KASHMIR VALLEYS 169 



other side, is a strange place, once a mosque, but, being 

 the gift of a woman, now degraded into a granary by 

 the narrow-minded Mussulman. 



The townspeople always appeared to me more 

 cheerful, lazier individually than the country culti- 

 vators, the same difference as between a Parisian and a 

 Brittany peasant. The conditions of life are easier in 

 the town, food is cheap, and entertainment can always be 

 had for the mere effort of walking to the market or into 

 the public offices, or even gaping over the bridge! 



The cold is great in winter, but can be easily over- 

 come by pasting up the windows with newspapers, and 

 filling the rooms with " kangars," the universally-used 

 charcoal-holders of the country. On the boat drifted, 

 stopping if I wished to look at a more than usually 

 attractive house, or to ask some question as to the 

 various cargoes being taken up and down in the great 

 barges that perform universally the office of drays in 

 this Eastern Venice. 



By the sixth bridge I landed, and gazed long up 

 stream at the strange vista the waterway presented, 

 with its burden of curious boats, its bordering houses, 

 its varied colouring. The sun was beginning to sink, 

 throwing a rosy veil over the snow peaks of the Pir 

 Panjal, and from the lakes arose a flaky mist that 

 blotted out into a soft obscurity the lower parts of the 

 town, leaving the temple-crowned Takht and the fortress 

 on Hari Parbat standing out, dark masses with 

 aureoles of golden light. I wandered round by back 

 ways to the large parade-ground to the west of the 

 city, returning by the poplar-bordered roads to the 

 second bridge, and then, having again joined my boat, 

 we returned through the Chenaar Bagrh, where many 



