126 AFOOT THROUGH THE 



and the wretched people have only known peace and 

 plenty when bowing the head willingly to the yoke 

 and putting aside all resistance. Probably the people 

 have in them still much of the old warlike spirit only 

 waiting to be roused by some powerful incentive, and 

 the assurance that while fighting, their homes will not 

 be plundered and broken up. Wherever our Kashmiri 

 auxiliaries of the Imperial Service troops have been 

 employed they have behaved well and shown plenty of 

 pluck, so that it may be that their old story is true, and 

 that the invaders forced on them the " pheran " or 

 womanly " frock," which is the universal wear in 

 Kashmir, in order to break their spirit, and that once 

 freed from that, they regain their old powers and forget 

 their softness and effeminacy. 



From the narrow, dark ways of the city we emerged 

 into the Dal Lake. A strange network of waterways 

 hedged about with osiers, and small trees, requiring a 

 very accurate knowledge to prevent hopeless straying, 

 for the floating gardens, about which more anon, have 

 so filled up the lake that only in one part is there still 

 open water, all the rest is cut up with countless tracks 

 like miniature canals separated one from another by the 

 high green crops or reeds and trees. Ponies and cattle 

 feed among them; men, women, and children wade 

 about or work at them from their shallow, flat-bottomed 

 boats, and the place gives more the idea of being the 

 home of a naturally amphibious race than any scene 

 amid the waterways of Holland or the lagoons. 



They have not yet accomplished all that is necessary 

 for the complete comfort of such an existence, as was 

 proved by the untimely upset of an aged crony who, 

 steering her boat full of fodder gathered from the water, 



