CHAPTER XIV

THE MACHIPURA

Wednesday, September 27.—­We left Srinagar yesterday, very sorry indeed to part from the many good friends we have made and left there.  Truly Kashmir is a hospitable country, and we have met with more kind friendliness in the last six months than we could have believed possible, coming as we did, strangers and pilgrims into a strange land.  Our consolation is that every one comes “Home” sooner or later, so that we can look forward to meeting most of our friends again ere very long, and recalling with them memories of this happy summer with those who have done so much to make it so.

Farewell, Srinagar!  Your foulness and inward evilness were lost in the background behind your picturesque and tumble-down houses as we floated for the last time down Jhelum’s olive waters, where the sharp-nosed boats lay moored along the margin or, poled by their sturdy Mangis and guided by the chappars of their wives and daughters, shot athwart the eddying flood, breaking the long reflections of the storeyed banks.

Past the Palace of the Maharajah, its fantastic mixture of ancient fairness and modern ugliness blending into a homogeneous beauty as distance lent it enchantment.

Past the temples, their tin-coated roofs refulgent in the brilliant sunlight; under the queer wooden bridges, their solid stone piers parting the suave flow of water into noisy swirl and gurgle.

Past the familiar groups of grave, white-robed men solemnly washing themselves, then scooping up and drinking the noisome fluid; past their ladies squatting like frogs by the river-side, washing away at clothes which never seem a whit the cleanlier for all their talk and trouble.

Past the children and fowls, and cows and crows, all hob-nobbing together as usual.

Past all these sights—­so strange to us at first and now so strangely familiar—­we floated, till the broken remnant of the seventh bridge lay behind us, and the lofty poplars that hem in the Baramula road stood stark and solemn in their endless perspective.

Here a jangling note, out of tune and harsh, was struck by the dobie, with whom we had a grave difference of opinion regarding the washing.

That gentleman having “lost by neglect” certain articles of my kit—­to wit sundry shirts and other garments—­and having rendered others completely hors de combat by reason of his sinful method of washing, I decided to “cut” three rupees off his remuneration.

This decision seemed to have taken from him all that life held of worth, and he implored me to spare his wife, children, and home, all of whom would be broken up and ruined if I were cruel enough, to enforce my awful threat.  Seeing that I was obdurate, being well backed by the infuriated Jane, whose underwear showed far more lace and open work than nature intended, the wretched dobie melted into loud and tearful lamentation, and perched himself howling in the prow.  This soon became so boresome that I deported him to Hesketh’s boat, where he underwent another defeat at the hands of that irate Lancer, whose shirts and temper had suffered together; finally the woeful washerman, still howling lugubriously, was landed on the river bank, and we saw and heard him no more!