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CHAPTER XLV.

KASHMIR TO THE HAZARA.

THE MANAS AND WULAR LAKES BEAUTIFUL MIRRORED SCENES SUGGESTIONS OF THE UNDER-WORLD THE MIDDLE JHELAM

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VALLEY -MOZAFARABAD-FAREWELL TO TENTS- -THE HAZARA

DISTRICT-ABBOTABAD AND ITS SOCIETY.

BEFORE leaving Kashmír I must devote a paragraph to its two most famous sheets of water, the Manasbal and the Wúlar Lake. They are both on the usual way out from Srinagar, which is also the usual way to it, and are seen by most visitors to the valley.

The Manasbal is called the most beautiful, but is rather the most picturesque, lake in Kashmír. It lies close to the Jhelam, on the north-west, and is connected with that river by a canal only about a mile long, through which boats can pass. This little lake is not much larger than Grasmere, being scarcely three miles long by one broad; but its shores are singularly suggestive of peacefulness and solitude. Picturesque mountains stand round a considerable portion of it, and at one point near they rise to the height of 10,000 feet, while snowy summits are visible beyond. In its clear deep-green water the surrounding scenery is seen most beautifully imaged. There being so little wind in

Kashmír, and the surrounding trees and mountains

being so high, this is one of the most charming features of its placid lakes. Wordsworth has assigned the occasional calmness of its waters as one of the reasons why he claims that the Lake country of England is more beautiful than Switzerland, where the lakes are seldom seen in an unruffled state; but in this respect the Valley of Roses far surpasses our English district, for its lakes are habitually calm for hours at a time they present an almost absolute stillness; they are beautifully clear, and the mountains around them are not only of great height and picturesque shape, but, except in the height of summer, are half covered with snow; the clouds are of a more dazzling whiteness than in England, and the sky is of a deeper blue. There, most emphatically, if I may be allowed slightly to alter Wordsworth's lines,—

"The visible scene

May enter unawares into the mind,

With all its solemn imagery, its woods,
Its snow, and that divinest heaven received
Into the bosom of the placid lake."

The poet just quoted has tried to explain the singular effect upon the mind of such mirrored scenes by saying, that “the imagination by their aid is carried into recesses of feeling otherwise impenetrable." And he goes on to explain that the reason for this is, that "the heavens are not only brought down into the bosom of the earth, but that the earth is mainly looked at and thought of through the medium of a purer element. The happiest time is when the equinoctial gales have departed ; but their fury may probably be called to mind by the sight of a few shattered boughs, whose leaves do not

differ in colour from the fading foliage of the stately oaks from which these relics of the storm depend: all else speaks of tranquillity; not a breath of air, no restlessness of insects, and not a moving object perceptible, except the clouds gliding in the depths of the lake, or the traveller passing along, an inverted image, whose motion seems governed by the quiet of a time to which its archetype, the living person, is perhaps insensible: or it may happen that the figure of one of the larger birds, a raven or a heron, is crossing silently among the reflected clouds, while the noise of the real bird, from the element aloft, gently awakens in the spectator the recollection of appetites and instincts, pursuits and occupations, that deform and agitate the world, yet have no power to prevent nature from putting on an aspect capable of satisfying the most intense cravings for the tranquil, the lovely, and the perfect, to which man, the noblest of her creatures, is subject." But the reasons thus suggested, rather than explicitly pointed out, are scarcely sufficient to explain the singular charm of a beautiful upland and cloudland scene reflected in a deep, calm, clear lake. Its most powerful suggestion is that of an under-world into which all things beautiful must pass, and where there is reserved for them a tranquillity and permanence unknown on earth. We seem to look into that under-world; the beauty of the earth appears under other conditions than those of our upper world; and we seem to catch a glimpse of the abiding forms of life, and of a more spiritual existence into which we ourselves may pass, yet one that will not be altogether strange to us. Some of our latest speculators have attempted to prove the existence of such a world even from the admitted facts of physi

cal science; and in all ages it has been the dream of poetry and the hope of religion, that beyond the grave, and perhaps beyond countless ages of phenomenal existence, or separated from us only by the veil of mortality, there is another and more perfect form of life-" the pure, eternal, and unchangeable" of Plato as well as of Christianity. No argument can be drawn in favour of such views from the under-world of a placid lake; but the contemplation of it is suggestive, and is favourable to that mood of mind in which we long and hope for a land where

"Ever pure and mirror-bright and even,
Life amidst the Immortals glides away;
Moons are waning, generations changing,
Their celestial life blooms everlasting,
Changeless 'mid a ruined world's decay."

The Wúlar is the largest remnant of that great lake which once filled the vale of Kashmír, and it too must disappear ere any long period of time elapses. Captain Bates says correctly that it "is a lake simply because its bottom is lower than the bed of the Jhelam; it will disappear by degrees as the bed of the pass at Baramula becomes more worn away by the river; its extent is perceptibly becoming more circumscribed by the deposition of soil and detritus on its margin.” This is not at all unlikely, as the average depth is only about twelve feet. Its greatest length is twelve miles, and its greatest breadth ten, so that it is by no means so grand a sheet of water as that of Geneva; but there is something in its character which reminds one of Lake Leman, and arises probably from the stretch of water which it presents, and the combined softness and grandeur of the scenery around. Lofty mountains rise almost immediately from its northern and eastern

sides; but there is room all round the lake for the innumerable villages which enliven its shore. Calm as it usually is, furious storms often play upon its surface, and in one of these Ranjit Singh lost 300 of the boats carrying his retinue and effects. In the beginning of spring some of the wild-fowl of this and the other lakes of Kashmir take flight to the distant valleys of Yarkand and Kashgar; and, in connection with that migration, the Kashmírís have a very curious story. They say that the birds, being aware of the difficulty of finding food in the streams of Tibet, which have only stony banks and beds, take with them a supply of the singhara, or water-nut of Kashmír, for food on their journey. Such forethought is rare among the lower creation. I once, however, had a large dog which, when it saw me ready to start on a journey, would try and get hold of a bone or something of the kind, and take that down with it to the railway, in order to relieve the tedium of confinement in the dog-box; and, of course, animals bring food to their young.

At Baramúla I took leave of the great valley of Kashmír. From that town a path leads up to the mountain-down of Gúlmarg, the most favourite of the sanitariums of Kashmír, and from whence a splendid view may be obtained of the wonderful 26,000-feet peak of Nangha Parbat, which rises about a hundred miles to the north, between the districts of Chilas and Astor. Immediately below Baramúla, and after leaving the great valley, the Jhelam changes its character, and becomes a swift, furious river, on which boats cannot be used at all, except at one or two calmer places, where they are used for ferries, being attached by ropes to the bank. Along these are paths on both

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