Page:Younghusband - Kashmir.pdf/131

 NANGA PARBAT 91

to feast my eyes on Nanga Parbat was a perpetual delight. It was the very emblem of sublimity. Day after day it would appear as a vision of soft pure white in a gauze-like haze of blue—too light and too ethereal for earth and seemingly a part of heaven; a vision which struck deeply into one’s being and evoked from it all that was most pure and lovely.

The frame and foreground in this autumn month were also worthy of the supreme subject of the picture. Through the pines the patches of sunlit meadow, with long shadows of the trees thrown here and there across them ; the horizontal streaks of mist; the groups of cattle; the cheerful twittering of the birds ;.the soothing hum of bees ; the rippling sound of running water; the back- ‘ground of dark firs and pines getting lighter as they merge into the distant bluey haze; the rocky peaks ; and, over all, the clear blue sky—gave a setting and an atmosphere most fitting to the mountain.