About the eleventh march from Srinagar, at
Kargil, a change for the worse occurs, and the remaining marches to
the capital of Ladakh are over blazing gravel or surfaces of denuded
rock, the singular Caprifolia horrida, with its dark-green mass of
wavy ovate leaves on trailing stems, and its fair, white, anemone-
like blossom, and the graceful Clematis orientalis, the only
vegetation.
Crossing a raging affluent of the Dras by a bridge which swayed and
shivered, the top of a steep hill offered a view of a great valley
with branches sloping up into the ravines of a complexity of mountain
ranges, from 18,000 to 21,000 feet in altitude, with glaciers at
times descending as low as 11,000 feet in their hollows. In
consequence of such possibilities of irrigation, the valley is green
with irrigated grass and barley, and villages with flat roofs
scattered among the crops, or perched on the spurs of flame-coloured
mountains, give it a wild cheerfulness. These Dras villages are
inhabited by hardy Dards and Baltis, short, jolly-looking, darker,
and far less handsome than the Kashmiris; but, unlike them, they
showed so much friendliness, as well as interest and curiosity, that
I remained with them for two days, visiting their villages and seeing
the 'sights' they had to show me, chiefly a great Sikh fort, a yak
bull, the zho, a hybrid, the interiors of their houses, a magnificent
view from a hilltop, and a Dard dance to the music of Dard reed
pipes.
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