Truly, until I beheld that tax-gatherer of the Orient, I had no idea that
the "purple-in-grain" beard existed outside a poet's fancy!
The road took us along the left bank of the river, whose soil-stained
waters churned their way through a wild and rocky gorge. On our left the
mountain rose bare and steep, fringed with a few straggling bushes, and
here and there a clinging patch of rose-coloured primula. Part of the
conglomerate cliff had come down and obliterated the road, but a party of
coolies was busily at work, and, after about an hour's delay, we
triumphantly bumped our way past.
The road now led steadily upward, leaving an ever-increasing slope (or
khud) between it and the river, until it attained a height of over a
thousand feet, when, turning to the left, it swung over the watershed, and
began to descend into the valley of the Kishenganga. Through the haze we
could make out Domel, our goal, lying far below, and then the old Sikh
fort of Musafferabad.
The road was so encumbered with rock-falls that we walked the greater part
of it, until we came to the new bridge over the Kishenganga, whose dark
red waters rush into the Jhelum about a mile below.
Here was Musafferabad, the whole place a confused jumble of wheeled
traffic caught up by the big landslip in front. Passing, amid the chatter
and clamour of men and beasts, through the medley of bullock-carts and
ekkas that crowded every available space, we hauled the carriage through
the bed of a watercourse whose bridge was broken.
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