KASHMIR VALLEYS 



167 



covered their fat, brown toes and splashed their soft, 

 rounded limbs. The various bridges (Kadal) under 

 which we passed, the boatmen shouting together in 

 chorus as they worked their hardest to keep the boat 

 steadily in the middle of the stream, were all of the 

 same type; their foundations are of deodar piles, then 

 logs of wood about twenty-five to thirty feet long and 

 two or three feet in girth are led two feet apart at 

 right angles, alternately with layers of stone. So piers 

 are built up from about twenty-five to thirty feet in 



Rebuilding bridge after floods, 1893 



height, and twenty-five feet square. These stand ninety 

 feet apart, and are spanned by long, undressed deodar 

 timbers. The force of the stream is broken by abut- 

 ments of stones running to a point constructed on the 

 up-stream side. These answer admirably their purpose, 

 stemming the wild rush of waters and standing securely 

 for hundreds of years, save when exceptional floods, 



