218 AFOOT THROUGH THE 



hills. Few things in this life have the power 

 to hold and possess without dispute mind and 

 memory, but never can anything replace that vision, and 

 if when this " passing shadow," this short breath of life 

 is over, I rise to other existences, this memory will 

 endure as a haunting sense of kinship with heights 

 and stainless fields of snow. Bevond the shimmering: 



v O 



nver and the smooth surface of the Wular, silvery in the 

 dazzling sunlight, rose the lesser heights of the Tragbal, 

 and behind heights with numbers for names. Further 

 east that rugged giant Haramuk, threw his rocky 

 summit seventeen thousand feet to the sky, to be over- 

 topped further round to the south by the beautiful 

 Mahadeo's sacred triple peak (Mahadeo, the creator god, 

 who is three gods), the Gwash Brari or Kolahoi, nearly 

 eighteen thousand feet, and the peak of Amarnath 

 sheltering its pilgrim cave. To the south was 

 the Pir Panjal, named from the Dogra and Kashmiri 

 words for peaks, " Poi " and " Pantsal," and the 

 passes by which the traveller marches into the 

 Poonch country, but often as the eye strayed it returned 

 always to that north-western corner where Nanga 

 Parbat raised its massive head and shoulders, 

 the key of that mysterious massif, the " roof of the 

 world." Beneath its quiet snows lie the bones of 

 those who timorously have attempted to pass up it ; its 

 beauties are only for those who are content to view from 

 afar, and, cheered by the vision, keep the memory to 

 help them when circumstances and environment are 

 changed, and sordid surroundings and daily scenes of 

 struggle and surrender require that the mind should 

 possess some sedative as an antidote against unconquer- 

 able weariness. 



