An Account of a Journey in Kashmir by David Lockhart Robertson Lorimer and Letters from Emily Overend Lorimer to her Parents sent from Bahrain and Kerman [‎615v] (1252/1291)

JL
4.
1 hope to get the Index finished, both halves, before going
off on Saturday. Then we shall only need lots of blue
pencil to get It ready for the post. It amounts to some
220 pp. of typing, but we hope to reduce It a bit. Then
''"P ]iart l'will be absolutely done and off our chests all but the
corrcetlon of the second proofs, which ought to be light work.
Then to pastures new !
1 have t been telling you about all the domestic work that
this pappy"harvest season brings with It. 1 have Just got
In about 650 lbs. of wheat, of this I have had some 200 well-
washed and dried before grinding, and the resultant flour
Is very nice and clean and neatly like "white flour". The
wheat and the flour and are now stored in my go“down in large
mud barrels and the top sealed with flat bricks and mud cement.
These khuras are really most picturesque things, they are only
sun baked 1 think, but they withstand rats and insects perfcetly
The big ones stand V and 8 feet high and are 5 feet or more In
diameter, little ones are anything from 18 inches up. The great
big fellows such as that In wh. I have my whfleat have a round hole
just above the bottom, this you plug with paper and seal with mud
and when you want your whlet, you spread a cloth on the ground
pull out yur plug and out It pours. It Is very primitive
and very attractive and no doubt as old as Noah. I am also
buying in winter charcoal and fuel. This as a troublesome
Job. Jjist when you are busiest, as on post day, they will come
to say that there are six or eight loads of fuel Just arrived.
You have to leave your work and go out and wait while they weigh
each In turn, undo it and cart it into the store room. Y 0 u have
to be quite wide awake the while or your mist trusted servats
^lf Indeed you are so green as to trust even the most trusted !)
will connive at their reckopg nine Instead of eight loads, or at
their only putting 7 into your store and concealing the 8 th.
round a corner. Charcoal is the same business, only dbstler .'
But If only they would not always claim you In the midst of
tther things, there is something very pleasant about the old-
fashioned scene, the primitive weighing arrangements, the
picturesque villagers in their blue cotton blouses and quaint
shaped hats, and the glorious indescribable snvail of the wood
and the "thorns" (do you rememberthe "fire of thorns" ? — it
must have been this very same thorny brushwood, that serves
instead of cork "firelighters" — save the mark ! — to kindle
the larger logs). °n Sunday, (I wil l not go on Sunday to
the store rooms) they brough me a lot, and I entrusted Burzu
with the lo /eking of it up. I trust B. rather more than anyone
else because he wants us to take him to Bambay with us and therefti
fore It would not suit him to be caught stealing or cheating
at the moment J) When I next cam£ along, there he had let the
men pile up 8 or 9 donkey loads of logs and brushwood Just at the
door so that you could not possibly get in, and it took a couple
of men several hours to shift it into its proper place.
when I want my store-room cleaned up, or as in this case
wood shifetd, I do not fancy entrusting the key to anyone for so
long a time, still less do I relish standing over them while It