Page:History of India Vol 5.djvu/359

 THE EMPEROR'S DIARY OF HIS JOURNEY 305 throne, I ordered its sides to be paved with stones, a garden to be made round it, and the stream which flowed from it to be similarly decorated on both sides. Such elegant chambers and edifices were raised on each side of the basin that there is scarcely anything to equal it throughout the inhabited world. The river expands much as it approaches the village of Pampur, which lies ten leagues from the city of Kashmir. All the saffron of Kashmir is the product of this village, and perhaps there is no other place in the world where saffron is produced so abundantly. I visited this place once with my father in the season in which the plant blossoms. In all other trees we see, they first get the branches, then the leaves, and last of all the flower. But it is quite otherwise with this plant, for it blossoms when it is only about two inches above the ground. Its flower is of a bluish colour, having four leaves and four threads of orange colour, like those of safflower, equal in length to one joint of the finger. The fields of saffron are sometimes half a league or a league in length and they look very beautiful at a dis- tance. In the season when it is collected, the saffron has such a strong smell that people get headache from it, and even though I had taken a glass of wine, yet I myself was affected by it. I asked the Kashmirians who were employed in collecting it whether it had any effect upon them, and was surprised by their reply that " they did not even know what headache was." The stream that flows from the fountain of Virnag is called Behat in Kashmir, and becomes a large river