“Farewell, oh, dearest brother! I could not possibly think of taking so much trouble for three rupees, especially as, now I come to think of it, I can borrow a singhara pole, and, in due time, will prod for thy corpse in the Wular! Mind thou wrappest the lucre snugly in thy cummerbund, that it be not lost—farewell, little brother!”
While the gentlemen of the Happy Valley have been lashed by the tongue and pen of every traveller, the ladies, on the contrary, have been rather overrated.
In all communities where the men are invertebrate the women become the real heads of the family, doing not only most of the actual work, but also taking the dominant position in affairs generally. This I have observed strikingly in the case of the three “slackest” male races I know—the Fantis of the Gold Coast, the Kashmiri, and the crofters of the West Highlands.
Opinion is divided on the question of female loveliness in Kashmir.
Marco Polo (who probably only got his ideas of “Kesmur” from hearsay) echoed the prevalent opinion by saying, “The women although dark are very comely” (ch. xxvii.). Bernier is enthusiastic: “Les femmes surtout y sont très-belles,” and hints at their popularity among the Moguls.
Moorcroft, Vigne, and others swelled the laudatory chorus until Forster, “having been prepossessed with an opinion of their charms, suffered a sensible disappointment,” and even was so rude as to criticise the ladies’ legs, which he considered thick!
Lawrence saw “thousands of women in the villages, and could not remember, save one or two exceptions, ever seeing a really beautiful face;” but the heaviest blow was dealt them by Jacquemont, who, as a gay Frenchman, should have been an excellent judge: “Je n’avais jamais vu auparavant d’aussi affreuses sorcières!”
APPENDIX III
I had hoped to have given, through the kindness of Colonel Ward, a full list of the birds of Kashmir. Up to the time of going to press, however, the complete list has not been made out. A very large proportion, however, has been published in the Journal of the Bombay Nat. Hist. Society. I would refer those desirous of a knowledge of the birds of Kashmir to the above Journal for 23rd April and 20th Sept. 1906, and 15th Feb. 1907. Also to Hume and Henderson’s Lahore to Yarkand, and to Le Mesurier’s Game, Shore, and Water Birds of India, to which I am indebted for the following:—
“In Kashmir, out of 116 genera of land birds, 34 have a wide range, 32 are characteristic of the Palar Arctic, 29 of the Indian, and 21 of the Himalo-Chinese sub-region. Only one species is peculiar to Kashmir, a very normal bullfinch (pyrula).”