A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil Part 20

The third murmured in somewhat broken English.

"Victoria Victrix, Beata Beatrix,"

whereby I recognised him to be a poet, if not a painter.

But the fourth--an energetic-looking man with a somewhat arrogant manner--said briskly: "Perchance the a.s.s is right; these pine needles are becoming monotonous, and I have seventeen million four hundred and sixty-two thousand five hundred and eleven more to do. Beshrew me if I do not take to pot-boiling!"

Down by the water-side a lady sat, sketching in water-colours for dear life; around her lay a litter of half-finished works, scattered like autumn leaves in Vallombrosa. I approached her, quite friendly, and offered to gather them up for her--at least some of them, saying soothingly, for I saw she was in a temper--

"Dear, dear, Clara, why, what _is_ the matter?"

"I am painting the Venice of the East," she cried petulantly, "but for the life of me I can't see a campanile, and how can I possibly paint a picture without a campanile?"

I understood that, of course, she couldn't, so I stole away softly on tip-toe, leaving her turning doungas into gondolas for all she was worth.

A dark, dapper man, with an alert air and an eyegla.s.s, sat near the seventh bridge, writing. Beside him stood an easel and other painting-gear.

I asked him what he was doing, and he answered, with a fine smile, "I am gently making enemies;" so, to turn the subject, I picked up a large canvas, smeared over with invisible grey, like the broadside of a modern battles.h.i.+p, and sprinkled here and there with pale yellow blobs.

"What have we here, James?" I inquired cheerfully, and he, staying his claw-like hand in mid-air, made reply--

"A chromatic in tones of sad colour, with golden accidentals--Kashmir night-lights."

"Ah! quite so," I exclaimed; "but have I got it right side up?"

He looked at it doubtfully for a moment, then, pointing to a remarkable b.u.t.terfly (_Vanessa Sifflerius_) depicted in the corner, cried: "It's all right; you'll never make a mistake if you keep this insect in the _right bottom corner_. It is put there on purpose."

Lastly, on an eminence I saw a man like an eagle, sitting facing full the sun, and upon his glowing canvas was portrayed the heavens above and the earth beneath and the waters under the earth, and behind him sat one who patted him upon the back, and looked at intervals over his shoulder at the glorious work, and then wrote in a book a eulogy thereof; and I, too, came and looked over the painter's shoulder, and I muttered, with Oliver Wendell Holmes,

"The foreground golden dirt, The suns.h.i.+ne painted with a squirt."

Then the man who patted the painter on the back turned upon me aggressively, and said: "This is the only painter who ever was, or will be, and if you don't agree with me you are a fool." The painter, smiling a sly Monna-Lisan smile of triumph, remarked: "Right you are, John. I rather think this _will_ knock that rascal Claude," and I laughed so that I awoke; but the memory of the dream remained with me, and it seemed to me that, perhaps, we poor amateurs might not be any better able to compa.s.s aught but caricatures of this marvellous scenery than the ghostly limners of my dream!

The hut just above ours was tenanted by a party of three young Lancers on leave from Rawal Pindi, a gramophone, and a few dogs.

One of the soldiers was laid up with a bad ankle, and it soon became a daily custom for Jane or me to play a game of chess or piquet with the invalid.

Later on, when leave had expired for the hale, when the dogs had departed, and the voice of the gramophone was no more heard in the land, we came to see a great deal of the wounded warrior, and finally arranged to personally conduct him off the premises, and return him, in time for medical survey, to Rawal Pindi.

Many years ago I read a delightful poem called _The Paradise of Birds_--I believe it was by Mortimer Collins,[1] but I am not sure. Now the Poet (who, together with Windbag, sailed to this very paradise of birds) deemed that this happy asylum of the feathered fowls was somewhere at the back of the North Pole. He cannot have known of Kashmir, or he would a.s.suredly have sent the persecuted birds thither, and placed the "Roc's Egg" as janitor, somewhere by the portals of the Jhelum Valley. Kashmir is truly and indeed the paradise of birds, for there no man molests them, and no schoolboy collects eggs, and the result is a fascinating fearlessness, the result of perpetual peace and plenty.

I regret exceedingly that my ornithological knowledge is extremely limited.

I could find no books to help me,[2] and, as I did not care to kill any birds merely to enable me to identify their species, my notes were merely "popular" and not "scientific."

Shall I confess that I began an erudite work on the birds of Kashmir, but got no further than the Hoopoe? It began as follows:--

THE HOOPOE

_Early history of_.--Tereus, King of Thrace, annoyed his wife Procne so much by the very marked attention which he paid to her sister Philomela, that she lost her temper so far as to chop up her son Itylus, and present him to his papa in the form of a ragout.

This, naturally, disgusted Tereus very much, and he "fell upon" the ladies with a sword, but, just as he was about to stab them to the heart, he was changed into a Hoopoe, Philomela into a nightingale, Procne into a swallow, while Itylus became a pheasant.

"Vert.i.tur in volucrem, cui stant in vertice cristae Prominet immodic.u.m pro longa cuspide rostrum; Nomen epops volucri."

OVID, _Metam_. lib. vi.

_His crest and patent of n.o.bility_.--Once upon a time, King Solomon, while making a royal progress, was much, incommoded by the powerful rays of the sun, and as he had ascendency over the birds, and knew their language, he called upon the vultures to come and fly betwixt the sun and his n.o.bility, but the vultures refused. Then the kindly Hoopoes a.s.sembled, and flew in close ma.s.s above his head, thus forming a shade under which he proceeded on his journey in ease and comfort.

At sundown the monarch sent for the King of the Hoopoes, and desired him to name a reward for the service which he and his followers had rendered.

