KASHMIR VALLEYS 197 



and untrammelled, even the fact of following a 

 made footpath seemed an unbearable bondage; 

 it was better to find new tracks, following fancy. 

 To strange pitfalls was I led, one steep slope 

 making a splendid if unexpected glissade, and I arrived 

 below suddenly, like a swift spirit among some 

 frightened sheep, and startled their wild keepers. 

 A conversation usually occurs when folk are thus landed 

 face to face, but, alack! we had no common tongue. 

 Certain feminine tastes are a good starting-point for 

 common understanding even when speech is wanting, 

 and my admiration of the lady shepherdesses' rough 

 corals and blue beads led to an examination of 

 my small trinkets, and some desire to know the whence 

 and whither of my wanderings. I, in turn, questioned 

 by gesture, and found they were taking herds from the 

 villages to the upper grazing grounds. Lusty, happy 

 folk they seemed, not too clean and savoury, but with 

 a fine conceit of themselves and their work. 



They conversed much, with a happy belief so univer- 

 sally possessed by the uneducated that the higher 

 culture must endow with a universal power of under- 

 standing tongues. Peasants on the Italian-French 

 frontier speaking uncouth patois, Kerry peasants with 

 none of the English, Bhils from Central India, the 

 strange tribesmen of the Kashmir frontier, all alike will 

 chatter without misgiving as to their intelligibility, and 

 doubtless a certain meaning filters through, aided by 

 gesture and expression. They are cheerful ruffians 

 these Gujars, have a contempt for all professions save 

 their own, and are dirty, dishonest, with a dash of the 

 spirit of enterprise and adventure at variance with the 

 typical Kashmiri. They possess, too, the hospitable 



