Travels in the Mogul Empire (Bernier) 19.5.6

19.5.6

The merchants who every year travel from mountain to mountain to collect the fine wool with which shawls are manufactured, all agree in saying that between all the mountains still dependent upon Kachemire there are many fine stretches of country. Among these tracts there is one whose annual tribute is paid in leather and wool, and whose women are proverbial for beauty, chastity, and industry. Beyond this tract is another whose valleys are delightful and plains fertile, abounding in corn, rice, apples, pears, apricots, excellent melons, and even grapes, with which good wine is made. The tribute of this tract is likewise paid in wool and leather, and it sometimes happens that the inhabitants, trusting to the inaccessible nature of the country, refuse payment; but troops always contrive to penetrate, and reduce the people to submission. I learn also from the merchants, that in the more distant mountains, which have ceased to be tributary to Kachemire, there are other beautiful tracts and countries, where the inhabitants are white and well-formed, and remarkable for their attachment to their native land, which they seldom quit. Some of these people have no King, nor even, as far as can be discovered, any religion; though certain tribes abstain from fish, and consider it unclean.