CHAPTER IX

THE HISTORY OF KASHMIR

A country of such striking natural beauty must, surely, at some period of its history have produced a refined and noble people? Amid these glorious mountains, breathing their free and bracing air, and brightened by the constant sunshine, there must have sprung a strong. virile and yet esthetic race? The beautiful Greece, with its purple hills and varied contour, fs dancing seas and clear blue sky, produced the graceful Greeks. But Kashmir is more beautiful than Greece. It has the same blue sky and brilliant sunshine, but its purple hills are ona far grander scale, and if it has no sea, it has lake and river, and the still more impressive snowy mountains. It has, too, greater variety of natural scenery, of field and forest, of rugged mountain and open valley. And to me who have seen both

‘wountries, Kashmir seems much the more likely to 115