Such was the origin and history of the Kashmir mountains. It remains to trace the course of life upon them, and picture their appearance in the various stages of their history.
[Illustration: THE TANNIN GLEN, LIDAR VALLEY]
In that remote time, which we have roughly taken as a hundred million years ago, when the oldest rocks, those for instance at Gulmarg, were first laid down in level soft deposit on the ocean bottom, there was no life on land or sea. In no part of the world have the rocks of this period given the slightest trace of any form of life. But in the course of time, in some warm climate and in some quarter where sea and land meet, and where, through the action of the tides, a portion of the land is alternately covered and laid open to the sunshine--that is, in some spot where earth and air, light, heat and water might all have their effect--it has been surmised that minute microscopic specks of slime must have appeared imbued with just that mysterious element which distinguishes life from all chemical combinations however complex.
Of this initial stage, which would not have been perceptible to the naked eye, no trace could possibly be left, but in the pre-Cambrian rocks in Europe there have been detected very minute specimens of the simplest known forms of life--the Protozoa--and obscure tracks and markings indicating the existence of life of some kind. And in the next geological period--the Cambrian and Silurian, say between thirty and fifty million years ago--there is not indeed in the Kashmir rocks yet any sign of life, but in the neighbouring district of Spiti there has been found in corresponding rocks fossils of corals, trilobites, shell-fish, worms, brachiopods (lamp-shells), and gastropods.
When Kashmir made its first brief emergence from the waters, in an archipelago of volcanic islands, though there was life of low and simple kind in the sea, on land there was none, and the islands must have been absolutely bare. Neither on hill-side nor on plain was there a speck of vegetation, not even the humblest moss or lichen, and not a sign of animal life. No bird or insect floated in the air. And over all there must have reigned a silence such as I remember in the Gobi Desert, and which was so felt that when after many weeks I arrived at an oasis, the twittering of the birds and the humming of the insects appeared as an incessant roar.
