gate of sixty-eight thousand square miles. Their share of the
population is infinitely greater in proportion. Out of a total, in 1873,
of 1,534,972 souls, the province of Jummoo contained 861,075--44,000 of
them in the city of that name, the political metropolis. The government
of Kashmir had 491,846, including 136,000 in the city of Srinagar. The
district of Punch, which boasts a rajah of its own, tributary to the
maharajah, had 77,566, and the outlying governments, as they are termed,
of Gilgit in the extreme north-east, Baltistan in the north, and Ladakh,
or Little Tibet, in the east, 104,485 together. In the province of
Kashmir the Mohammedans are in the large majority of six to one. In that
of Jummoo, on the contrary, the excess is slightly in favor of the
Hindus--a circumstance which accounts for the sovereign's choice of a
capital, he being a Hindu and showing in his political acts a preference
for his co-religionists and a corresponding distrust of his Moslem
subjects. In Ladakh, Budha is supreme, his worshippers numbering 20,254
to 260 followers of Islam and 107 adherents of the Vedas--hardly one to
the square mile of all religions.

[Illustration: KASHMIRI BOATMEN.]

The different creeds get on very comfortably side by side, the mosque
and the idol temple decorating the same street, and the praying-machines
of the Lamas grinding out perpetual bliss without let or hinderance from
those who believe in another way of reaching the ear of the Unknowable.
This Utopian scene of universal toleration has not failed to attract the
representatives of our own faith. The Moravians have long had an
establishment on the south-eastern mountains, and we read of the
conversion of the descendants of the last rajah of Kishtwar by an
American missionary--of what sect is not stated.

Generally speaking, the lines of race coincide but vaguely with those of
creed. The Hindus and Mohammedans are both of Aryan race, and Mohammedan
converts are found among the Mongolian--or rather Turanian--worshippers
of Budh. The latter process would have made more headway but for the
influence of the reigning dynasty, which discourages it on system. The
change implied in this proselytism is greater in respect of some social
practices than in the abstract principles of religious belief. The
polyandry of the Tibetans is in direct contrast with the polygamy of the
Moslems, and is far more strictly maintained. It is favored by the
circumstance that, co