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Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books
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| 0413 |
The heart of a continent : vol.1 |
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Except when crossing the Shandur Pass—and even that was
not very exhilarating—we were always at the bottom of narrow
valleys, with lofty mountains overhanging and enclosing them
in. Not a blade of anything green was to be seen, for all that
was not buried in snow was withered by the frost. All the
trees were bare and sombre-looking, and the mud-built villages
damp and cheerless. Chitral itself we found to be, not a town
or even a large village, but a collection of little hamlets scattered
over a stretch of cultivated land about three miles in length and
a mile and a half in width, at the northern end of which, close
by the river, stood a small fort, which formed the residence
of the Mehtar. This was Chitral, a place at that time almost
unknown to English people.
Our first month or two in Chitral was certainly not en-
livening. We lived in a native house, without windows or
chimneys, and with only a hole in the roof by which to let in
the light (and the snow and the cold) and to let out the smoke
(and the heat) of a fire lit in the middle of the floor. There
was little to do out-of-doors, except to take a walk one day up
and the next day down the valley, and the weeks wore by with
monotonous regularity. But as spring came on the whole
aspect changed. Through January and February we had
frequent falls of snow, and the thermometer at night ranged
from twelve degrees Fahrenheit to the freezing-point. But in
March the snow cleared away from the valley bottom and the
lower hillsides, the new grass began to sprout, the young corn-
shoots appeared in the fields, little purple primulas and a
beautiful yellow and crimson tulip bloomed out on the river-
banks; then the willow trees were tinged with green as the
young leaves budded out. By the beginning of April the
apricot trees burst into blossom, and the valley was covered
with clouds of white bloom, and then, as day by day the sun-
shine grew warmer, every tree—the magnificent planes, the
poplars, the drooping willow, and the orchards of apricots,
2 A
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