# Littell's Living Age/Volume 125/Issue 1610/The Abode of Snow - Part I

From Blackwood's Magazine.
THE ABODE OF SNOW.
PART I.
TO THE HEIGHTS.
I have heard of an American backwoodsman who, on finding some people camping about twenty miles from his log cabin, rushed back in consternation to his wife and exclaimed, "Pack thee up, Martha — pack thee up; it's getting altogether too crowded hereabouts." The annoyance which this worthy complained of is very generally felt at present; and, go almost where he may, the lover of peace and solitude will soon have reason to complain that the country round him is becoming "altogether too crowded." As for the enterprising and exploring traveller who desires to make a reputation for himself by his explorations, his case is even worse. Kafiristan, Chinese Tibet, and the very centre of Africa, indeed remain for him; but, wherever he may go, he cannot escape the painful conviction that his task will ere long be trodden ground, and that the special correspondent, the trained reporter, will soon try to obliterate his footsteps. It was not so in older times. The man who went out to see a strange country, if he were fortunate enough to return to his friends alive, became an authority on that country to the day of his death, and continued so for generations afterwards if he had only used his wits well. An accurate description of a country usually stood good for a century or two at least, and for that period there was no one to dispute it; but the Khiva of 1872 is fundamentally different from the Khiva of 1874; and could we stand to-day where Speke stood sublimely alone a few years ago at Murchison Falls, when he was accomplishing the heroic feat of passing (for the first time in authentic history) from Zanzibar to Cairo, through the ground where the Nile unquestionably takes its rise, we should probably see an English steamboat, with Colonel Gordon on board, moving over the waters of Lake Victoria Nyanza. For the change in the relations of one country with another, which has been effected by steam as a means of propulsion, is of a most radical kind; and it proceeds so rapidly, that by the time the little girls at our knees are grandmothers, and have been fired with that noble ambition to see the world which possesses the old ladies of our own day, it will be only a question of money and choice with them as to having a cruise upon the lakes of Central Africa, or going to reason with the Grand Lama of Tibet upon the subject of polyandry. Any one walking along the Strand may notice advertisements of "Gaze's annual tour to Jerusalem, Damascus, Nineveh, Babylon, the Garden of Eden, &c. &c." No doubt that sort of thing will receive a check occasionally; there has been a refreshing recurrence, within the last two months, of brigandage in Sicily and the Italian peninsula, which may serve to create a vacuum for the meditative traveller: and if a party of Cook's tourists were to fall into the hands of Persian or Kurdish banditti, the unspeakable consequences would probably put a stop to excursions to the Garden of Eden for some time to come; but still the process would go on of bringing together the ends of the earth, and of making the remotest countries familiar ground.
Such a process, however, will always leave room for books of travel by the few who are specially qualified either to understand nature or describe mankind; and there are regions of the world, the natural conformation of which will continue to exclude ordinary travellers, until we have overcome the difficulty of flying through the air. Especially, are such regions to be found in the Himáliya — which, according to the Sanscrit, literally means "The Abode of Snow" — and indeed in the whole of that enormous mass of mountains which really stretches across Asia and Europe, from the China Sea to the Atlantic, and to which Arab geographers have given the expressive title of "The Stony Girdle of the Earth." It is to the loftiest valleys and almost the highest peaks of that range that, in this and two or three succeeding articles, I would conduct my readers from the burning plains of India, in the hope of ​finding themes of interest, if not many matters of absolute novelty. I have had the privilege of discoursing in "Maga," from and on many mountains — mountains in Switzerland and Beloochistan, China and Japan — and would now speak
* Of vales more wild and mountains more sublime.
Often, of late years, when thinking of again writing in The Magazine, and describing new scenes, the lines have recurred to me with painful force which the dying Magician of the North wrote in pencil by Tweedside: —
* How shall the warped and broken board
* Endure to bear the painter's dye?
* The harp with strained and tuneless chord,
* How to the minstrel's skill reply?
