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

by Sir Francis Edward Younghusband

In that remote time, which we have roughly taken as a hundred million years ago, when the oldest rocks, those for instance at Gulmarg, were first laid down in level soft deposit on the ocean bottom, there was no life on land or sea. In no part of the world have the rocks of this period given the slightest trace of any form of life. But in the course of time, in some warm climate and in some quarter where sea and land meet, and where, through the action of the tides, a portion of the land is alternately covered and laid open to the sunshine—that is, in some spot where earth and air, light, heat and water might all have their effect—it has been surmised that minute microscopic specks of slime must have appeared imbued with just that mysterious element which distinguishes life from all chemical combinations however complex.

Of this initial stage, which would not have been perceptible to the naked eye, no trace could possibly be left, but in the pre-Cambrian rocks in Europe there have been detected very minute specimens of the simplest known forms of life—the Protozoa—and obscure tracks and markings indicating the existence of life of some kind. And in the next geological period—the Cambrian and Silurian, say between thirty and fifty million years ago—there is not indeed in the Kashmir rocks yet any sign of life, but in the neighbouring district of Spiti there has been found in corresponding rocks fossils of corals, trilobites, shell-fish, worms, brachiopods (lamp-shells), and gastropods.

When Kashmir made its first brief emergence from the waters, in an archipelago of volcanic islands, though there was life of low and simple kind in the sea, on land there was none, and the islands must have been absolutely bare. Neither on hill-side nor on plain was there a speck of vegetation, not even the humblest moss or lichen, and not a sign of animal life. No bird or insect floated in the air. And over all there must have reigned a silence such as I remember in the Gobi Desert, and which was so felt that when after many weeks I arrived at an oasis, the twittering of the birds and the humming of the insects appeared as an incessant roar.

GOING TO THE WEDDING, UPPER INDUS VALLEY

It does not, however, follow from its bareness that the scenery of this archipelago may not have been beautiful, for those who have frequently passed up the Gulf of Suez know that the early morning and evening effects on bare deserts and rocky hills are often the most perfect in the delicacy and brilliance of their opalescent hues, and that the combination of this colouring with the bluey-green and the life and sparkle of the sea makes up a beauty which wooded mountain-sides may often lack. And as from the islands the summits of snowy ranges in India and Central Asia might be discerned, Kashmir even in its primitive and most barren stage must yet have had many a charm of its own.

But the bareness of the islands must have shortened the term of their existence, for it meant that the hills and plains were easily scoured out by the torrential rains which then fell upon them. It seems difficult in these days to imagine that when tropical rains fall on barren land they will not at once bring up a luxuriant crop of vegetation which would do much to keep the soil in its position; but in those days there was on land no plant life of any description. The hills and plains must, in consequence, have been deeply scoured, and rushing rivers have rapidly carried, in sand and boulders and muddy and chemical solution, the disintegrated surface of the land to the bottom of the sea, and laid down there the sediments and deposits which, subsequently upheaved, form the Kashmir rocks of the present day.

It is not until we come to the almost mediæval period corresponding to the Coal Measures, about twenty million years ago, that the record of land life in Kashmir begins.

In the hill-sides behind Khunmu, a little village about ten miles east of Srinagar, there is a series of rocks lying in layers over the older "trap" rocks of volcanic origin which form the great bulk of the neighbouring mountains, and in these sedimentary rocks, in what are called carbonaceous shales, are found some ferns named gangamopteris. They were discovered in 1906 by Mr. Hayden, and they are estimated by him to be "not younger than Upper Carboniferous," and they "may belong to the basis of that subdivision, or even to the Middle Carboniferous," that is, they may be about fifteen to eighteen million years old. At the same place, but on a layer of later date, have also been found fossil brachiopods—marine shell-fish resembling cockles—also of Upper Carboniferous times.