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

by Sir Francis Edward Younghusband

CHAPTER I

SCENERY AND SEASONS

Bernier, the first European to enter Kashmir, writing in 1665, says: "In truth, the kingdom surpasses in beauty all that my warmest imagination had anticipated." This impression is not universally felt, for one of the very latest writers on Kashmir speaks of it as overrated, and calls the contour of the mountains commonplace and comparable to a second-rate Tyrolean valley. And fortunate it is that in this limited earth of ours we every one of us do not think alike. But I have seen many visitors to Kashmir, and my experience is that the bulk of them are of the same view as the above-mentioned Frenchman. They have read in books, and they have heard from friends, glowing descriptions of the country; but the reality has, with most, exceeded the expectation. Some have found the expenses of living and the discomforts of travel greater than they had expected. And some have arrived when it was raining or cloudy, and the snows were not visible; or in the middle of summer when the valley is hazy, steamy, and filled with mosquitoes. But when the clouds have rolled by, the haze lifted, and a real Kashmir spring or autumn day disclosed itself, the heart of the hardest visitor melteth and he becomes as Bernier.

The present book will deal, not with the whole Kashmir State, which includes many outlying provinces, but with Kashmir Proper, with the world-renowned valley of Kashmir, a saucer-shaped vale with a length of 84 miles, a breadth of 20 to 25 miles, and a mean height of 5600 feet above sea-level, set in the very heart of the Himalaya, and corresponding in latitude to Damascus, to Fez in Morocco, and to South Carolina.

APPROACH TO SRINAGAR

The country with which one is most apt to compare it is, naturally, Switzerland. And Switzerland, indeed, has many charms, and a combination of lake and mountain in which, I think, it excels Kashmir. But it is built on a smaller scale. There is not the same wide sweep of snow-clad mountains. There is no place where one can see a complete circle of snowy mountains surrounding a plain of anything like the length and breadth of the Kashmir valley, for the main valleys of Switzerland are like the side valleys of Kashmir. And above everything there is not behind Switzerland what there is at the back of Kashmir, and visible in glimpses from the southern side,—a region of stupendous mountains surpassing every other in the world.

By these Himalayan regions only, by the mountains of Baltistan and Hunza, and by those unequalled mountains seen from Darjiling, can Kashmir be excelled. There indeed one sees mountain majesty and sublimity at their very zenith. And with such as these Kashmir cannot compare. But it possesses a combination of quiet loveliness and mountain grandeur which has a fascination all its own. If one could imagine the smiling, peaceful Thames valley with a girdle of snowy mountains, he would have the nearest approach to a true idea of Kashmir it is possible to give. He would not expect the stern ruggedness and almost overwhelming majesty of the mighty mountains beyond Kashmir. But he would have the tranquil beauty and genial loveliness which to some are even preferable.

Of this, my collaborator's pictures will give a true and vivid impression, though every artist allows that it is impossible to give in a single picture the broad general effect of those wide-flung landscapes and of the snowy ranges stretching from one horizon to another. For that impression and for the varying effect of spring and autumn, of winter and summer, dependence must be on the pen alone.