Seizing
the wrap in some haste, as I was afraid of the door jamming, I rejoined
Jane in the open, to watch the poplars swaying like drunken men and the
solid earth bulging unpleasantly. The shock lasted for three minutes, and
when it seemed quite over we retired to our beds to try to get warm again.
The morning at breakfast-time was perfectly beautiful. Baramula lay
serenely mirrored in the silver waters of the Jhelum, its picturesque
brown wooden houses clustering on both banks, and joining hands by means
of a long brown wooden bridge. No signs of any unusual disturbance could
be seen among the chattering crews of the snaky little boats and
deep-laden "doungas" that lined the banks or furrowed the waters of the
shining river.
We left Baramula in high spirits to accomplish the five-and-thirty miles
which still stretched between us and Srinagar. The scenery was quite
different from anything we had yet known, for now we were in the broad
flat valley of Kashmir, which stretches for some eighty miles from beyond
Islamabad, on the N.E., to Baramula, planted at the neck where the Jhelum
River, after spreading itself abroad through the fertile plain,
concentrates to pour its many waters through the mountain barrier until it
joins the Indus far away in Sind.
A broad and level road stretched straight and white between a double row
of stark poplars, reminding one of the poplar-guarded ways of Picardy;
also (as in France) not only were the miles marked, but also the
thirty-two subdivisions thereof.
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