We were still close to some of the scattered huts of Pahlgam, so an authority, in the shape of a lumbadhar or chowkidar, or some such, came to our help, and promptly collected for us an elderly gentleman who was tending his flocks and herds in the vicinity.  Doubtless it was provoking, when he was looking forward to a comfortable afternoon tea in the bosom of his family, after a hard day’s work of doing nothing, to be called upon to carry a nasty angular yakdan for seven miles along a distinctly uneven road; but was he therefore justified in blubbering like a baby, and behaving like an ape being led to execution?

The first half-mile was dreadful.  At every couple of hundred yards the coolies would sit down in a bunch, groaning and crying, and nothing less than a push or a thump would induce them to move.  We felt like slave-drivers, and indeed Sabz Ali and the shikari behaved as such, although their prods and objurgations were not so hurtful as they appeared, being somewhat after the fashion of the tale told by an idiot,

  “Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

Presently we became so much irritated by the ceaseless row that we decided to sit down and read and sketch by the roadside, in order to let the whole mournful train pass out of sight and earshot.

Now, I wish to maintain in all seriousness that I am not a Legree, and that, although I by no means hold the “man and brother” theory, yet I am perfectly prepared to respect the droits de l’homme.

This may appear a statement inconsistent with my acknowledgment that I permitted coolies to be beaten—­the beating being no more than a technical “assault,” and never a “thrashing!”—­but my contention is that when you have to deal with people of so low an organisation that they can only be reached by elementary arguments, they must be treated absolutely as children, and judiciously whacked as such.

No Kashmiri without the impulsion of force majeure would ever do any work—­no logical argument will enable him to see ultimate good in immediate irksomeness.

It is very difficult for the Western mind to give the Kashmiri credit for any virtues, his failings being so conspicuous and repellent; for not only is he an outrageous coward, but he feels no shame in admitting his cowardice.  He is a most accomplished thief, and the truth is not in him.  He and his are much fouler than Neapolitan lazzaroni, and his morals—­well, let us give the Kashmiri his due, and turn to his virtues.  He is, on the whole, cheerful and lively, devoted to children, and kind to animals.[1]

Here is a story which is fairly characteristic of the charming Kashmiri.

During the floods which nearly ruined Kashmir in 1901, a village near a certain colonel’s bungalow was in danger of losing all its crops and half its houses, the neighbouring river being in spate.  My friend, on going to see if anything could be done, found the water rising, and the adult male inhabitants of the village lying upon the ground, and beating their heads and hands upon it in woebegone impotence.