Kashmir, described by Sir Francis Younghusband, painted by Major E. Molyneux

by Sir Francis Edward Younghusband

Yet another attractive spot near Srinagar is the site of the original city founded by Asoka at Pandrathan, three miles distant on the Islamabad road. Here at the end of a spur running down from the mountains and jutting out to meet a bend in the river, stands the remains of an immense monolith lingam on the levelled edge of the spur, eighty feet or so above the river. Immediately beneath is a majestic bend of the river, and one April evening when I visited the sight I looked out from the raised plateau up two glistening reaches, bordered by fresh green grass and overhung by graceful willows and poplars in their newest foliage. The wheat-fields on the opposite bank were a brilliant emerald, and the fields of glowing yellow mustard and young linseed interspersed with scarlet poppies gave a relieving touch of colour. All the valley was dotted over with picturesque hamlets half-hidden in clumps of willow and over-towering chenar trees. The recent floods gave a lake-like appearance to the middle distance. On the right the temple on the Takht-i-Suliman formed a graceful feature in the scene; and from there completely round the semicircle to the distant left stretched the dreamy snowy mountains, hazy immediately under the sun, but white and distinct when the evening sun struck full upon them. A more fitting site for worship could hardly be found.

In full summer the Kashmir valley is, perhaps, in its least interesting condition. The snow has nearly melted from the mountains. They are often hidden by heat-haze or dust. The fruit blossoms are all over. The yellow mustard and the blue linseed in the fields have gone to seed. The green of the trees has lost its freshness; and the prevailing tones are heavy greens and browns. The weather too is sultry. The thermometer rises to 95° or 97° in the shade. A heavy, lethargic feeling oppresses one. Mosquitoes appear in swarms. And by the end of June every one who can flees to Gulmarg, to Pahlgam in the Lidar valley, to Sonamarg in the Sind, to Gurais and to the numerous other cool mountain resorts.

THE TEMPLE, CHENAR BAGH

But early in September the valley renews its charms and visitors return. The atmosphere has been freshened and cooled by the rains which, though they fall lightly in the valley itself, are often heavy on the surrounding mountains. The ripe rice-fields show an expanse of green and yellow often two or three miles in extent. The villages, dirty and untidy at close quarters, it is true, but nestling among the chenars, willows, poplars, walnuts, and mulberries, show as entrancing islands amidst the sea of rice. Ponies browse among the marshes up to their knees in water; and groups of cattle graze along the grassy edge of the streams and water-ducts.

The sun is still powerful in the daytime, and the sky usually bright and clear. But the monsoon will often make a few final efforts. One such day I note when voluminous masses of cloud rolled up from behind the Pir Panjal to a height of twenty-five or thirty thousand feet, their westward edges aglow from the setting sun, and showing clear and distinct against the background of pinky light blue sky, while the great main volume remained dark, heavy, and sombre, with now and then a spit of lightning flashing out, and on the far side, away from the setting sun, threatening tentacles stretched out across the valley in unavailing effort to reach the mountains on the northern side. Under these mighty monsoon masses even the great mountains looked dwarfed and puny. It was a great and final effort of that stupendous natural phenomenon which bears the waters of the Indian Ocean to beat upon the Himalaya; and as an omen that the monsoon was now over, the sky behind the storm-clouds was intensely clear and tranquil, and the moon slowly ascended in undisturbed serenity.

And the rainy season being finished there now commenced almost the most charming time of all, not, indeed, with the freshness of spring, but with more certainty of continual brightness and light, and more vigour and strength in the air, and above all, with that warmth and richness of colour in the foliage which makes an autumn in Kashmir unique. Towards the end of October the green of the immense masses of chenar slowly turns to purple, red, and yellow, and every intervening shade. The poplars, mulberries, and apricots add each their quota of autumnal beauty. The valley and the river edge are resplendent in the gorgeous colouring. And beautiful as is the spring, I was tempted to think that even more exquisitely lovely still was the bright autumnal day when we drifted down the river in our house-boat, when all the chenars along the river bank were loaded with the richest and most varied colouring, when the first fresh fall of snow on the mountains was glistening in the radiant sunshine, and there ran through the air that restful sense of certainty that this was no hurried pleasure snatched from a stormy season, but that for day after day and week after week one might count on the same brilliant sunshine, the same clear, blue sky, and daily increasing crispness, freshness, and vigour in the air.