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Here is a story which is fairly characteristic of the charming Kashmiri.
During the floods which nearly ruined Kashmir in 1901, a village near a
certain colonel's bungalow was in danger of losing all its crops and half
its houses, the neighbouring river being in spate. My friend, on going to
see if anything could be done, found the water rising, and the adult male
inhabitants of the village lying upon the ground, and beating their heads
and hands upon it in woebegone impotence.
He walked about upon their stomachs a little to invigorate them, and,
sending forthwith for a gang of coolies from an adjacent village which lay
a little higher, he set the whole crowd to work to divert part of the
stream by means of driftwood and damming, and was, in the end, able to
save the houses and a good part of the crops.
When the hired coolies came to be paid for their labour, the villagers
also put in a claim for wages, and were desperately vexed at my friend's
refusal to grant it, complaining bitterly of having had to work hard for
nothing!
You will find a good description of the Kashmiri in _All's Well that Ends
Well:_--
_Parolles_. He will steal, sir, an egg out of a cloister.... He
professes not keeping of oaths, in breaking them, he is stronger
than Hercules. He will lie, sir, with such volubility, that you
would think truth were a fool: drunkenness is his best
virtue; ... he has everything that an honest man should not have;
what an honest man should have, he has nothing.
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