THE FOREST 89
sky. The whole scene will be bathed in a bluey haze. ‘Through the many vistas cut in the forest the eye will be carried to the foot-hills sloping gradually towards the river, to the little clumps of pine wood, the village clusters of walnut, pear, and mulberry, the fields of rice and maize, to the silvery reaches of the Jhelum, winding from the Wular Lake to Baramula, to the purply blue of the distant mountains, then on to the bluey white of Nanga Parbat, sharply defined, yet in colour nearly merging into the azure of the sky, and showing out in all the greater beauty that we see it framed by the dark and graceful pines in which we stand.
And this forest has no mean attractions of its own, of which to my little girl the chief were the white columbines. ‘Here also are found purple columbines, delphiniums, what are known as white slipper orchids, “yellow violas, balsams, mauve and yellow primulas, potentillas, anemones, Jacob’s ladder, monkshood, salvias, many graceful ferns, and numerous other flowers of which I do not pretend to know the name.
The Residency is situated on the summit of the ridge above the circular road, and from it can be seen not only Nanga Parbat (through a vista cut
