"The food of those who can afford it is partly of meat, mutton of goats or sheep, which sells at about three pence per pound. Beef is not procurable, as the Sikh ruler punishes the death of a cow capitally. The chief food of the people is vegetable; turnips, cabbages, and radishes, the Sinhara, or water-nut, and rice. The turnips are purple, or reddish, and speedily become woolly: the radishes are mostly white and strong: the cabbages do not head, but the leaves are frequently stripped. Besides these, lettuces, spinach, and other common vegetables are in extensive use, boiled into a sort of soup, with a little salt, or even the leaves of the dandelion, dock, plantain, and mallow; and the catkins of the walnut are employed as food, seasoned with a little salt, mustard, and walnut oil... Another principle article of the food of the common people, the Sinhara, or water-nut, grows abundantly in the different lakes in the vicinity of the capital, and especially in the Wular lake, which yields an average return of ninety-six to a hundred and twenty thousand ass-loads a year. It is fished up from the bottom in small nets, and affords employment to the fishermen for several months. It constitutes the almost only food of at least thirty thousand persons for five months in the year. After being extracted from the shell the nuts are eaten, raw, boiled, roasted, fried, or dressed in various ways, after being reduced to flour. The most common preparation is boiling one ser of the flour with two quarts of water, so as to form a sort of gruel, which, though insipid, is nutritive. The Sinhara, in the shell, is sold in about a rupee per load... Another article of food derived form the lakes is the stem of the Nymphaea Lotus. In the autumn, after the plate of the leaf has begun to decay, this has acquired maturity, and, being boiled till tender, furnishes a wholesome and nutritious article, which supports, perhaps, five thousand persons in the city for nearly eight months."