THE VALE OF KASHMIR 25
no matter how mildly, they started and trembled as though threatened with a pistol; and this is said to be a common occurrence. Mr. C. E. Biscoe, head of the large schools of the Church Missionary Society, which even the natives generally recognize as the best in Kashmir as to both education and character-building, introduced compulsory exercise into the curriculum a few years ago. At first the boys, chiefly Brahmins, with a smaller number of Mohammedans, were abjectly afraid of the water, though they had lived near it all their lives. In order to make them learn to swim, it was actually necessary to throw them into the canals. Now, however, they have learned to do fine work both in and on the water, and during the last great flood, which half submerged Srinagar, saved much property and some lives. To be sure, they are still cowardly; but there has begun to be a school spirit, which makes them ashamed to show their fears. Similarly, in football, the boys at first ran away from one another; but now many of them stand up pluckily and run the risk of getting hurt, which shows that though isolation may have made the Kashmiris cowardly, they have a certain amount of moral fibre capable of cultivation.
Exclusiveness was carried so far in Kashmir in the Middle Ages that practically all foreigners were kept out, just as has been the case more recently in Tibet, perhaps for similar physical reasons. Even to-day, in spite of the incorporation of Kashmir in the British Empire, the old ideas prevail so far that no foreigner can remain in the Vale without a permit — renewed, I believe, annually; nor can a foreigner buy or build a house or own land. Natives, or the native
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