Below, In Shadow,
Lay The Baltal Camping-Ground, A Lonely Deodar-Belted Flowery Meadow,
Noisy With The Dash Of Icy Torrents Tumbling Down From The Snowfields
And Glaciers Upborne By The Gigantic Mountain Range Into Which We Had
Penetrated By The Zoji Pass.
The valley, lying in shadow at their
base, was a dream of beauty, green as an English lawn, starred with
white lilies, and dotted with clumps of trees which were festooned
with red and white roses, clematis, and white jasmine.
Above the
hardier deciduous trees appeared the Pinus excelsa, the silver fir,
and the spruce; higher yet the stately grace of the deodar clothed
the hillsides; and above the forests rose the snow mountains of
Tilail, pink in the sunrise. High above the Zoji, itself 11,500 feet
in altitude, a mass of grey and red mountains, snow-slashed and snow-
capped, rose in the dewy rose-flushed atmosphere in peaks, walls,
pinnacles, and jagged ridges, above which towered yet loftier
summits, bearing into the heavenly blue sky fields of unsullied snow
alone. The descent on the Tibetan side is slight and gradual. The
character of the scenery undergoes an abrupt change. There are no
more trees, and the large shrubs which for a time take their place
degenerate into thorny bushes, and then disappear. There were
mountains thinly clothed with grass here and there, mountains of bare
gravel and red rock, grey crags, stretches of green turf, sunlit
peaks with their snows, a deep, snow-filled ravine, eastwards and
beyond a long valley filled with a snowfield fringed with pink
primulas; and that was CENTRAL ASIA.
We halted for breakfast, iced our cold tea in the snow, Mr. M. gave a
final charge to the Afghan, who swore by his Prophet to be faithful,
and I parted from my kind escorts with much reluctance, and started
on my Tibetan journey, with but a slender stock of Hindustani, and
two men who spoke not a word of English. On that day's march of
fourteen miles there is not a single hut. The snowfield extended for
five miles, from ten to seventy feet deep, much crevassed, and
encumbered with avalanches. In it the Dras, truly 'snow-born,'
appeared, issuing from a chasm under a blue arch of ice and snow,
afterwards to rage down the valley, to be forded many times or
crossed on snow bridges. After walking for some time, and getting a
bad fall down an avalanche slope, I mounted Gyalpo, and the clever,
plucky fellow frolicked over the snow, smelt and leapt crevasses
which were too wide to be stepped over, put his forelegs together and
slid down slopes like a Swiss mule, and, though carried off his feet
in a ford by the fierce surges of the Dras, struggled gamely to
shore. Steep grassy hills, and peaks with gorges cleft by the
thundering Dras, and stretches of rolling grass succeeded each other.
Then came a wide valley mostly covered with stones brought down by
torrents, a few plots of miserable barley grown by irrigation, and
among them two buildings of round stones and mud, about six feet
high, with flat mud roofs, one of which might be called the village,
and the other the caravanserai. On the village roof were stacks of
twigs and of the dried dung of animals, which is used for fuel, and
the whole female population, adult and juvenile, engaged in picking
wool. The people of this village of Matayan are Kashmiris. As I had
an hour to wait for my tent, the women descended and sat in a circle
round me with a concentrated stare. They asked if I were dumb, and
why I wore no earrings or necklace, their own persons being loaded
with heavy ornaments. They brought children afflicted with skin-
diseases, and asked for ointment, and on hearing that I was hurt by a
fall, seized on my limbs and shampooed them energetically but not
undexterously. I prefer their sociability to the usual chilling
aloofness of the people of Kashmir.
The Serai consisted of several dark and dirty cells, built round a
blazing piece of sloping dust, the only camping-ground, and under the
entrance two platforms of animated earth, on which my servants cooked
and slept. The next day was Sunday, sacred to a halt; but there was
no fodder for the animals, and we were obliged to march to Dras,
following, where possible, the course of the river of that name,
which passes among highly-coloured and snow-slashed mountains, except
in places where it suddenly finds itself pent between walls of flame-
coloured or black rock, not ten feet apart, through which it boils
and rages, forming gigantic pot-holes. With every mile the
surroundings became more markedly of the Central Asian type. All day
long a white, scintillating sun blazes out of a deep blue, rainless,
cloudless sky. The air is exhilarating. The traveller is conscious
of daily-increasing energy and vitality. There are no trees, and
deep crimson roses along torrent beds are the only shrubs. But for a
brief fortnight in June, which chanced to occur during my journey,
the valleys and lower slopes present a wonderful aspect of beauty and
joyousness. Rose and pale pink primulas fringe the margin of the
snow, the dainty Pedicularis tubiflora covers moist spots with its
mantle of gold; great yellow and white, and small purple and white
anemones, pink and white dianthus, a very large myosotis, bringing
the intense blue of heaven down to earth, purple orchids by the
water, borage staining whole tracts deep blue, martagon lilies, pale
green lilies veined and spotted with brown, yellow, orange, and
purple vetches, painter's brush, dwarf dandelions, white clover,
filling the air with fragrance, pink and cream asters,
chrysanthemums, lychnis, irises, gentian, artemisia, and a hundred
others, form the undergrowth of millions of tall Umbelliferae and
Compositae, many of them peach-scented and mostly yellow. The wind
is always strong, and the millions of bright corollas, drinking in
the sun-blaze which perfects all too soon their brief but passionate
existence, rippled in broad waves of colour with an almost
kaleidoscopic effect.
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