But the grandest mountains of the world, which have restored something of former strength, may perhaps suggest thoughts of interest, despite the past death-in-life of an invalid in the tropics. There is a lily (F. cordata) which rarely blossoms in India, unless watered with ice-water, which restores its vigour and makes it flower. So the Englishman, whose frame withers and strength departs in the golden sunlight, but oppressive air, of India, finds new vigour and fresh thought and feeling among the snows and glaciers of the Himáliya. If the reader will come with me there, and rest under the lofty deodar tree, I promise him he will find no enemy but winter and rough weather, and perhaps we may discourse not altother unprofitably under the shadow of those lofty snowy peaks, which still continue
* By the flight
* Of sad mortality's earth-sullying wing,
* Unswept, unstained.
The change in modern travel has brought the most interesting, and even he wildest, parts of India within easy reach for our countrymen. Bishop Heber mentions in his Journal that he knew of only two Englishmen — Lord Valencia and Mr. Hyde — who had visited India from motives of science or curiosity since the country came into our possession. Even thirty years ago such visits were unknown; and the present Lord Derby was about the first young Englishman who made our Indian empire a part of the grand tour. Nowadays old ladies of seventy, who had scarcely ever left Britain before, are to be met with on the spurs of he Himáliya; and we are conveyed rapidly and easily over vast stretches of burning land, which, a few years ago, presented formidable obstacles to even the most eager traveller. On the great routes over the vast plains of Hindústhan there is no necessity now for riding twenty miles a day from bungalow to bungalow, or rolling tediously in a "palki gharri" over the interminable Grand Trunk Road. Even in a well-cushioned comfortable railway-apartment it is somewhat trying to shoot through the blinding sunlight and golden dust of an Indian plain; and knowing ones are to be seen in such circumstances expending their ice and soda-water upon the towels which they have wrapped round their heads. But we are compelled to have recourse to such measures only in the trying transition periods between the hot and the cold seasons; because, when the heat is at its greatest, artificially-cooled carriages are provided for first-class passengers. Three days from Bombay and twenty pounds conveyance expenses will land the traveller at Masúri (Mussooree), on the outer range of the Himáliya; and yet, if he chooses to halt at various places by the way, a single step almost will take him into some of the wildest jungle and mountain scenery of India, among the most primitive tribes, and to the haunts of wild animals of the most unamiable kind. Had the bishop-poet lived now he might have sung, with much more truth than he did fifty years ago,
* Thy towers, they say, gleam fair, Bombay,
* Across the dark-blue sea;
for the schemes of Sir Bartle Frere, energetically carried out by his successor, Sir Seymour Fitzgerald, have given that city the most imposing public buildings to be found in the East — if we except some of the Mohammedan mosques, with ​the palaces and tombs (for these, too, are public buildings) of the Mogul emperors — and in other ways, also, have made it worthy of its natural situation, and a splendid gate of entrance to our Indian empire. But half Europeanized as the capital of Western India is, within ten miles of it, in the island of Salsette, at the little-visited Buddhist caves of Kanhari, the traveller will find not only a long series of ancient richly-sculptured cave-temples and monastic retreats, but also the most savage specimens of animal and vegetable life, in a thick jungle which often seems alive with monkeys, and where, if he only remains over night, he would have a very good chance of attracting the attention of the most ferocious denizen of the Indian forest. Though the locomotive bears him swiftly and smoothly up the inclines of the Thull Ghaut, instead of his having to cross the Sáhyádri range by a bridle-path, or be dragged painfully by tortured bullocks at the rate of half a mile an hour, as was the case only a few years ago; yet he has only to stop at the picturesquely-situated bungalow at Egutpoora, and wander a little way along the edge of the great bounding wall of the Deccan, in order to look down immense precipices of columnar basalt, and see huge rock-snakes sunning themselves upon the bastions of old Marátha forts, and be startled by the booming cry of the Entellus monkey, or by coming on the footprints of a leopard or a tiger. And it may not be amiss, when writing of the Western Ghauts, to point out the remarkable parallelism, which has not before been noted, between these mountains and the Himáliya, for it may serve to make the contour of both ranges easily intelligible. Both are immense bounding walls; the one to the elevated plains of the Deccan, and the other, to the still more elevated table-land of Central Asia. Carrying out this parallel, the Narbada (Nerbudda) will be found to occupy very much the same position as the Indus, the Sutlej as the Tápti, and the Godaveri as the Brahmaputra. All have their rise high up on their respective table-lands; some branches of the Godaveri rise close to the sources of the Narbada, just as the Indus and the Brahmaputra have their origin somewhere about Lake Manasarowar; and yet the former rivers fall into the sea on the opposite sides of the Indian peninsula just as the two latter do. So, in like manner, the Tápti has its origin near that of the Narbada, as the Sutlej rises close to the Indus; and if we can trust the Sind tradition, which represents the upper part of the Arabian Sea as having once been dry land, there may have been a time within the human era when the Tápti flowed into the Narbada, as the Sutlej does into the Indus some way above the sea. There is no mountain group in the highlands of Central India where the three southern rivers rise quite so close together as do the three northern rivers from the lofty and inaccessible Tibetan Kailas, but still there is a great similarity in their relative positions; and it is only when we think of the Sáhyádri and Himáliya as boundary-walls that we can understand their relations to the table-land behind them, and their terrific fall to the low-lying land in front.
