CHAPTER X II
The vast blue height
Was murmurous with peri’s plumes,
And the leathern wings of genii.
^-*Henley<
Look on its broken arch, its ruin’d wall,
Its chambers desolate, and portals foul;
Yes, this was once ambition!s Airy hall,
The dome of thought, the palace of the soul.
—Byton.
A steep ascent leading to fine views an d m an y backslidings—A
fa iry palace—Pre c ip ita te descent an d an old m an ’s warning.
W h il e drifting about on the lake I had noticed high
up on the side of the hills that close it in on the eastern
side some very strange ruins, and as the natives called
it the Peri Mahal (palace of the fairies), I thought it
ought to be worth visiting, and, determined to be
energetic one day, and, instead of floating about on the
lake, make the ascent of Zebanwan, a peak some
nine thousand feet high to the east of the
Takht, and from there walk down the further
slope, and visit the spot that had so attracted
me. Srinagar is a real holiday: land, where to
make an effort even for one’s own pleasure seems a
sacrilege—a denying of the spirit of the place—for which
reason such acquaintances as I possessed, native and
European, professed themselves greatly shocked at my
enterprise. One thought that I should never reach the
top, a quite insufficient reason for not at least making a
sta rt;' another considered I should get hot, which
seemed more than probable; a third offered me his
pony; -as being safer than my own ten toes, an opinion
I vigorously combated; and my servant was certain
that evil spirits of the worst—women with feet turned
the wrong way—were lingering among the ruins to work
havoc on the too adventurous. As I had no wish to
be accompanied by such discouraging companions, I
started out alone at a very early hour, hoping thereby
to escape the full heat of the sun.
My path led me out behind the Moonshi Bagh along
a very shadeless road, where the beautiful little cottage
hospital, of which I shall have more to say in a later
chapter, looked like a little piece of Old England, with
its surrounding rows of stiff hollyhocks and astonished-
faced sunflowers peering over the hedges to say, “ How
do you do this very fine day 1 ” an island of coolness and
rest, and on to the gap through which the road passes
that leads to the pretty suburb of Gupcar, and from
which one turns off to the left to mount the Takht from
the eastern side, and to the right for the height I was
going to attempt. From the very beginning I was glad
I had refused the offer of. a pony. With a path that at
its best barely supported two not too enormous human
feet, and at its/worst left it uncertain whether a landslip
had obliterated its outlines lately, or whether,
weary of an unappreciative world that did not value
its attractions, it had quietly disappeared out of the