THE VALE OF KASHMIR

(INDIA)

ANDREW WILSON

Almost every one longs, and many hope, to see the beautiful Vale of Kashmir. Probably no region of the earth is so well known to the eye of imagination, or so readily suggests the idea of a terrestrial Paradise. So far from having been disappointed with the reality, or having experienced any cause for wishing that I had left Kashmir unvisited, I can most sincerely say that the beautiful reality excels the somewhat vague poetic vision which has been associated with the name. But Kashmir is rather a difficult country to get at, especially when you come down upon it from behind by way of Zanskar and Súrú. According to tradition, it was formerly the Garden of Eden; and one is very well disposed to accept that theory when trying to get into it from the north or northwest.

After months of the sterile, almost treeless Tibetan provinces, the contrast was very striking, and I could not but revel in the beauty and glory of the vegetation; but even to one who had come up upon it from below, the scene would have been very striking. There was a large and lively encampment at the foot of the pass, with tents prepared for the Yarkand envoy, and a number of Kashmir officers and soldiers; but I pushed on beyond that, andcamped in solitude close to the Sind river, just beneath the Panjtarne valley, which leads up towards the caves of Ambernath, a celebrated place for Hindú pilgrimage. This place is called Báltal, but it has no human habitations. Smooth green meadows, carpet-like and embroidered with flowers, extended to the silvery stream, above which there was the most varied luxuriance of foliage, the lower mountains being most richly clothed with woods of many and beautiful colours. It was late autumn, and the trees were in their greatest variety of colour; but hardly a leaf seemed to have fallen. The dark green of the pines contrasted beautifully with the delicate orange of the birches, because there were intermingling tints of brown and saffron. Great masses of foliage were succeeded by solitary pines, which had found a footing high up the precipitous crags.

And all this was combined with peaks and slopes of pure white snow.Aiguillesof dark rock rose out of beds of snow, but their faces were powdered with the same element. Glaciers and long beds of snow ran down the valleys, and the upper vegetation had snow for its bed. The effect of sunset upon this scene was wonderful; for the colours it displayed were both heightened and more harmoniously blended. The golden light of eve brought out the warm tints of the forest; but the glow of the reddish-brown precipices, and the rosy light upon the snowy slopes and peaks, were too soon succeeded by the cold grey of evening. At first, however, the wondrous scene was still visible in a quarter-moon’s silvery light, in which the Panjtarne valley was in truth—

“A wild romantic chasm that slantedDown the sweet hill athwart a cedarn cover—A savage place, as holy and enchantedAs e’er beneath the waning moon was hauntedBy woman wailing for her demon lover.”

“A wild romantic chasm that slanted

Down the sweet hill athwart a cedarn cover—

A savage place, as holy and enchanted

As e’er beneath the waning moon was haunted

By woman wailing for her demon lover.”

The demon lovers to be met with in that wild valley are bears, which are in abundance, and a more delightful place for a hunter to spend a month in could hardly be invented; but he would have to depend on his rifle for supplies, or have them sent up from many miles down the Sind valley.

The remainder of my journey down the latter valley to the great valley or small plain of Kashmir was delightful. A good deal of rain fell, but that made one appreciate the great trees all the more, for the rain was not continuous, and was mingled with sunshine. At times, during the season when I saw it, this “inland depth” is “roaring like the sea;”

“While trees, dim-seen in frenzied numbers tearThe lingering remnant of their yellow hair;”

“While trees, dim-seen in frenzied numbers tear

The lingering remnant of their yellow hair;”

but soon after it is bathed in perfect peace and mellow sunlight. The air was soft and balmy; but, at this transfer from September to October, it was agreeably cool even to a traveller from the abodes and sources of snow. As we descended, the pine-forests were confined to the mountain-slopes; but the lofty deodar began to appear in the valley, as afterwards the sycamore, the elm, and the horse-chestnut. Round the picturesque villages, and even forming considerable woods, there were fruit-trees—as the walnut, the chestnut, the peach, the apricot, the apple, and thepear. Large quantities of timber (said to be cut recklessly) was in course of being floated down the river; and where the path led across it there were curious wooden bridges for which it was not necessary to dismount. This Sind valley is about sixty miles long, and varies in breadth from a few hundred yards to about a mile, except at its base, where it opens out considerably. It is considered to afford the best idea of the mingled beauty and grandeur of Kashmir scenery; and when I passed through its appearance was greatly enhanced by the snow, which not only covered the mountain-tops, but also came down into the forests which clothed the mountain-sides. The path through it, being part of the great road from Kashmir to Central Asia, is kept in tolerable repair, and it is very rarely that the rider requires to dismount. Anything beyond a walking-pace, however, is for the most part out of the question. Montgomerie divides the journey from Srinagar to Báltal (where I camped below the Zoji La) into six marches, making in all sixty-seven miles; and though two of these marches may be done in one day, yet if you are to travel easily and enjoy the scenery, one a day is sufficient. The easiest double march is from Sonamarg to Gond, and I did it in a day with apparent ease on a very poor pony; but the consequence is that I beat my brains in order to recall what sort of a place Gond was, no distinct recollection of it having been left on my mind, except of a grove of large trees and a roaring fire in front of my tent at night. Sonamarg struck me as a very pleasant place; and I had there, in the person of a youthful captain from Abbotabad,the pleasure of meeting the first European I had seen since leaving Lahaul. We dined together, and I found he had come up from Srinagar to see Sonamarg, and he spoke with great enthusiasm of a view he had had, from another part of Kashmir, of the 26,000 feet mountain Nanga Parbat.Margmeans “meadow,” and seems to be applied especially to elevated meadows;sonastands for “golden”: and this place is a favourite resort in the hot malarious months of July and August, both for Europeans in Kashmir and for natives of rank.

