46 AFOOT THROUGH THE 



For we are one round me your graces fling 



Their chains, my heart to you for aye I gave 



One in the perfect sense our poets sing, 



"Gold and the bracelet, water and the wave." 



The heat was over-powering ; the rushing, sparkling 

 rills ice-eold; the fakirs that surrounded the 

 sacred pond sat loathsome in their dirt and squalor; 

 the Mahants (Hindu priests of the Pundit class, 

 appointed by the Maharajah to look after the sacred 

 fish) resplendently spotless in their white robes. 

 My neat, well-dressed boatmen, in their comfortable 

 encampment, were watched by miserable villagers from 

 a very poor " ganw " (native village) near by, begging 

 for food or pice. What a country of sharp contrasts 

 it was, the result of the meeting of so many bygone 

 civilisations that, alternately with periods of wildest 

 anarchy and pillage, passed over the valley. In the 

 cool of the afternoon I left the camp to visit some 

 strange cave temples to be found a short way off on the 

 right bank of the Liddar high in the cliff side. Exca- 

 vated partially by man, these caves run far back into 

 the hillside, and contain temples of the usual Kashmir 

 form, built some one thousand years ago, and quite 

 unworthy of remark save for the strange fact of the 

 existence of people who could care to build in the 

 darkness and gloom when all the land lay open to 

 them a ready-made background of perfect beauty. 

 Our guide insisted on our following a narrow, dark 

 passage that led to a tiny chamber where had lived 

 and died a very holy fakir. : ' Why did he choose such 

 undesirable quarters ? " I queried. " Because he was so 

 holy," I was told. " But how do you know he really 

 lived here ? " began the unbeliever. " Here are his 



