Gulmerg and still he remained invisible, I feared I
should have to return home and see again his portrait—
most successful, surely, of snow photographs that adorns
the walls of the Royal Geographical—without being
cheered by a vision of the prototype. As the regions
above were unpropitious, I thought it advisable to visit
the gorge below Gulmerg, from which it is possible to
reach the Ferozepore nullah and the snow bridge. I t
has often appeared to me a strange trait in human
nature that love that seems so ingrained in most people
of a “ name,” call the most glorious mountain path “ a
pass” without surname, and none will feel interested
in visiting it. A mountain will remain unclimbed if it
cannot boast an imposing title. For this reason every
one considered it part of the correct routine of Gulmerg
to visit the Eerozepore nullah. Beautiful as it is, there
are probably a dozen spots round Gulmerg as fair, but
lacking the distinction of a name. I was sufficiently led
away by the popular notion of an excursion to start out
with the intention of visiting the famous stream, but
being but vaguely instructed in the route to follow, and
only meeting with coolies who neither spoke my language
nor knew of the place under that name, I strayed away,
and, slipping down grassy slopes, clambering over
boulders, making my way up snow-bound streams, I
spent twice as happy a day as I should have done if
following the direct path, amid the loneliness of the
vast woods, the colossal trees reaching away to
unfathomable green vaults overhead, their roots hidden
in a carpet of forget-me-nots, alkanets, stitchworts, and
delicate fern tangles!
The air was as strong and uplifting in its
quality as that breathed among the Alps. Free
and untrammelled, even the fact of following a
made footpath seemed an unbearable bondage;
i t : was better to find new tracks, following fancy.
To strange pitfalls was I led, one steep slope
making a splendid if unexpected glissade, and I arrived
below suddenly, like a swift spirit among some
frightened sheep, and startled their wild keepers.
A conversation usually occurs when folk are thus landed
face to face, but, alack! we had no common tongue.
Certain feminine tastes are a good starting-point for
common understanding even when speech is wanting,
and my admiration of the lady shepherdesses’ rough
corals and blue beads led to an examination of
my small trinkets, and some desire to' know the whence
and whither of my wanderings. I, in turn, questioned
by gesture, and found they were taking herds from the
villa g es to the upper grazing grounds. Lusty, happy
folk they seemed, not too clean and savoury, but with
a fine conceit of themselves and their work.
They conversed much, with a happy belief so universally
possessed by the uneducated that the higher
culture must endow with a universal power of understanding
tongues. Peasants on the Italian-French
frontier speaking uncouth patois, Kerry peasants with
none of the English, Bhils from Central India, the
strange tribesmen of the Kashmir frontier, all alike will
chatter without misgiving as to their intelligibility, and
doubtless a certain meaning filters through, aided by
gesture and expression. They are cheerful ruffians
these Gujars, have a contempt for all professions save
their own, and are dirty, dishonest, with a dash of the
spirit of enterprise and adventure a t variance with the
typical Kashmiri. They possess, too, the hospitable
p