Picturesque Kashmir / by Arthur Neve ; illustrated by Geoffroy W. Millais.

  • Arthur Neve
Date:
1900
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Picturesque Kashmir / by Arthur Neve ; illustrated by Geoffroy W. Millais. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    in the dense forests which clothe the north side of the hills. In the menagerie he has a varied collection of animals, from the royal tiger to hyenas and pigs. On one occasion, when visiting him, a wild boar was let loose near our party, and some agility was dis[)layed in avoiding its tusks as it rushed through the midst of us, followed by the llajah’s dogs. The best road to Punch is that which crosses the Haji Pir and joins the Murree cart road at Uri. The modern traveller has no difficulty in selecting his road from India to Kashmir, for he dashes through the deep valley of the Jhelam in a hill cart at the rate of eight miles an hour, with relays of horses every five miles, and thus covers the whole distance in two days, which his predecessors required a fortnight to travel. The very swiftness of the transition makes the scenery in a general way more striking, but there is no leisure to linger over the details of its beauty. In the cool morning one is traversing at full gallop the straight road, bordered by acacias, that crosses the Pindi plain. It is not yet sunrise, and the distant peaks look pale blue against the lemon-yellow eastern sky ; the nearer hills are a deep indigo, with here and there lighter tints where wreaths of smoke rise from the numerous hamlets hidden away in the jungle; in the plain are fields of ri])e corn, partly cut. Swiftly ascending the low hills one soon reaches a difierent atmosphere ; the stately ■pinus longifolius covers the slopes, and maidenhair ferns cling to the rocks. Before noon the traveller is at Murree, and he may be enveloped in clouds, and feel the damp chill of the mists which roll through the dark
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