At Ganderbahl I was fairly in the great valley of Kashmir, and encamped under some enormouschúnáror sycamore trees; the girth of one was so great that its trunk kept my little mountain-tent quite sheltered from the furious blasts. Truly—

“There was a roaring in the wind all night,The rain fell heavily, and fell in floods,

“There was a roaring in the wind all night,

The rain fell heavily, and fell in floods,

but that giganticchúnárkept off both wind and rain wonderfully. Next day a small but convenient and quaint Kashmir boat took me up to Srinagar; and it was delightful to glide up the backwaters of the Jhelam, which afforded a highway to the capital. It was the commencement and the promise of repose, which I very sadly needed, and in a beautiful land.

THE VALE OF KASHMIR.

I afterwards went up to Islamabad, Martand, Achibal, Vernag, the Rozlú valley, and finally went out of Kashmir by way of the Manas and Wúlar Lakes, and the lower valley of the Jhelam, so that I saw the mostinteresting places in the country, and all the varieties of scenery which it affords. That country has been so often visited and described, that, with one or two exceptions, I shall only touch generally upon its characteristics. It doubtless owes some of its charm to the character of the regions in its neighbourhood. As compared with the burning plains of India, the sterile steppes of Tibet, and the savage mountains of the Himalaya and of Afghanistan, it presents an astonishing and beautiful contrast. After such scenes even a much more commonplace country might have afforded a good deal of the enthusiasm which Kashmir has excited in Eastern poetry, and even in common rumour; but beyond that it has characteristics which give it a distinct place among the most pleasing regions of the earth. I said to the Maharajah, or ruling Prince of Kashmir, that the most beautiful countries I had seen were England, Italy, Japan, and Kashmir; and though he did not seem to like the remark much, probably from a fear that the beauty of the land he governed might make it too much an object of desire, yet there was no exaggeration in it. Here, at a height of nearly 6,000 feet, in a temperate climate, with abundance of moisture, and yet protected by lofty mountains from the fierce continuous rains of the Indian southwest monsoon, we have the most splendid amphitheatre in the world. A flat oval valley about sixty miles long, and from forty in breadth, is surrounded by magnificent mountains, which, during the greater part of the year, are covered more than half-way down with snow, and present vast upland beds of purewhite snow. This valley has fine lakes, is intersected with water-courses, and its land is covered with brilliant vegetation, including gigantic trees of the richest foliage. And out of this great central valley there rise innumerable, long, picturesque mountain-valleys, such as that of the Sind river, which I have just described; while above these there are great pine-forests, green slopes of grass, glaciers, and snow. Nothing could express the general effect better than Moore’s famous lines on sainted Lebanon—

“Whose head in wintry grandeur towers,And whitens with eternal sleet;While Summer, in a vale of flowers,Is sleeping rosy at his feet.”

“Whose head in wintry grandeur towers,

And whitens with eternal sleet;

While Summer, in a vale of flowers,

Is sleeping rosy at his feet.”

The great encircling walls of rock and snow contrast grandly with the soft beauty of the scene beneath. The snows have a wonderful effect as we look up to them through the leafy branches of the immensechúnár, elm, and poplar trees. They flash gloriously in the morning sunlight above the pink mist of the valley-plain; they have a rosy glow in the evening sunlight; and when the sunlight has departed, but ere darkness shrouds them, they gleam, afar off, with a cold and spectral light, as if they belonged to a region where man had never trod. The deep black gorges in the mountains have a mysterious look. The sun lights up some softer grassy ravine or green slope, and then displays splintered rocks rising in the wildest confusion. Often long lines of white clouds lie along the line of mountain-summits, while at other times every white peak and precipice-wall is distinctly marked against the deep-bluesky. The valley-plain is especially striking in clear mornings and evenings, where it lies partly in golden sunlight, partly in the shadow of its great hills.

The green mosaic of the level land is intersected by many streams, canals or lakes, or beautiful reaches of river which look like small lakes. The lakes have floating islands composed of vegetation. Besides the immensechúnársand elms, and the long lines of stately poplars, great part of the plain is a garden filled with fruits and flowers, and there is almost constant verdure.

“There eternal summer dwells,And west winds, with musky wing,About the cedar’d alleys flingNard and cassia’s balmy smells.”

“There eternal summer dwells,

And west winds, with musky wing,

About the cedar’d alleys fling

Nard and cassia’s balmy smells.”

Travel, Adventure and Sport from Blackwood’s Magazine(Edinburgh and London), Vol. vi.

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