ld a
story of a holy man who spent all his life endeavouring to make a rope
long enough to reach to the bottom, and failing, at length threw
himself in and was never seen again. My boatman to give me an idea of
its depth, dropped in white pebbles which could be seen for a long time
sinking in the clear green water, until they gradually disappeared from
sight. I longed to take a plunge into the cool fluid, and Ungoo
evidently read my wish in my looks, for he proposed that I should gussul
or bathe. The presence of three women however proved too much for my
modesty, and I refrained, although I have no doubt that had I not done
so their feelings would not have been in the least outraged. Very
handsome water lilies (lotus) on the surface of the lake, the flowers
being of a delicate pink colour with a yellow centre, and as large as
the crown of a man's hat. At the further extremity, a high hill rises
from the edge of the water. A stream is artificially conducted along its
face at a height of about fifty feet, and the surplus water escapes in
several pretty little cascades, by the side of one of them grow some
noble chenars. The bottom of the lake around the edges is very uneven,
and covered with a dense growth of mynophillum spicatum, on which
planorbus and other molluces graze and tiny fry pick their invisible
atoms of food. The elegant shape of this plant with its branching and
finely cut leaves, and the inequalities of the ground remind me of the
pine-clad hills in miniature. A brilliant king-fisher took the gunwale
of the boat as the "base of his operations," and I amused myself all the
morning, by watching him catch fish; when one approached the surface he
descended with a splash which I imagined would have driven every fish
far away, emerging quickly and very seldom without a capture, which he
turned head downwards and swallowed alive and whole, then looked round
with a laughable air of self-satisfaction. When the fish was a size too
large to be trifled with, he first polished it off by rapping its head
on the boards. It is now sunset, and that bird is still feeding, and
probably the day will end without deciding whether his appetite or his
capacity is the larger. A native brought me a dish of excellent
apricots and mulberries--the mulberries especially good, and my garden
is celebrated for the best peaches in Kashmir.

JULY 27th.--Up the Jhelum again, past Sumbul with its deodar bridge
(similar to the others describe