We have been taking life easily here for the last week. The Smithsons intend going into Tilail as soon as the Tragbal becomes feasible; we propose to remain in Srinagar for a while. The weather has not been very fine—cold winds and a good deal of rain, varied by thunderstorms, being our daily experience. The spring is, I am told, exceptionally backward, and, although the almond is in full and lovely flower, the poplars and chenars are barely showing a sign of life.
My wife having gone to lunch at the Residency this afternoon, I walked half-way up the Takht-i-Suleiman, whose sharp, rock-strewn pyramid rises a thousand feet above Srinagar.
The view of the Kashmir plain, through which the river winds like a silver snake; the solemn ring of mountains, enclosing the valley with a rampart of rock and snow; the innumerable roofs of the city, glittering like burnished scales in the keen sunlight, densely clustered round the fort-crowned height of Hari Parbat, went to make up such a picture as Turner would have kneeled to.
Of course it is simply futile to compare one magnificent view with another which differs entirely in kind. All that one can do is to lay by in the memory a mental picture-gallery of recollection; and as I sat in the shelter of a big rock, gazing out over the level plain stretching below, where the changing shadows as they swept by turned the amber masses of the trees to gold, I conjured up in my mind’s eye other scenes whose beauties will remain with me while life shall last:—The purple and gold of a glorious sunset over Etna, the Greek theatre of Taormina in front of me, with the sea below—a shimmering opal that melted away in the haze beyond Syracuse; the awful rapids raging furiously below Niagara, a very ocean tortured and maddened to blind fury, pouring its irresistible torrents through the chasm above the whirlpool; and again, a cloudless October morning, with just the keen zest of early autumn in the air, as I lay high up on a hillside in Ardgour watching for deer—with the hills of Lochaber and Ballachulish reflected in all their glory of purple and russet in the waters of Loch Linnhe, windless and still!
Chills can be caught amidst the most glorious scenery—the little tufts of purple self-heal at my feet were shivering and shaking in a biting breeze that swept down from the snows to the north-east, and although I am an admirer of Kingsley, I do not hold with him in his wrong-headed admiration for a “nor’-easter”—so I quitted my perch in search of tea.
Easter Monday.—The Smithsons scuttled away in a great hurry to-day, their shikari, Asna (the best shikari in Kashmir), having heard that, owing to the lateness of the season, the bara singh have not even yet all shed their horns—so Charlotte is filled with high hope. The bears, too, are said to be waking from their winter’s doze and poking around in warm and balmy corners.
Armed to the teeth and thirsting for blood, the hunter and the huntress cast loose their matted dounga and paddled away merrily down the Jhelum to Bandipur, thence to pursue the royal bara singh, and later, if possible, scale the snow-barred slopes of the Tragbal and penetrate the lonely Tilail Valley to assail the red bear and the multitudinous ibex.
Jane and I having decided that a purely shikar expedition into the more difficult parts of the country was not suited to our prosaic habits, remained to enjoy the effeminate pleasures of Srinagar till the weather should grow a few degrees warmer.
As we are bidden to a sort of state luncheon to-morrow, given by the Maharajah, it appeared to me to be but right and seemly to go and inscribe my name in the visitors’ book of His Highness, and also to call upon his brother, the Rajah Sir Amar Singh. I went with the more alacrity as I thought it might prove interesting. Strolling across the big bridge above the Palace, I soon found myself in the purely native quarter, immersed in a seething crowd of men and beasts, from beneath whose passing feet a cloud of dust rose pungent. The water-sellers, the hawkers of vegetables and of sweets, the cattle, the loafers and the children got into the way and out of it in kaleidoscopic confusion. By the side of the street, money-changers, wrapped in silent consideration, bent over their trays of queer and outlandish coins. Bright cottons and silks flaunted pennons of gorgeous colours. Brass, glowing like gold, rose piled on low wide counters. In front stood the Palace, looking its best from this point, and showing huge beside the huddle of wooden and plaster huts which hem it in.
General Raja Sir Amar Singh lives in a sort of glorified English villa. Were it not for the flowering oleanders and hibiscus in front and the silvery gleam of temple domes beyond, one might suppose oneself near the banks of Father Thames. And were it not for the group of stalwart retainers at the door, the illusion need not be lost on entering the house.