But there is no snow on the Sáhyádri mountains, so we must hurry on past Nasik, where there is a holy city scarcely less sacred than Benares in the estimation of the Hindus; so holy is it that the mere mention of the river on which it stands is supposed to procure the forgiveness of sins; and the banks of this river are covered by as picturesque ghauts and temples as those of the Gangetic city. No traveller should omit stopping at Nándgaum, in order to pay a visit to the immense series of carved hills, of rock-temples and sculptured caves, which make Ellora by far the most wonderful and instructive place in India. If we have to diverge from the railway line again into the upper Tápti valley, we shall find that the basins of rich and once cultivated soil are covered by dense jungle of grass and bamboo, full of tiger, bear, bison, sambar, and spotted deer, and inhabited, here and there, by Kurkies and other aboriginal tribes, but having a deadly climate during great part of the year. Approaching Khandwa, on the railway, we see the ancient and famous fort of Asirghar in the distance rising eight hundred and fifty feet above the plain, and twenty-three hundred feet above the sea; and Khandwa itself, which has been built with the stones from an old Jain town, is important now as a place where the whole traffic of Central India to Bombay meets, and as one terminus of a branch line of rail which takes into the great native state of India, and the capital of the famous Holkar. Here we enter into the Narbada valley, and are soon between two notable ranges of mountains, the Sátpúra and the Vindhya. Ten years ago the Central Provinces were described as "for the most part a ​terra incognita;" and, though now well-known, the highlands of Central India present abundance of the densest jungle, full of the wildest animals and the most primitive of men. In the early dawn, as the railway train rushes along through the cool but mild air, are seen to the right an irregular line of picturesque mountains covered with thick jungle to their summits; and the Englishman unaccustomed to India, who leaves the railway and goes into them, will find himself as much out of his reckoning as if he threw himself overboard a Red Sea steamer and made for the Arabian coast. The Narbada, which is the boundary between the Deccan and Hindusthan proper, rises at Amartank, at the height of five thousand feet, in the dominions of the painted Rajah of Rewa, who was certainly the most picturesque figure in the great Bombay durbar two years ago; it enters the Gulf of Bombay at the cotton town of Bharuch or Broach, and to the English merchant is almost the most important of the Indian rivers. It is supposed that, in prehistoric times, its valley must have been a series of great lakes, which are now filled by alluvial deposits of a recent epoch; and the discovery of flint implements in its alluvium, by the late Lieutenant Downing Sweeney, has indicated it as an important field for the researches of the archæologist. Though its upper course is tumultuous enough, in deep clefts through marble rock, and falling in cascades over high ledges, it soon reaches a rich broad valley, containing iron and coal, which is one of the largest granaries and is the greatest cotton-field of India. Through that valley it runs, a broad yellow strip of sand and shingle; and it has altogether a course of about eight hundred miles, chiefly on a basalt bed, through a series of rocky clefts and valley-basins.
