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Hundreds of boats from enormous doungas containing the noisy inhabitants of, I should suppose, a whole village, down to the tiniest shikara, whose passenger was perched with careful balance to retain a margin of safety to his two inches of freeboard converged upon the crowded bank, above which rose the mosque. How can I best attempt to describe the din, the crush, the light, the colour?
"Dear, dear, Clara, why, what is the matter?" "I am painting the Venice of the East," she cried petulantly, "but for the life of me I can't see a campanile, and how can I possibly paint a picture without a campanile?" I understood that, of course, she couldn't, so I stole away softly on tip-toe, leaving her turning doungas into gondolas for all she was worth.
This morning we cast loose from our poplars, and brought the fleet up to within half a mile of the seventh bridge, or, rather, of the spot where the seventh bridge used to be, for all but a fragment has been washed away! The strong current prevented us from getting any higher up the river in our doungas.
The river, which had been up to the fourteen-foot level, as shown on the gate ports at the entrance to the Sunt-i-kul Canal, had fallen to 9-1/2 feet, and the mud, exposed both on its banks and in the fields and flats which had been flooded, must have given out unwholesome exhalations, of which the riverine population, the dwellers in house-boats and doungas, got the full benefit.
We embarked close to the back of the hotel, at the Chenar Bagh, and went gaily enough down the strong current of what we took to be an affluent of the Jhelum. The river life was most fascinating crowds of heavy doungas lay moored along the banks their long, low bodies covered in by matting, and their extremities sloping up into long peaked platforms for the crew.
In the first place, he had appropriated the only two shikaras he could find, and our baggage was already being stowed in them; secondly, he had discovered both Juma and Ismala, our Mangis, who reported the doungas moored below Parana Chaum, about four miles away over the flooded fields. This was good news, and we ate a cheerful lunch under a tree densely populated by jackdaws.
Hesketh was reduced to despair; after two months in bed, this could not but be a trying journey under the most favourable circumstances, and the prospect as held out by his pessimistic bearer was pretty gloomy no boats available, and no signs of our doungas.
Baramula lay serenely mirrored in the silver waters of the Jhelum, its picturesque brown wooden houses clustering on both banks, and joining hands by means of a long brown wooden bridge. No signs of any unusual disturbance could be seen among the chattering crews of the snaky little boats and deep-laden "doungas" that lined the banks or furrowed the waters of the shining river.
The scene here was charming a grand festa or religious tamasha being toward; the whole river was swarming with boats great doungas, with their festive crews yelling a monotonous chant, paddled uproariously by. Light shikaras darted in and out, making up for want of volume in their song by the piercing shrillness of their utterances.
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