282 TRAVEL, ADVENTURE, AND SPORT. 



struck the ground with his trident, and the opening 

 earth caused the waters of the lake to disappear, 

 which soon brought about the death of the monster 

 Yaldeo. Hence the name Kashmir, which is made 

 out to be a contraction of Kashafmar, the place or 

 country of Kashaf, the liishi, who may thus be said 

 to have made it. As to the truth or probability of 

 this story about Kashaf, I need say nothing. The 

 Hindu may turn round upon us and argue : " You 

 say the age of miracles is over, and you can show no 

 modern ones in support of your religion more prob- 

 able or less puerile in appearance than those which 

 the masses of this country believe that our devotees 

 still accomplish. As the age of miracles is past for 

 you, so, unhappily, is for us the age for the incarna- 

 tion and appearance on earth of our gods, otherwise 

 you would not be here. This we have long been 

 taught, and see abundant reason to believe, is the 

 Kola Yogi, or Black Age, when the gods have retired 

 from the earth ; but that does not prove they have 

 never been here before. We find that even the 

 rationalistic Socrates did not deny the actual exist- 

 ence of the gods of Greece ; and that, in an age of 

 culture and criticism, the historian Plutarch thor- 

 oughly believed in them. Is the universal belief of 

 whole nations and of hundreds of millions of people 

 for tens of centuries, to go for nothing in elucidation 

 and proof of the past history of the human race 1 If 

 so, what importance, what value, can we attach to 



