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Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books
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| 0091 |
The Pulse of Asia : vol.1 |
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OCR Text
houses all winter, and had now been spread over the fields
to hasten the melting of the snow.
Although our friendly entertainers were Kashmiris, who,
with their neighbors, had been brought across the moun-
tains fifty years before by the government in order to keep
the road to Ladakh open in winter, they had adopted the
habits peculiar to their new environment. It may have been
imagination on my part, but it seemed as if, under the
influence of the more bracing climate, steadier work, and
greater necessity for forethought demanded by the harder
conditions of their new life, the people of Matayan had
become franker, more hospitable, and less suspicious than
their relatives in Kashmir.
Matayan lies in the upper part of the valley of the Dras
River, in the midst of magnificent mountain scenery. The
bottom of the valley is broad and flat and easy to trav-
erse, while the sides rise precipitously 500 or 1000 feet
to a shoulder above which peak after peak rises white
and gleaming to a height of 17,000 or 18,000 feet. When
we passed that way, everything was white except where the
snow had slid in avalanches from some dark precipice of
naked rock. No trees broke the pure expanse; the villages
and the fields where earth had been scattered were but
insignificant spots in a vast world of snow. Even at a dis-
tance of a few hundred yards, the trail that we were to fol-
low was lost in the universal snow, which sparkled and
scorched our faces in the sun, or lay cold and quiet in
the blue shadows. Once some specks appeared far ahead,
which, when we met them, proved to be three stooping boys,
carrying on their backs huge loads of asafœtida cut in the
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