Three Months of My Life | Page 9

which gives a
scene so great an aspect of wildness and desolation, as dead fir trees.
There they stand on the most barren and inaccessible places, rearing
their gaunt and whitened forms erect as ever, and though lifeless yet not
decayed. Seared and blasted by a thousand storms, they stand stern and
silent, ghostlike and immoveable, scorning the elements. No wind
murmurs pleasantly through their dead and shrunken branches, the

howling tempest alone can make them speak, and then with wild
straining shriek and harsh rattle, they do battle with the whirlwind. It
was getting hot and I was thinking of my dandy, when a storm passed
over with heavy rain. This was a mitigated evil (if an evil at all for my
bed remained dry, and a wet bed is the worst result of a shower) as it
rendered walking cool and pleasant. It cleared up again, and I rode the
last half mile. The cleanest and best bungalow here I have been in since
I left Ghuri. The view down the valley is extremely pretty, hills rising
one above the other, but shut in on all other sides by high mountains.
Gingle, which is only one or two huts, stands on a small plateau a
quarter of a mile long by one hundred and fifty yards wide, fifty feet
above the Jhelum. The ground is laid out in paddy fields irrigated by a
stream of the coolest and purest water. It is a great satisfaction to be
able to drink water freely without fear. In the plains of India the water
is so contaminated as to be almost poisonous, and I do not think that
previous to this march I had drank a gallon of it since I landed in
Calcutta.
JULY 16th.--Left Gingle with the earliest streak of dawn for Baramula,
an eighteen mile march. Road very much more level, never ascending
high above the river whose erratic course we continued to follow.
Passed through groves of hazel overrun by wild vines, but both grapes
and nuts as yet green. The plateaus become gradually larger and almost
continuous, and the hills separated and diminished in size, those on the
right being covered with the lank deodar, while those on the left
possessed only a bright green mantle of grass, far away in front they
altogether ended, and the open sky above the valley was alone visible.
And now an unusual occurrence presented itself. We were following
the stream upwards towards its source, yet at every mile it increased in
width and became more placid, till at length its surface was unbroken,
and it assumed the form of a magnificent river, wider than the Thames
at Richmond. The hills continued provokingly to overlap one another
as though anxious to shut in and hide the happy valley from sight. But
at length I discerned a far distant white cloud which I guessed
betokened the summit of a mountain, and a few yards further revealed a
faint glistening opaque line which the inexperienced eye would have
certainly taken for a portion of the cloud, but which could not be

mistaken by one who had before seen the snows. About half a mile
from Buramula we obtain the first view of the Vale of Kashmir, but not
an extensive one, as it is obstructed on either side by low hills.
However, what is seen is very pretty. A large level plain traversed by a
broad smooth river which has now lost its tortuous zig-zag course and
bounded by the everlasting snows covering the main backbone of the
Himalayas. At the head of the valley stands the quaint looking town of
Baramula surrounded by hills on all sides but one, embowered in trees
and intersected by the Jhelum, across which there is a good wooden
bridge. The houses have mostly an upper story, and are built of wood
with gabled roofs. The streets are narrow and roughly paved, and I
regret to say are not more pleasant to the nostrils than are those of other
Indian towns. The bridge built of deodar wood, beams of which are
driven into the bed of the river, and then others laid horizontally upon
them, each row at right angles to and projecting beyond the layer
beneath, till a sufficient height has been reached, six of these and two
stone piers form the buttresses of the bridge and a broad pathway of
planks connects them. The march was a fatiguing one on account of its
length, and I used the dandy freely. I shall however discard it altogether
for the future. I went to the Barahduree but found it occupied by a man
whose name I was told was "----," had been there five days. His Coolies
had taken possession of all the rooms, and though I was