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Updated: June 3, 2025
These gardens are simply patches redeemed from the desert plain, supplied with irrigating water, and surrounded with a high mud wall; leading through the garden are gravelled walks, shaded by rows of graceful chenars.
The Mussul Bagh is a large grove of fine chenars planted in lines so as to form avenues at right angles to each other. There must be several hundred of these noble trees upon the ground, I do not mean fallen but erect and vigorous. The Shaliman Bagh is an extensive and well cultivated pleasure garden with pavilions, tanks, canals and fountains, in true oriental style.
There is also an arch over the canal, between the second and third tanks. The whole garden was originally laid out in several terraces faced with masonry, and having wide flights of stone steps from one to the other; but all is now much decayed, and the garden itself is quite uncultivated, except a small portion, and is but a wilderness of fruit trees and fine chenars.
And in the spring, with the willows and poplars in freshest green; the almond, pear, apple, apricot, and peach trees in full blossom, white and pink; the fields emerald with young wheat, blue with linseed, or yellow with mustard; and the village-borders purple with iris; or in the autumn when the chenars, the poplars, and apricots are turning to every tint of red and yellow and purple, Kashmir is in a glow of colour.
It is simply this that the land is so desperately poor that it will only produce one crop, and thus an immense acreage is required for the support of a few inhabitants; thus, from ages past up to the present time, the natives have been continually felling fresh forest and deserting the last clearing, which has accordingly grown into a dense, thorny jungle, forming what are termed the "Chénars" of Ceylon.
Broad chenars, just beginning to break into leaf, gave promise of ample shade against the day when the blaze should become overpowering. So far so good, but the grass that bordered the path was not the sweet green turf of an English lawn, and the way was edged by big earthen pots, into which were hastily stuck wisps of iris blooms and Persian lilac.
There was some delay at a lock and great excitement in pushing over the fall caused by the rash of the water. Passed through the city which is a large one, and encamped under chenars on the banks of the canal on the other side.
But we met an ascending scale of loveliness so varied in its aspects that I passed from one emotion to another and knew no sameness. That afternoon the camp was pitched at the foot of a mighty hill, under the waving pyramids of the chenars, sweeping their green like the robes of a goddess.
The chenars of Bejbehara threw a most welcome shade from the noonday sun, which was striking down with evil force as we panted across the steamy rice-fields which surround them. Hither we came at noon, only to find that our boats were not awaiting us as we had directed.
An avenue of chenars led straight to the bridge, showing either the antiquity of the trees or the comparatively modern date of the temple. June 19. Yesterday afternoon we left Bejbehara, and went on to Kanbal, the port of Islamabad. A hot and sultry day, oppressive and enervating to all but the flies, which were remarkably energetic and lively.
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