Abstract
UP till now the standard authority on Kashmir was Drew's well-known book. It contained a good deal of information about routes and passes, and concerned itself not so much with Kashmir proper as with the outlying and dependent territories. The present work has a more restricted aim, and deals more thoroughly with its subject.. The reader must distinguish between Kashmir the kingdom and Kashmir the vale. The former is a large territory containing enormous mountain areas, chiefly uninhabited and stretching, in theory at any rate, from Tibet to Chitral and from the Pamirs to the border of the great Indian plain. But Kashmir proper is a level valley, apparently an old lake basin, included between a fork of the Himalayas. On the map it resembles, as Mr. Lawrence well remarks, a white foot-print set in a mass of black mountains. The level of the valley floor is about 6000 feet above the sea, and it is approximately 84 miles in length and 20 to 25 miles in width. Numerous traderoutes debouch upon this valley and concentrate upon its populous capital, Srinagar on the Jhelum. To Kashmir proper may also be reckoned the fertile lower portions of a number of tributary side-valleys, for the most part exceedingly beautiful, and well marked with wood, water, and meadow. This beautiful area—the garden of India—is shut off from the rest of the world by bare and, in many places, snowy mountain ranges, or by a gorge which has only a few years ago been trained to admit a cart road. It is inhabited by an interesting race, speaking a language and having a literature, a written history, and an art of their own. Thus Kashmir is marked out by nature, history, and circumstance as a geographical unit suited for separate treatment and study.
The Valley of Kashmir.
By W. R. Lawrence (Oxford: Frowde, 1895.)
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CONWAY, W. The Valley of Kashmir. Nature 53, 99–100 (1895). https://doi.org/10.1038/053099a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/053099a0
