Kashmir: The Land of Streams and Solitudes by P. Pirie
A lyrical portrait of the Kashmir valley: the river the Kashmiris call the Veth, its poplar-lined roads, orchards, gardens and changing seasons. The original edition was illustrated with paintings by H. R. Pirie.
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An extract from the book
There are other roads in Kashmir; roads like colonnades between serried ranks of poplar trees, “the tall, slim, silvery pillars of the beautiful populus alba, or the somber stateliness of the dark poplars of Lombardy ; roads bordered by willows, or leading through marshy meadow-land, or carpeted with snowy petals from the blossoming branches of apple and pear and cherry trees, which make fragrant archways overhead; many and lovely are the roads of the Valley ; but the road par excellence of Kashmir is the River, the Veth as the Kashmiris call it, which is an abbreviation of Vitasta, its Sanskrit name, the fabulosus Hydaspes of the classic historians.
Up and down the wide and placid river go the flat bottomed, slow-moving boats of the country—the wide grain-barges, the doongas with their roofs and sides of matting, the deep-laden market boats, and the little fishing-boats so often drawn up near the bank with a wide net outspread, its wet meshes glittering in the sunshine like a dragon-fly’s wing.
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