THE VALE OF KASHMIR 29
steps leading to little temples with high, top-heavy silvered domes; market-women passed down the canal with boatloads of spinach and turnips from the floating gardens in the Dal Lake, mere rafts of water-plants strewn with a little earth; merry children in twos or threes sang musically at the tops of their voices; and men clothed in dirty white walked briskly along the embankments beside the canals, under the fine bur-covered chenar trees, just as old Hwen Tsiang reports them to have done long ago. Except for the fast walking, — fast compared to that of India, — the general appearance was leisurely. The Kashmiris, as has been said, have a reputation for laziness ; but when I watched them working, they seemed to show a good deal of energy and steadiness, though perhaps it was only to keep warm. Along the canal where we anchored, at least a dozen houseboats were being built for the accommodation of summer visitors. All the timber was sawed into planks on the spot by hand. The men who worked the big saws, one at either end, kept at work steadily, though the labor is tiresome, and twice during ten minutes I noticed that when one of a pair had to stop for something, his comrade went and helped some one else.
Within the last few decades, a new factor has entered into the geographic development of Kashmir — namely, the attraction exercised by its climate and scenery upon the British sojourners in India. The aesthetic element of love of scenery and the rational element of choosing a place for a home for the sake of its favorable climate, though strictly geographic factors, exist only in highly civilized communities. Therefore, in the past they have been of
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