morning
Wind, the Nasim Bagh, that stately pleasaunce, planted
with chinar trees, on the shores of the Dal, a lake whose
loveliness can scarcely have an equal. Whether, in the
sunshine of an afternoon of early spring, it mirrors in
dreamy beauty the snow-crowned peaks that guard it, the
willow and poplar groves of the gardens fringing its
banks, and the clouds that march in white procession
along the hill-tops ; or when the hills are dark with
storm it lies in their midst, a still sheet of grey and
silver ; whether serene in sunset, or sparkling in the
morning light — it has always some new beauty to
enchant one.
The lake lies north of the city of Srinagar, and, to
visit it, one goes up the Dal Canal which connects it
with the river. This canal is entered by massive lock
gates on the right bank of the Jhelum, a little above
the Residency. After the gate the canal goes through
the open green spaces of the English quarter, the high
bund (embankment) on the left lined with tall poplars,
while, on the right, rise the steep, bare slopes of the
Takht-i-Sulaiman, the Throne of Solomon, a rocky
hill rising about a thousand feet above the level of
A MOGHUL GARDEN
259
the city. As one "nears the lake the canal, which is
a narrow one, becomes more and more crowded ; in
one place, where the banks are low and marshy, there
are numbers of grain barges drawn up on^both sides,
closely packed, and often almost entirely blocking the
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GRAIN BARGES
narrow channel. Through these one's little boat picks a
careful way, cleverly evading the advancing bulk of a timber
or grain barge on the move, which it would be suicidal to
collide with. The boatmen of Kashmir are as clever in
managing their craft as the gondoliers of Venice in their
narrow canals, and one usually emerges safely from the
riskiest of situations.
2 6o KASHMIR
Below a rocky spur of the Takht-i-Sulaiman there is
another ponderous gateway, through which one passes
into the lake. When the river is low the water rushes
through this with great force ; there are iron chains which
the boatmen hold on by to pull the boat through, and,
with any luck, you may escape being swamped and emerge
safely on the other side, but it is perhaps wiser to get out
and walk over the bridge, taking your best cushions and
other belongings with you, as even if you escape being
capsized you are apt to get rather wet.
After the exciting passage of the gate all is peace — the
translucent clearness, the still beauty, of the reed-fringed
waterways of the Dal. To visit the Nasim Bagh your
boatman will probably turn to the left, up one of the
many narrow channels among the floating gardens for
which the lake is famous. They are, however, far less
romantic than they sound, their products being limited to
vegetable marrows, melons, cucumbers, and other emi-
nently sensible articles of food. The gardeners of the Dal
are more strictly utilitarian than the Japanese, whose
floating gardens are less for use than beauty, and of whom
it is told that in the time of a great famine an imperial
edict forbade the cultivation of anything that was not
good for food. This caused the greatest dismay, and a
petition was sent to the Mikado asking that the ban
A MOGHUL GARDEN 261
might at least be removed from the iris of their floating
gardens, for the complexion powder used by the women
was made from it. " We must die any way," they said.
" Let us at least die looking our best." And it is said
that the petition was granted.
But these floating gardens of Kashmir, islands of
vivid green in the clear, still water, with their background
— A^S &£
A GARDENER OF THE DAL
of young poplars and softly shadowed hillsides, have a
beauty of their own. The little willows that border them
are amusingly decorative, pollarded till they look like a
fluffy ball of greyish-green on a short, stout handle. They
are very absurd, these little willows, which, in spite of all
their efforts, can never live up to their reputation and be
the weeping willows their name demands. How could it
be possible under the circumstances ? The dancing ripples
262 KASHMIR
on the water, the radiant sky, the light spring breezes are
all against it, and make any attempt at a melancholy pose
utterly ridiculous, so they seem to have given it up, their
branches stick out at all sorts of retroussd angles, or
boldly take a skyward instead of a downward curve, while
their leaves flutter gaily to the tune of the ripples.
The devious course your boat follows will take you
through a little village with the usual ziarat — a Ma-
homedan shrine — its architecture a cross between a
mosque, a log-hut, and a pagoda. On the turf-covered
roof the iris is in flower, a field of white with one tall
scarlet tulip swaying on its stem, distinct against the
sapphire sky. Then you go under an arched stone bridge,
past a flight of steps, where a group of red-robed Pundit-
anis (Hindoo women) are washing their clothes and their
babies ; then more floating gardens, till you emerge on a
clear sheet of blue water beyond which lies the Nasim
Bagh.
The great Akbar chose well the site of his garden,
for, from here, the view over the lake is unsurpassed.
In the garden itself, whatever there may originally have
been in the way of stone-paved tanks and masonry balus-
trades, of hewn terraces and arranged flower-beds, has
been destroyed by the jealousy of later Pathan rulers,
or smoothed away by Time. Stately aisles of magnifi-
A MOGHUL GARDEN 263
cent chinar trees, fit monument to the greatest of the
Moghuls, are all that remain of Akbar's garden. But
the kindly hand of Nature has been at work, and one
cannot help feeling glad that there is no petty ornament
made by man to distract one's attention, or to spoil the
lovely slopes of rich, velvety turf, from which the clumps
of purple and white iris — the fleur-de-lis of France —
lift their beautiful heads while the air is faintly sweet
with their scent.
