Even at the time of which I am writing it was dilapidated, and the houses looked exactly like those made by children out of a pack of cards, which a puff of wind might be expected to destroy.

Of late years the greater part of the city has been injured by earthquakes, and Srinagar looks more than ever like a card city.

The great beauty of the place in those days was the wooden bridges covered with creepers, and gay with booths and shops of all descriptions, which spanned the Jhelum at intervals for the three miles the river runs through the town--now, alas! for the artistic traveller, no more.

Booths and shops have been swept away, and the creepers have disappeared--decidedly an advantage from a sanitary point of view, but destructive of the quaint picturesqueness of the town.
The floating gardens are a unique and very pretty characteristic of Srinagar.

The lake is nowhere deeper than ten or twelve feet, and in some places much less.