PRELUDE
The 24th of April, and I find myself on the road to Kashmir. For a thousand miles my journey lies across the plain of India, that spread here like a sea. Somewhere above me upon the northern Horizon, there climbs towards Heaven, the mighty wall of the Himalaya, yet hidden as completely from sight, as though it had never been.

In the early dawn we are on the road to the Mountains, each moment nearer to us, as the swift Daimler swallows space; and in half an hour from the Railway, we are caught in the sinuous toils of the Foot-hills. It is a road flanked in its lower courses by golden corn-fields and green avenues of trees, and trodden by guns and infantry and cavalry on the march, and fine upstanding men and splendid women. Here we are in the cradle of a martial breed, the heirs of centuries of invasion and war. The men are virile with lithe erect bodies and a direct gaze; some harness to the business of war in the Empire's khaki and scarlet, others sickle in hand, bending to the wind-blown corn, tying their sheaves of gold, or cracking their carters' whips along the white highway. And the women are good to look upon, straight of feature, erect as lances, full-bosomed and stateley to the world.

[The mosque's] design was charming and very happily adapted to its mountain environment. It took the place of an older mosque, which had died of age, and its very foundations were set amidst the earthen graves of bygone generations.
"I have seen just such a Mosque in use amongst the Mussulmans of China," I observed; and they wondered at their Faith being spread so far abroad; and with that note of communal affection which is so characteristic of Islam, they asked:
"And are they well entreated by the King of China?"
I replied that it might be so now; but that in the past they had suffered much persecution. Whereupon they shook their heads sadly, as those not unacquainted with sorrow, and said gratefully enough:
"It is not so under the benign rule of our Emperor of London. Since you came here our Fate has changed, and our Religion, our Lands, and our Women have been left inviolate. We know well to whom we owe this change, and we are grateful."

Here upon the near bank were Elizabethan-looking houses, laden with wisterias and roses, encompassed about with lawns and gardens, and shaded by great trees at whose feel the daisies enamelled the grass. There was throughout a sense of abounding life, as though growth came without volition, and Nature seemed to look at one with a deep benevolence and say: "This is bus a fraction of what I can accomplish."
The church, whose spire rose but a little above the level of the embankment, seemed buried in roses and flowers and rooted in lush meadows, and upon the embankment itself there was the English club, with its rich carpets and dark timbered walls and its wooden seats across the road, reserved for its members, whence under the shelter of four monumental chinars, that may have grown here when Elizabeth was on her throne, they see the world go by, the rushing river upon the one hand with its multitudinous life, and their own women and children, domestic, as in England, upon the other.

It is possible just now to see both together in two of the most attractive old houses in Srinagar. These houses are a revelation of beauty after the rococo palace of the Maharajah and the tin-roofed shops and distressing buildings of the European quarter.
From the narrow street you pass into a wide sunlit court, upon the far end of which there opens the front door of a house. Over it there is a wide Saracenic arch, which is half a dome, painted and cusped within, with a seat upon either hand for the doorkeeper and his cronies to sit and warm themselves in the sun. Here, some mules which have carried in a burden are tethered as before a Spanish entrance, fretting and whisking away the flies. High above them soars the front of the house, perfectly proportioned and spaced, with deep overhanging caves of carved cedar, with projecting oriels and windows filled with pinjra work in arabesque designs. From the door a stone passage leads straight through the house to the crowded sunlit street beyond. You cannot but pause in its soft gloom to enjoy this sighht of the passing world, like a picture on a screen.
A narrow and winding stair that suggests the middle ages climbs through the interior of the house to the lighted rooms, in which workers are busy over delicate embroideries; no less than seventy-five men and boys in a space that would be cramped for half a dozen Englishmen. They are a frail community these hereditary weavers, who sit here now with their slender pliant fingers, their sensitive faces and dark liquid eyes,, embroidering the linen and canvas before them with millions of stitches. What incredible labour it is, like that of bees in a comb, which goes to create the finished article, for which you pay so little, and which you so lightly fling aside in the dealer's shop for some little fault in the pattern or in the scheme of colour! Here it seems inhuman to tax the life and patience of any creature with a soul, to this extent.