Page:The lives of celebrated travellers (Volume 2).djvu/216

 a country exhibiting that store of luxuriant imagery which is produced by a happy disposition of hill, dale, wood, and water; and that these rare excellences of nature might be displayed in their full glory, it was the season of spring, when the trees, the apple, the pear, the peach, the apricot, the cherry, and mulberry, bore a variegated load of blossom. The clusters also of the red and white rose, with an infinite class of flowering shrubs, presented a view so gayly decked, that no extraordinary warmth of imagination was required to fancy that I stood at least on a province of fairy land."

It is in such regions as these, and not in our northern climates, that the month of May is a season of beauty. The plains, dotted with numerous villages, and intersected by small rivers, were already waving with a rich harvest; while every copse and woody knoll gave shelter to innumerable singing-birds, whose notes made the whole atmosphere appear alive with music. Having reached Pamper, our traveller embarked in a boat on the Jylum, and proceeded by water to the city of Serinagur, which, with its houses covered with parterres of beautiful flowers, possesses at a distance a splendid and imposing aspect, answering in some degree to the idea which the historians of the flourishing days of India have given of it. But on entering the streets the illusion is quickly dissipated. Slaves are invariably filthy in their habits, and the people of Kashmere are now the slaves of the Afghans.

One of the principal beauties of this magnificent valley is its lake, a sheet of water five or six miles in circumference, interspersed with numerous small islands, and surrounded in its whole extent by shores singularly picturesque and romantic. We have already given, in the life of Bernier, some account of Serinagur and its environs; but it may be interesting to add here the picture of the Shalimar, which our traveller drew upon the spot nearly one hundred