life
of the Great Mogul and his court, but a fair itinerary. His description
of Srinagar and its vicinity still holds good, and modern books point us
to the pass of the Pir Panjal so disastrous to the imperial ladies. The
foremost of fifteen elephants, each carrying four women, took fright in
a narrow part of the so-called road and backed the rest over a
precipice. Only three or four of the odalisques were killed by the fall,
but not one elephant was saved. Bernier passed the scene of the accident
two days after, and saw some of the animals still alive, but able only
to trumpet mournfully for assistance.

North of Jummoo the highest type of road accommodates no longer an
elephant, but at most a hill-pony. In the vale of Srinagar the chief
thoroughfares are sluggish rivers, lakes and canals, navigated by a
remarkably sturdy race of boatmen. The chief line of traffic to that
valley, the heart of Kashmir proper, from Jummoo, is hardly practicable
for horses. In its length of a hundred and seventy-seven miles it
crosses two ridges, each nine thousand feet above the sea, with a hollow
between five thousand feet deep. The starting-point, or southern end of
the path, is fifteen hundred feet above tide, and the valley of Srinagar
from fifty-two hundred to sixty-five hundred. These are all trifling
elevations compared to those of the Himaliya on the south-east and the
Karakoram chain, to which England has pushed the maharajah's boundary,
on the north; but they will do very well for Western tourists to "cut
their teeth on," especially as they are interspersed with minor hills of
every grade of height and surface. The varied assortment of climates
also supports the idea of a general training-ground for travellers.
Bernier thought the first summit he crossed, coming from the south, "the
dreadful rim of the world," but the descent of it plumped him, "as if by
enchantment, into the centre of France." In sheltered places with a
southern exposure the tropics reappear, but the vegetation of the
foothills and middle mountains is said to be, but for the deodara cedar
(_Pinus excelsa_) and a few other trees, European in character. The
resemblance of the undergrowth is less marked, and still less that of
the inhabitants, the costume of the mountaineers, notably the tribe
named Gaddis, reasserting Asia. These Oriental Swiss are as hardy as
their Western analogues, thanks to a continual struggle for existence
against Nature and a tolerably fr