at
more than sixty thousand tons of the edible nuts are gathered each year
and ground into flour, the root besides serving as a popular esculent.
What is an object of devotion with the Tibetans of the higher Himaliyas
a few days' journey distant, as formerly with the Egyptians, is to the
Kashmiris an article of food and trade. They might draw from the waters,
which cover a very small part of the fertile valley, fish enough to
support, with the nelumbium nuts, nearly the whole of the present
population; but then they are lotus-eaters, and as such improvident and
indolent by all rules of poetry and legend.

Srinagar has been likened to Venice. Standing a mile higher in the
world, water-communication is its dependence for movement of persons and
things almost as exclusively as with the Queen of the Adriatic. For
once, the lean, dry Oriental has his fill of water. Moisture prevails in
excess. The characteristic flat roof of his house gives place to one
with slope enough to shed any shower or number of showers; and that soon
becomes clad with a spontaneous growth of plants. The surplus rainfall,
however, is not so great as it would be were not the stormy south-west
monsoons cut off by the mountains. The English, water-dogs by nature,
and last from the blazing plains of the Panjab, do not complain of
dampness. One of them, indeed, declares that "the air is exceedingly
dry, notwithstanding the immense amount of water in the valley and the
frequent showers of rain."

Srinagar--as the city known for four centuries as Kashmir was anciently
and is again named under Hindu rule--is a little disappointing in the
material employed for most of its structures. Stone is not wanting, but
the deodar timber is more abundant, being floated down cheaply from the
mountains, where it forms immense forests, the carefully preserved
hunting-ground of the Mogul emperors. A Frenchman dubs it a city of
chalets, and recommends the architects of Paris to seek there the most
charming models for kiosks, verandas, turrets, cupolas, etc. The
humblest suburban and rural abodes he pronounces full of the
picturesque. They appear to be much in the Swiss style, so natural to an
alpine region. They, too, are mostly of wood, except on the high slopes,
where that material is scarce or wholly absent, and on the frontiers,
where each hut is a little rock-fort.

[Illustration: MEN OF DARDISTAN.]

Even the piers of the bridges over the Jhelam are, above the water