If the traveller has come straight from Bombay, he will feel inclined to halt at Jabalpúr (Jubbulpore) after his ride of twenty-six hours; but if his stay there be only for a day, he will do well, after seeing the novelty of a Thug school of industry to hire a horse-carriage, and drive on about ten miles to the famous and wonderful Marble Rocks, where he will find a beautifully-situated bungalow for travellers, and an old but by no means worn-out Khansamah, who will cook for him a less pretentious but probably as good a dinner as he would find in the hotels of Jabalpúr. The place I speak of presents one of those enchanting scenes which remain forever vivid in the memory. The Narbada there becomes pent up among rocks, and falls over a ledge about thirty feet high, and then flows for about two miles through a deep chasm below the surface of the surrounding country, cut through basalt and marble, but chiefly through the latter. The stream above its fall has a breadth of one hundred yards, but in the chasm of only about twenty yards; and the glittering cliffs of white marble which rise above it are from eighty to one hundred and twenty feet high, and are composed of a dolomite and magnesian limestone. Such, briefly stated, are the constituents of the scene, but they are insufficient to explain its weird charm. I went up between the Marble Rocks in the early morning in a boat, by moonlight, and floated down in sunlight; an as we moved slowly up that romantic chasm, the drip of water from the paddles, and the wash of the stream, only showed how deep the silence was. A tiger had been doing some devastation in the neighbourhood, and one of the boatmen whispered that we might have a chance of seeing it come down to drink at the entrance of the cleft, or moving along the rocks above, which of course made the position more interesting. The marble walls on one side, which sparkled like silver in the moonlight, reflected so white a radiance as almost to illumine the shadow of the opposite cliffs; but the stream itself lay in deeper shadow, with here and there shafts of dazzling light falling upon it; and above the moonbeams had woven in the air a silvery veil, through which even the largest stars shone only dimly. It did not look at all like a scene on earth, but rather as if we were entering the portals of another world. Coming down in the brilliant sunlight the chasm appeared less weird but hardly less extraordinary. Large fish began to leap at the dragonflies which skimmed over the surface of the water; monkeys ran along the banks above, and chattered angrily at us; many peacocks also appeared above, uttering their harsh cries; and the large bees' nests which hung every here and there from the Marble Rocks, began to show unpleasant symptoms of life. Let every visitor to this place beware how he disturbs these ferocious and reckless insects. They are very large; their sting is very poisonous, and they display a fury and determination in resenting any interference, which makes them most formidable enemies. Two Englishmen, I ​was told, were once floating through the chasm, when a ball, which one of them had fired at a peacock, slanted off from the rock and unfortunately happened to hit one of these nests. The consequence was that the bees immediately swarmed about the boat, and stung one of its occupants, who was unable to swim, so severely that he died from the effects. His companion leaped into the stream and floated down with it; but even then a cloud of bees followed him for a long way, watching his movements, and immediately attacked his face and every portion of his body which appeared for an instant above the surface of the water.
Allahabad, the capital of the North-West Provinces, has become one of the most important places in India from its position at the junction of two mighty rivers, and as the centre of the railway communication between Bombay, Calcutta and the Panjab. It possesses a newspaper, the Pioneer, which obtained great popularity all over India from the humour of its late editor, the Rev. Julian Robinson; and while its past is interesting from its connection with the Indian Mutiny and the stemming of the tide of mutiny, the archæologist will find in it remains which are of great importance for the elucidation of Indian antiquity. English travellers will also find there the residence of the cotton-commissioner, Mr. Rivett-Carnac, who is so well known by his great efforts to enable India to meet the demands of Great Britain for its products, by his activity in collecting information of all kinds, and his extreme readiness in imparting it to those who are happy enough to come in contact with him.
But we must proceed towards the Himáliya; and in order to do so at once, I shall say nothing hereof Cawnpore and Lucknow, Delhi and Agra. They have been admirably described by several modern writers, but no description can give an adequate idea of the mournful interest excited by a visit to the two former, or of the dazzling beauty of the Taj Mahal and the Pearl Mosque of Agra. I shall only remark that those who visit the scenes of the Indian Mutiny may do well to inquire for themselves into the true history of that dreadful outbreak, and not allow themselves to be deceived by the palliating veil which such amiable writers as the late Dr. Norman Macleod have drawn over it. That history has never been written; and I was assured by one of the special commissioners who went up with the first relieving force from Allahabad, that the government interfered to prevent his publishing an account of it drawn from the sworn depositions which had been made before him. It is right that the angel of mercy should bend over the well at Cawnpore, and flowers spring from the shattered walls of the Residency at Lucknow; but the lessons of the mutiny are likely to be in great part lost, if its unprovoked atrocities are to be concealed in the darkness to which every humane heart must desire to relegate them.
