74 THE GARDENS OF THE TAJ 



the Murree Hills, growing in little patches where 

 the sun could reach them through the fir trees, 

 dainty little cream-coloured flowers, with pointed 

 petals streaked on the outer sides with carmine. 

 Lower, the hillsides were bare as yet, but down 

 in the ravine by the river the lilies were coming 

 out, in form like our Madonna lilies, but smaller, 

 pink in colour, with long reed-like leaves, growing 

 in tufts in crevices of the limestone cliffs, tan- 

 talisingly out of reach. Then as the rocks receded 

 and the valley grew more wooded, splendid 

 crown -imperials shot up through the mossy 

 carpet strewn with the brown of last year's 

 leaves, magnificent great red bells, which glowed 

 between the bare mauve twigs and russet buds 

 of the undergrowth. Each flower as we passed 

 it I thought the loveliest of all, but the craftsman 

 who crowned the crescent of the Taj with an iris 

 knew best, for the memory of the other lilies 

 fades before the blue Kashmir iris as we saw it 

 when at last the valley opened out : blue lakes 

 and pools of iris, between a golden land of mustard 

 fields and reefs of bright green grass, stretching 

 away into the gloomy deep-blue distance of the 

 lower mountain chains, above which towered the 

 cloud- wreathed summits of the snowy Pir Panjal. 



