Driven overboard by the cock, and a feeling that exercise would be
beneficial, we landed in the afternoon, and plodded along the bank for
some miles. The innumerable mulberry trees are loaded with ripe fruit, the
ground below being literally black with fallen berries. We ate some, and
pronounced them to be but mawkish things.
After dinner we sat on deck, as the lamp smelt too strongly to let us
enjoy ourselves in the cabin, and the coolies on the bank and the people
in our boat and those in the cook-boat engaged in a triangular duel of
words, until the last few grains of my patience ran through the glass, and
I spake with _my_ tongue.
There is certainly some curious quality in the air of this country which
affects the nerves: maybe it is the elevation at which one lives--certain
it is that many people complain of unwonted irritability and
susceptibility to petty annoyances. And, while travelling in Kashmir is
easy and comfortable enough along beaten tracks, yet the petty worries
connected with all matters of transport and supply are incessant, and
become much more serious if one cannot speak or understand Hindustani.
It takes some little time for the Western mind to grasp the fact that the
Kashmiri cannot and must not be treated on the "man and brothel" principle.
He is by nature a slave, and his brain is in many respects the undeveloped
brain of a child; in certain ways, however, his outward childishness
conceals the subtlety of the Heathen Chinee.
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