The body of Srinuggur, the former capital, is intersected with a labyrinth of canals. To avoid the necessity of crossing the dangerous Wular lake, through which flows the main stream of the Jhelum, a navigable canal was constructed in early times to connect Sopur with Srinuggur.
The Dal or city lake is situated north-east of Srinuggur, and is connected with the Jhelum by a canal called the Tsont-i-kul, or Apple-tree Canal, which enters it opposite the palace. The Anchar is situated to the north of Srinuggur. It is con nected with the Dal by means of the Nalli Mar, which flows into the Sind river near Shadipnr. The Manasbal, said to be the most beautiful lake in Kashmir, is situated near the right bank of the Jhelum, and is 11 miles long, a of a mile wide, and very deep. But the Wular is the largest of all the Kashmir lakes. Its extreme breadth from north to south is 1 miles, exclusive of the marches on the south side ; extreme breadth, 10 miles ; circumference, nearly 30 miles; average depth, 12 feet ; deepest part, about 16 feet. The Jhelum flows into the Wular on its east side, near the middle of the lake, leaving it at its south-west ' corner in a fine open stream about 200 yards wide.
The valley is singularly free from any modern intermixture of foreign races, and, though now professing Muhammadanism, the features of the Kashmir people proclaim them to be one of the highest and purest races in the world. They are of quite high Aryan type, very fair, handsome, with chiselled features, and a strong, athletic figure, but none of them are of martial proclivities.
The Kashmir people, though long since converted to Muhammadanism, have been of the Brahmanical race. The educated class, who maintained their own tenets, and are still very numerous, are known as pandits. They are exceedingly clever, and are a somewhat oppressive bureaucracy, which has ruled Kashmir under every successive Government, and has sent out Colonies to seek their livelihood in Northern India.
The industry and mechanical skill of the stout limbed prolific Kashmiri are as well knibwn as their poverty, their tameness of spirit, and their loose morality. The few unmixed Rajputs possess the personal courage and the pride of race which distinguish them elsewhere.
The languages of Kashmir are divided into 13 separate dialects. Of these, Dogri and Chibhali, which do not differ much from Hindustani and Panjabi, are spoken in the hills and country of the Punch and Jamu districts. Kashmiri is mostly used in Kashmir proper, and is rather curiously and closely related to the Sanskrit. It is not, however, the court language, and for the purposes of a traveller through Kashmir either Hindustani or Panjabi will serve. Five dialects are included under the term Pahari,' a language spoken by the mountaineers in the east of Kashmir. Besides these, there are two dialects of Tibetan, which are spoken in Baltistan, Ladakh, and Champas ; and in the north-west three or four varieties of the Dard dialects of Aryan origin.
The Kashmir Brahmans eat meat, and are excluded by the Indian Brahmans, alike from the five Gaur and from the five Dravid, and form a separate Brahmanical class, being more secular than the priestly Brahmans of Hindustan and the Dekhan, than whom they are altogether loose in their observances. The Kashmiri pandits are known all over Northern India as a very clever and energetic race of office-seekers ; as a body they excel in acuteness the same number of any other race with whom they come in contact. Almost all the secular pandits use the Persian character freely ; they are perfectly versatile, and, serving abroad, will mount a horse, gird on a sword, and assume at a push a semi-military air. The lower classes of Kashmir have long since been converted to Muhammadanism, but they seem to be ethnologically identical with the Brahmans, and tradition asserts that they are of the same race. The Brahmans of Kashmir are regatded by those of Bengal as of an inferior order, and the agricultural Brahmans on the Saraswati banks arc similarly looked down upon.
Probably owing to the circumstance that the valley has so often been the resort of pleasure seekers, the morals of the people are not at a high standard. A satirical Persian couplet runs— `Dar jahan ast do tailah be pir Sunni-i-Balkh, Shiah-i-Kashmir.' which may be rendered that there is not an honest man among the Sunni of Balkh or the Shiah of Kashmir.