On Friday mornings in early spring the devout
Mahomedans of the city of Srinagar visit the lake in
great numbers, for the most famous Moslem shrine
in Kashmir is the ziarat and mosque of Hazrat Bal,
on the shore of the lake, about half a mile from the
Nasim Bagh. Here the faithful go to pray, and, on
great occasions, the sacred relics of the Prophet which
are supposed to be kept here are shown to them. Their
devotions finished, the rest of the day is spent in visiting
the famous gardens — there are two others besides the
Nasim Bagh, called the Shalimar and the Nishat Bagh
— and admiring the scenery of the lake.
The Kashmiris, with their strong artistic instincts,
seem to be keenly alive to the beauties of Nature. The
pilgrimage to Hazrat Bal is most popular in spring, for it
is then that the orchards near it and their hedges of lilac
264
KASHMIR
are in flower. You will see quiet groups of people of
all ages silently gazing at the lovely aisles of delicate
blossom, making white archways faintly flushed with rose
between the beauty of the earth touched with the hand of
spring and the changing April sky.
One wonders if it is in this way that the grace and
„.»«/< ii
IN A KASHMIR MEADOW
charm of the thousand patterns they trace, in embroidery
and carving, in copper and silver, are evolved ; from the
study of the lines of branch and flower against the
sky, from the grace of stately iris or of curving lotus
stem.
There is a feeling of festival in the air on a radiant
April morning, and the picturesque boat-loads one passes,
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A MOGHUL GARDEN 267
all evidently thoroughly awake to the joy of life, add a
vivid human interest to the scene.
The different boat-loads one sees on Friday mornings
are very interesting. Some seem to contain a family
party out for the day. Fore and aft are bunches of iris
or lilac, and in front of the boat is hung a cage of singing
birds — poor captives who, after being cooped up so long
in the crowded alleys of the city, are to share the plea-
sures of a day in the country. The boat is open from
end to end, the sides are cushioned, and floor and
cushions are covered with thick white Yarkandi numdahs
(felt rugs). The meals are cooked in the stern of the
boat, while in the centre is the large polished samovar, in
which tea will presently be brewed and served in little
green or blue china bowls ; with it will be served small
round biscuits — sweet ones to-day, for is it not a holiday?
These will no doubt be bought at one of the bun-
shops near the shrine, which do a great trade on these
days.
After their prayers have been said in the mosque they
will go on round the lake, through the one-arched bridge
that, from the top of the Takht-i-Sulaiman, looks like a
gipsy ring set with a single diamond. Then they will land
at the Nishat Bagh, with its sloping terraces and flower
beds, to admire the view of the lake. But, first of all,
268 KASHMIR
they will go to the Shalimar Garden, built for the most
beautiful of Eastern queens by the Moghul, who loved
Kashmir almost better than he loved her. Here the
children will wonder at the funny little round fountains,
and wish that the Maharaja had ordered them to play
to-day, so that they might see the water rise out of the
masonry cones, and make a silvery mist in the air under
the flowering apple and pear trees.
Then there will be the long way home — all too short
it will seem! — in the afternoon sunlight, under the frown-
ing spur where stands the strange, wild Peri Mahal, the
"Fairies' Palace"; through a gap in the nearer hills
they will have a glimpse of exquisite snowy peaks, and
pass on to the vineyards of Gupkar and the rocky pro-
montory of Gagribal, where the water is so clear and soft
that it is said the softness of the famous shawls of
Kashmir was due to their being washed in this water.
After this will come the quiet canals bordered with float-
ing gardens, the clear water reflecting the lovely sunset
colouring of the surrounding hills ; then, through the
picturesque but miry Nalla Mar, to their homes.
A great many parties are arranged for the day by
the more wealthy Mahomedans, who hire large boats
to entertain their guests in, and hundreds of these visit
the shrine in the course of the day.
A MOGHUL GARDEN
269
But at evening all is peace again at the Nasim Bagh,
when the sound of the paddles of the holiday-makers has
died away in the distance. It is dark in the shadow of
the great chinar trees — a fragrant darkness, sweet with
the breath of the white iris which stars the gloom. Far
in'the west, against the pale saffron of the sunset sky, the
hill crowned with Akbar's fort stands out faintly violet, and
over its peaked summit glimmers the evening star.
- lp
)
My best thanks are due to Mr. G. M. Chesney, the
Editor of the Pioneer, Allahabad, for his kindness in
allowing me to publish a number of these articles which
I contributed to the Pioneer in 1904, 1905, and 1906.
P. PIRIE.
Badshah Bagh,
Luck now,
India.
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