Then the King of the Hoopoes answered that nothing could be more glorious than the golden crown of King Solomon; and so Solomon decreed that the Hoopoes should thenceforward wear golden crowns as a mark of his favour.

But alas! when men found the Hoopoes all adorned with golden crowns, they pursued and slew them in great mult.i.tudes for greed of the precious metal, until the King of the Hoopoes, in heavy sorrow, hied hastily to King Solomon, and begged that the gift of the golden crowns might be rescinded, ere every Hoopoe was slain.

Then Solomon, seeing the misery they had brought upon themselves by their presumption, transformed their crowns of gold to crowns of feathers, which no man coveted (for the Eastern ladies didn't wear hats), and the Hoopoes wear them to this day as a mark of royal favour, but all the feathers fell off the necks of the disobliging vultures.

_His amazing talent_.--In those dark ages ... the Hoopoe was considered as prodigiously skilful in defeating the machinations of witches, wizards, and hobgoblins. The female, in consequence of this art, could preserve her offspring from these dreaded injuries.

She knew all the plants which defeat fascinations, those which give sight to the blind; and, more wondrous still, those which open gates or doors, locked, bolted, or barred.

Aelian relates that a man having three times successively closed the nest of a Hoopoe, and having remarked the herb with which the bird, as often, opened it, applied the same herb, and _with the same success_, to charm the locks off the strongest coffer.--_Naturalists' Magazine_ (about 1805).

_His personal appearance_.--The beak is bent, convex and sub-compressed, and in some degree obtuse; the tongue is obtuse, triangular and very short, and the feet are ambulatory. As this bird has a great abundance of feathers, it appears considerably thicker than it is. It is, in fact, about the size of a mistletoe thrush, but looks, while in its feathers, to be as large as a common pigeon.--_Naturalists' Magazine_.

I had got _no_ further in my _magnum opus_, when I unfortunately showed my notes to Colonel--well, I will not mention his name, but he is the greatest authority on the birds and beasts of Kashmir. He besought me to spare him, pathetically remarking that I should cut the ground from under his feet, and take the bread out of his mouth, and the wind out of his sails, if I went any further with my monograph on the Hoopoe. He saw at a glance that I was conversant with authorities whom he had never consulted, and possessed a knowledge of my subject to which he could hardly aspire, so I gracefully agreed to leave the field to him, and relinquished my _magnum opus_ in its very inception.

One of the chiefest charms of Kashmir, and one which is apt to be overlooked, is the entirely unspoilt freshness of its scenery. No locust horde of personally-conducted "trippers" pollutes its ways and byways, nor has the khansamah of the dak bungalow as yet felt constrained to add sauerkraut and German sausage to his bill of fare--for which Allah be praised!

The world is growing very small, and the globe-trotter rushes round it in eighty days. The trail of the cheap excursionist is all over Europe, from the North Cape to Tarifa, from the highest Alpine summit (which he attains in comfort by a funicular railway) to the deepest mines of Cornwall. Egypt has become his footstool, and the sh.o.r.es of the Mediterranean his wash-pot.

Niagara is mapped and labelled for his benefit, and the Yosemite is his happy hunting-ground. He "does" the West Indies in "sixty days for sixty pounds," and he is now arranging a special cheap excursion from the Cape to Cairo. "But," it may be remarked, "what were Jane and I but globe-trotters'? and am I not trying to sing the praises of Kashmir with the avowed object of inducing people to go out and see it for themselves?"

By all manner of means let us travel. Far be it from me to wish folks to stay dully at home, while the wonders and beauties of the wide world lie open for the admiration and education of its inhabitants.

But there are globe-trotters and globe-trotters. My objection is only to those--alas! too numerous--vagrants who cannot go abroad without casting shame on the country which bred them; whose vulgarity causes offence in church and picture-gallery; who cannot see a monument or a statue without desiring to chip off a fragment, or at least scrawl their insignificant names upon it.

From these, and such as these, Kashmir is as yet free; but some day, I suppose, it will be "opened up," when the railway, which is already contemplated, is in going order between Pindi and Srinagar, and cheap excursion tickets are issued from Berlin and Birmingham.

Here is a specimen page of the Guide Book (bound in red) for 19--(?):

"Ascend Apharwat by the funicular railway. The neat little station, with its red corrugated-iron roof, makes a picturesque spot of colour near the Dobie's Ghat. Fares, 4 an. 6 pi., all the way."

"A local guide should on no account be omitted (several are always to be found near the station leaning on their khudsticks, and discussing controversial theology in the sweet low tones so noticeable in the Kashmiri). See that he be provided with a horn, to the hooting of which the Echo Lake will be found responsive."

"From the balcony of the * Hotel Baloo an unrivalled view of Nanga Parbat should be obtained. Gla.s.ses can be procured from the anna-in-the-slot machines which are dotted about."

"This veritable king of the Himal--" (here follows a pageful of regulation guide-book gush).

"Good sport is to be obtained from the obliging and enterprising manager of the hotel, Herr Baer. A few rupees will purchase the privilege of shooting at that monarch of the mountains, the markhor. Start not, fair tourist, for no danger lurks in the sport. No icy precipices need be scaled, no giddy gulfs explored, and the only danger which menaces the bold hunter in the mimic stalk, is that which menaces his s.h.i.+ns in the broken soda-water bottles and sharp-edged sardine tins with which the summit of Apharwat is strewn."

"As a matter of fact, the consumption of mutton is considerable in the Hotel Baloo in the tourist season, and the worthy Baer conceived the brilliant and financially sound scheme of attaching some old ibex and markhor horns (bought cheap when the old library at Srinagar was swept away in the last flood) to his live stock, and turning his decorated flock loose on the mountain's brow, where the sportsman saves him the trouble of slaughter while enjoying all the excitement and none of the difficulty of a veritable stalk."