240 TRAVEL, ADVENTURE, AND SPORT. 



famous in the East, but if you want beautiful Kash- 

 miris do not go to Kashmir to look for them. They 

 have all fine eyes, and " the eyes of Kashmir " have 

 been justly celebrated in Eastern poetry ; but that 

 is almost the only feminine attraction to be found 

 in the country even among the dancing - girls and 

 the boat-girls. As to the ordinary women, there is 

 too much sad truth in Victor Jacquemont's outburst 

 against them " Know that I have never seen any- 

 where such hideous witches as in Kashmir. [He 

 had not been in Tibet !] The female race is remark- 

 ably ugly. I speak of women of the common ranks 

 those one sees in the streets and fields since those 

 of a more elevated station pass all their lives shut up, 

 and are never seen. It is true that all little girls who 

 promise to turn out pretty are sold at eight years of 

 age, and carried off into the Panjab and India." I 

 am afraid a good deal of that traffic still goes on, 

 notwithstanding the law which forbids women and 

 mares to be taken out of the country ; and as it has 

 gone on for generations, it is easily explicable how 

 the women of Kashmir should be so ugly. A con- 

 tinuous process of eliminating the pretty girls and 

 leaving the ugly ones to continue the race must lower 

 the standard of beauty. But the want of good 

 condition strikes one more painfully in Kashmir than 

 the want of beauty. The aquiline noses, long chins, 

 and long faces of the women of Kashmir, would 

 allow only of a peculiar and rather Jewish style of 



