the
Sikhs and than the Dogras or Hindus of Jummoo, their present superiors
politically. They are industrious, manufacturing besides shawls other
stuffs and much fancy-work in wood. The beauty of the women is as much
remarked upon now as in the old days, and the late Mr. Moore cannot be
accused of overstepping poetic license on that point.

[Illustration: SKARDU FORT, BALTISTAN.]

The higher classes of the Kashmiris having held more firmly to their
religion during Mohammedan sway, most of the non-Moslem inhabitants are
Brahmans, and they live chiefly in the city. Unlike their
co-religionists of the province of Jummoo, many of whose high-caste men
cultivate the soil, the Kashmiri Brahmans contemn manual occupations.
They are largely employed in the offices of the state. The lowest
occupations are left to a class of pariahs called Batals, who are
considered by some to represent a wholly distinct race, a remnant of the
aborigines who were dispossessed by the first Aryan settlers. As it is
easier to procure photographs of individuals belonging to this degraded
class than of those above them, an unjust impression of the physical
traits of the Kashmiris is apt to reach the Western World. The
dancing-girls are Batals, and are pronounced by those who know very
unfavorable specimens of the Kashmiri fair. The Mohammedan women are
always veiled.

But ethnic science, whether based on linguistic, physical, social or
religious distinctions, is in a very unsatisfactory condition.
Surprising yet illusory resemblances are constantly cropping up in the
most unexpected ways and places. Wilson was struck with the Gaelic
traits of the Mongolian Budhists who inhabit the mountains of Zanskar,
south-east of the valley. "The sound of their language, the brooches
which fasten their plaids, the varieties of tartan which their woollen
clothes present, and even the features of the people (which are of an
Aryan rather than a Tartar type), strongly reminded me of the Scotch
Highlanders." He had the support, too, of one of those imaginative
savants who delight in Welsh, Erse and Gaelic philology, who insisted
"that the names of innumerable places in Tibet and Tartary are identical
with the local names of the Gaelic language." Add to this the fact that
a corps of the maharajah's army is uniformed in an almost critically
exact reproduction of "the garb of old Gaul," and the argument is a good
deal more complete than many on more practically momentous