GARDENS OF KASHMIR.

Northern Advocate, 19 January 1922, Page 2

GARDENS OF KASHMIR.

wonderlands of beauty,

A PARADISE OX EARTH. Gardens! Gardens! Who knows what a garden is till he has seen the gardens of Kashmir, ask Major A. W. Hewlett in the Manchester "Guardian." Tlie peasants, the boatmen on the lake, the townsmen who come out from Srinagar of a Sunday to picnic— though why on a, Sunday 1 know not — tell you they were by Akar. True it is they were by the Moghuls (those wonderful princes who seemed to live three hundred years before their time), or, in one ease at least, by their Grand Vizers. However, he seems to hold in Kashmir the placc in popular fancy that Alfred and Queen Elizabeth do in England, and everything that is historically noteworthy is credited to him. In any case, to have made these gardens is a thing to be proud of. These are &ix or seven of them about in Kashmir, and I have seen two of them. The one I have in mind, no doubt the best known, is the Shalimar, and at present my house* boat lies moored in the old canal which leads up to its water-gate. How many a regal procession of boats with silken

curteins and golden canopies, with slaves an ! magicians and all the resplendent trappings of the Court, passed down here three hundred years ago! Yes, they were a wondrous race, this conquering dynasty from the Central Asian steppes, but, like others before them, they were not proof against the enervating influence of India, and they ended up as imbecile puppets, the toys of the harem, and idle favourites. But what is strangest, as we survey their story, is the fact that these conquerors; pre-eminent, men of affairs that they were, were yet able to take the most intense pleasure in the beauties of nature, and where these were lacking, as they «Te in so many parts of India, they did their best, with considerable succcss, to create substitutes. It is strange, because the average inhabitant of India cares not a jot for the fineet scenery on earth. Take him to the Himalayas, and he is less moved by the grandest scenery in the world than by the inadequacy of the local bazaar. His interest in life for centuries has been religious musing and the multiplication and propitiation of abounding divinities. But the Moghuls loved trees and water and shade, flowers and landscapes and waterfalls, and took as great pleasure in their parks as an English country gentleman. The mountains come down to the lake, n great Teedy-shored expanse of shallows like a huge Norfolk broad, but there is, of course, between their feet and the edge of the water a long sloping terrain. No iiner site could be desired, for the mountains themI selves tower overhead to six thousand feet above the lake level, and with your back to them you gaze across a wonderful expanse of waters to other mountains no less immense and backed by ranges still higher, the highest in the world, whereon shine eternal snows. Terrace on terrace, subtly adapting itself to the rise of the land, and giving ampler views as it ascends, the garden climbs insensibly through perfect vistas of magnificent chenar trees. Lawns as smooth and green as any English turf canvas their mighty shadows, and down it all runs a Droad stone waterway, its margins gay with thousands of geraniums, roses and oleanders. At, the edges of the terraces it converts itself into silver-streaked waterfalls. Pillared pavilions !intervene, cosily embowered but not hidden, so that their slender flutings and mouldings display themselves with just a sufJ ficiencv of coy secrecy, and their hues, j which would be garish' in any 'other clime, stand out from the greenery with the most modest insistence. Sable cypresses stand by the corners, and as to

the beds of flowers, they shine like a

butterfly's wing beneath a microscope. And by the old wall, intact, but with that unmistakable air of old walls, tall hollyhocks rise high as an elephant. But to a flower-lover, perhaps, the finest show of all are the huge sulphur dahlias which lay their heads together by the hundreds. When they turn on the water from burns that arc gathered freni the .mountain nullahs behind, scores of fountains leap to life in the stone tanks,* and their pleasant splash lings in cool cadence through the hollows of the l>k;ck-niarb!e-pillami zenrua where, Three centuries ago, the pi hue and his ladies lay to eat the I sweetmeat? Hear to the East and to fdl 'heir sauls with the panorama of green and hike opening before them like a paradise. Biuis, too, are here, as how should they not be? The Knglish thrush lieps about the lawns as he does in your vice.jr.ge garden at home, and crows a»:d J .-jackdaws >et the air vibrating with then quarrels. From tree to tree flashes the golden oriole, a living streak of gold, and the hoopoe with his bill pickaxes the turf, as dainty 011 his feet as a dancing mistress. it must be admitted that the chenar trees make the gardens what they arc.

There is no finer tree on earth than a chenar. It rises to a mounta'nous b. fight, and its bole could hide an elephant behind it, whilst the leaves arc not only large in themselves but are j iic-.cod in such dense .masses as to be almost solid. Of English trees it is most like a sycamore, but of vastly greater proj)ortions. It and the poplar trees almost make the A'ale of Kashmir from a scenic point of view. The poplars, which send up their tall jreen spires by the thousand, seem to grow like weeds. From a low altitude they make the landscape look curiously bristly; from a little higher they divide it like hedges. Then, too, if we must be fair to other gardens, we must, renumber the backing of the mountains. The lingo valley, or rather ravine, wlj.ich opens up behind the garden, of more than 150 square miles, is the catchment basin for the Srinagar water supply. It is also what is called a "rukh"— that is, a place closed to all shojting, a sanctuary where wild beasts may live una propagate in peace. -Hence it is that the grim old back, bear ami the stately bara singh, the great Kashmir stag, survey from quite close at hand, irom amidst the huge grey rock pinin rles and escarpments and the dense scrub in the watercourses, the Sunday parades of bright-hued women and white muslin-clad men which thread the gay parterres and duskier shadows of this old haunt of kings. Behind the serrated top of the ravine rises the crest of Mahadeo, a peak of painful pilgrimage to Hindus, precipitous and hoary, of a height of 13,000 feet. I have seen many gardens, but the Hhalimar is as far beyond them <;s Windsor Park is beyond a recreation ground. Perhaps one of its greatest charms is its lack of artificiality. So marvellously does it fit into its niche between the___mountain and the lake that one never remembers it was made by human hands.