CASHMERE, the capital of the above province, is a large city, which extends three miles on each side of the river Jhelum, over which there are five wooden bridges. It is of unequal breadth; but in some places it is nearly two miles. It has a small citadel called Shore Ghur, in the south-east quarter, where the governor resides. The houses are mostly built of wood, with partition walls of brick and mortar. They are high, being many of them three stories, having sloping wooden roofs covered with a bed of fine earth, which in summer is sown with flowers, and exhibits a lively appearance. The town, like most of those in the East, is dirty in the extreme, its narrow streets being covered with the filth of the inhabitants, who, even in the East, are proverbially unclean. The river is, notwithstanding, covered with baths. The public buildings in the city are not of any consequence; but in the environs there are the remains of palaces built by the emperors of Hindustan. There is a beautiful lake near the town, which extends from the north-east quarter in an oval circumference of five or six miles, and communicates with the Jhelum by a narrow channel near the suburbs. On the east side of the lake is a detached hill called Tukhti Solomon. On this eminence stands a mosque dedicated to Solomon, to whose miraculous interposition the Mahomedans ascribe the draining off of the waters from the valley; whilst the Hindus claim this river for their divinities. Near this lake stands another hill, which is covered with orchards and gardens, and has on its summit a mosque dedicated to a Mahomedan saint held in high estimation; and in the centre of the lake is an island, on which the Emperor Jehangire built a palace, which he adorned with gardens and water-works at an immense expense, and to which he frequently retired from the heat of India and the noise of a court. A heavy fall of rain, accompanied by a tremendous flood, which took place in 1635, greatly injured the city and all the buildings in the vicinity. Bernier, who visited Cashmere in 1663, gives a romantic and interesting description of it. But since it has come under the dominion of the Afghans, it has fallen into decay, and its buildings are many of them crumbling into ruin. The travelling distance from Lahore is 587 miles, from Agra 724, from Lucknow 866, from Bombay 1277, from Calcutta 1564, and from Madras 1882. (Rennell's Memoir of a Map of Hindustan; Elphinstone's Account of the Kingdom of Caubul; Foster's Journey from Bengal to England; Bernier, Hamilton, &c.)