t was a glorious afternoon, and we deeply regretted that time would not
permit us to visit the neighbouring Shalimar Bagh, which lay hidden among
the trees near by. The excursion must remain a "hope deferred" for the
present, as we had again to thread the maze of half-submerged melon plots
and miniature kitchen gardens which, even in the golden glow of a perfect
evening, could not be made to fit in with our preconceived ideas of
"floating gardens." Jane was frankly disappointed, as she admitted to
having pictured in her mind's eye a series of peripatetic herbaceous
borders in full flower, cruising about the lake at their own sweet will
and tended by fair Kashmirian maidens.

By-the-bye, here let me expose, once for all, the fallacy of Moore's
drivel about the lovely maids of fair "Cashmere." _There are none!_ This
appears a startling statement and a sweeping; but, as a matter of fact,
the Eastern girl is not left, like her Western sister, to flirt and frivol
into middle age in single "cussedness," but almost invariably becomes a
respectable married lady at ten or twelve, and drapes her lovely, but not
over clean, head in the mantle of old sacking, which it is _de rigueur_
for matrons to adopt.

The good Tommy Moore did not know this, but, letting his warm Irish
imagination run riot through a mixed bag of Eastern romancists and their
works, he evolved, amid a _pot pourri_ of impossibilities, an impossible
damsel as unlike anything to be found in these parts as the celebrated
elephant evolved from his inner consciousness by the German professor!

As I traversed the main, or rolled by train,
From my Western habitation,
I frequently thought--perhaps more than I ought--
Upon many a quiet occasion
Of the elegant forms and manifold charms
Of the beautiful female Asian.

For the good Tommy Moore, in his pages of yore,
Sang as though he could never be weary
Of fair Nourmahal--an adorable "gal"--
And of Paradise and the Peri,
Until, I declare, I was wild to be where
I might gaze on the lovely Kashmiri.

Through the hot plains of Ind I fled like the wind,
Unenchanted by mistress or ayah,
The dusky Hindu, I soon saw, wouldn't do,
So I paused not, until in the sky----Ah!--
Far upward arose the perpetual snows
And the peaks of the proud Himalaya.

But in Kashmir, alas! I found not a lass
Who answered to Tommy's description--
For the make of such maid I am sadly