KASHMIR VALLEYS 



sacrilege a denying of the spirit of the place for which 

 reason such acquaintances as I possessed, native and 

 European, professed themselves greatly shocked at my 

 enterprise. One thought that I should never reach the 

 top, a quite insufficient reason for not at least making a 

 start; another considered I should get hot, which 

 seemed more- than probable; a third offered me his 

 pony, as being safer than my own ten toes, an opinion 

 I vigorously combated; and my servant was certain 

 that evil spirits of the worst women with feet turned 

 the wrong way were lingering among the ruins to work 

 havoc on the too adventurous. As I had no wish to 

 be accompanied by such discouraging companions, I 

 started out alone at a very early hour, hoping thereby 

 to escape the full heat of the sun. 



My path led me out behind the Moonshi Bagh along 

 a very shadeless road, where the beautiful little cottage 

 hospital, of which I shall have more to say in a later 

 chapter, looked like a little piece of Old England, with 

 its surrounding rows of stiff hollyhocks and astonished- 

 faced sunflowers peering over the hedges to say, " How 

 do you do this very fine day ? " an island of coolness and 

 rest, and on to the gap through which the road passes 

 that leads to the pretty suburb of Gupcar, and from 

 which one turns off to the left to mount the Takht from 

 the eastern side, and to the right for the height I was 

 going to attempt. From the very beginning I was glad 

 I had refused the offer of a pony. With a path that at 

 its best barely supported two not too enormous human 

 feet, and at its worst left it uncertain whether a land- 

 slip had obliterated its outlines lately, or whether, 

 weary of an unappreciative world that did not value 

 its attractions, it had quietly disappeared out of the 



