on their backs, and bearing forward on their
strong sticks to support them, and I inquired
of the distance. “ The smoke of two pipes,”
was the unlucid answer. I have not yet smoked a
native pipe, so the length of time taken to finish one
was unknown to me. But they told me that above the
weather had been very bad, that snow had fallen a day
or two before, and much rain was soon expected. As
I contemplated camping this was not reassuring, for
Gulmerg- bazaar
I had been warned what Gulmerg could be when really
damp.
The coolies told me there was a shorter route up
than the one I had come, and it would probably be taken
by my retainers. This spurred me to . renewed efforts,
hoping I should not be kept too long waiting at the
top for them. The air was distinctly cooler, for I was
some three thousand feet higher than my last resting-
place, Magam, and with a little effort I was really up
on a level with the tiny bazaar—still empty, for the
Parsee merchants who come up in the summer were still
below in the valley—the whole merg spread out before
me, vast shelving sweeps of greenness and flowers
screened on every side by secular forests of giant pines
from the fierce blasts and rigorous tempests that sweep
over the lonely snow-clad peaks above.
I t was like standing on the outer rim of a great
saucer, winter above, spring at my feet, spring that,
as is her wont, had arrayed herself in her best-hued
cloak of white and blue, the colours of virginal new life
and passionless fruitfulness. Among the Alps the snow
slopes give way to the gentians and narcissus; in our
spring gardens the frost-bound soil slowly softens and
clothes itself with a wreath of snowdrops, of anemones,
blue squills, starch hyacinths, and starry chionadoxa;
and here in Kashmir the snows had given place to a
wealth of blue iris that bordered each streamlet, peering
curiously into the waters to watch their liberation from
their long-borne frost chains, or crowned the little
clusters of mud-plastered graves announcing to the poor
bodies hidden away below that they were not forgotten,
while the friendly free breath of the victorious spring
was waking all round to new life.
Above the waters gathered, at the bottom of the
hollow below me were other blossoms that matched the
iris, blue anemones, blue gentians, blue forget-me-nots,
blue Jacob’s ladder, and thousands and thousands of
white stitchwort and chickweed, white omithagallum
that imitate the lilies of the valley so well, and white
marsh marigolds. The towering pine forests stood dark
and sombre, ringing round the grassy basin, and dividing
the flowery whiteness below from the cold glistening
snows above. I t was one of these scenes that, like the
court of King Solomon, takes the heart out of a woman,
impressing her with a depressing feeling of fugitiveness