Page:Younghusband - Kashmir.pdf/40

 14 SCENERY AND SEASONS

keener still. Their eyes looked on the same scene as mine did, and could distinguish each detail with even greater accuracy. Yet while I lay entranced by its beauty, the keen-eyed shikaris, the animals, and the soaring eagle above me, might have been stone blind for all the impression of beauty it left upon them. Clearly it is not the eye, but the soul that sees beauty. As the soul can respond so will beauty be seen. But then comes the still further reflection — what may there not be staring me straight in the face which I am as blind to as the Kashmir stags are to the beauties amidst which they spend their entire lives? The whole pano- rama may be vibrating with beauties man has not yet the soul to see. Some already living, no doubt, see beauties that we ordinary men have not the souls to appreciate. It is only a century ago that mountains were looked upon as hideous, yet now they are one of our chiefest enjoyments. And in the long centuries to come may we not develop a soul for beauties unthought of now? Undoubtedly we must. And often in reverie on the mountains I have tried to conceive what further loveliness they may yet possess for men.

From clambering over mountains in search of a