here
willow trees do not grow.

The whole bund is in a very unsafe state: it was raised three feet after
the last flood, but its width was not increased correspondingly. Now that
the water has fallen, great fissures and subsidences have appeared, and in
many places large portions of the bank have fallen away, carrying big
trees with them.

[1] Our pet name for Shikari Mark II., who reigns in the stead of Ahmed
Bot, sacked for expensive inefficiency.

CHAPTER XIV

THE MACHIPURA

Wednesday, _September_ 27.--We left Srinagar yesterday, very sorry indeed
to part from the many good friends we have made and left there. Truly
Kashmir is a hospitable country, and we have met with more kind
friendliness in the last six months than we could have believed possible,
coming as we did, strangers and pilgrims into a strange land. Our
consolation is that every one comes "Home" sooner or later, so that we can
look forward to meeting most of our friends again ere very long, and
recalling with them memories of this happy summer with those who have done
so much to make it so.

Farewell, Srinagar! Your foulness and inward evilness were lost in the
background behind your picturesque and tumble-down houses as we floated for
the last time down Jhelum's olive waters, where the sharp-nosed boats lay
moored along the margin or, poled by their sturdy Mangis and guided by the
chappars of their wives and daughters, shot athwart the eddying flood,
breaking the long reflections of the storeyed banks.

Past the Palace of the Maharajah, its fantastic mixture of ancient
fairness and modern ugliness blending into a homogeneous beauty as
distance lent it enchantment.

Past the temples, their tin-coated roofs refulgent in the brilliant
sunlight; under the queer wooden bridges, their solid stone piers parting
the suave flow of water into noisy swirl and gurgle.

Past the familiar groups of grave, white-robed men solemnly washing
themselves, then scooping up and drinking the noisome fluid; past their
ladies squatting like frogs by the river-side, washing away at clothes
which never seem a whit the cleanlier for all their talk and trouble.

Past the children and fowls, and cows and crows, all hob-nobbing together
as usual.

Past all these sights--so strange to us at first and now so strangely
familiar--we floated, till the broken remnant of the seventh bridge lay
behind us, and the lofty poplars that hem in the Baramula road stood stark