Here, in the valley of the Ganges, we may be said to be at the base of the Himáliya, though even from near points of view they are not visible through the golden-dust haze of an Indian March. This valley runs parallel with the Stony Girdle for twelve hundred miles, itself varying from eighty miles in breadth at Monghir, to two hundred at Agra; and is so flat as to suggest rather an immensely long strip of plain than anything like a valley. Those who do not think of venturing into the high and interior Himáliya, but yet wish to have something like a near view of the highest and grandest mountains in the world, will of course direct their steps to one or more of the hill-stations on its southern or south-western front, and each of the more important of these is a place of departure for the wilder and more inaccessible country behind. A brief glance at these latter will serve to expose the points from which the most interesting parts of the Himáliya are accessible.
​178 THE ABODE OF SNOW. Passing then over the five hundred miles of Nepal, and casting one longing look in the direction of Gaurisankar, we come to Naini Tal or Nyni Tal, which is the sanitarium of the North-West Provinces, as Dárjiling is of Bengal, and is visited every year by their lieutenant-governor, and a large portion of Allahabad society. It is a charming spot, with a beautiful little lake surrounded by wooded mountains; but it is not in proximity to any high peaks, nor does it command views of the snowy ranges. It does not afford easy access to any of the points of special interest in the higher mountains, and we do not recommend the Himáliyan tourist to pay it a visit, for the time which it would occupy might be much better bestowed in other directions; but it has the advantage of having two outposts of civilization between it and the snowy mountains, — namely, Almora, from which a long route by the base of Nanda Kut (22,536 feet high), will take up to another door into Chinese Tartary — and Ránikhet, to which the late Lord Mayo had some thought of removing the summer seat of the supreme government from Simla, because it has abundance of wood and water, and is one of the very few places in the Himáliya where there is a little level ground.
The next sanitarium is Masúri, or Mussooree, which can be reached, through the Sewalik range and the beautiful valley of the Dehra Doon, in a long day from Saharunpore on the railway. It is not visited by any government in particular; there is nobody to look after people's morals in that aerial retreat; and the result is that though Masúri has much quiet family life, and is not much given to balls or large gay parties, it yet has the character of being the fastest of all the hill-stations, and the one where grass widows combine to allow themselves the greatest liberty. This is scandal, however — not exact science; and as I have something special to say about both Masúri and Simla, I shall only remark here that they present by far the best points of departure for a tour in the interior Himáliya; but it should be noted that it is almost impossible to cross the outer snowy range from the former station during July, August, and September, when the monsoon is piling snow upon it, and beneath the snow-line the rivers are flooded.
The younger hill-stations of Dharamsala and Dalhousie are a long way to the north-west of Simla, and are so far from the line of railway to Lahore and from any carriage-roads, that they are not likely to be sought, in the first instance, by any tourist, however enterprising. But it may be remarked that they are convenient depots of the products of civilization; that Dalhousie is a good starting-point for Kashmir, and that Dharamsala, where the houses stand at elevations of from about four thousand to seven thousand feet high, rises out of the Kangra valley, which Lord Canning held to be the most beautiful district in India, with the exception of Kashmir, and which combines the advantages of tropical with Alpine climate and vegetation. Very far beyond these, at a height of about seven thousand feet, we have Mari (Muree) which is the hill-station for the Panjab and its lieutenant-governor, and the great point of departure for Kashmir. It is only forty miles distant from the Grand Trunk Road at Ráwal Pindi, and can be reached in hill-carts, so that it is really more accessible to the English tourist than some of the hill-stations which geographically may appear much nearer; but it is not in immediate proximity to any very high ranges, though sometimes a glimpse can be got from its neighbourhood of the wonderful peak of Nangha Purbat, which is 26,629 feet high. Close to the Indus, where the Himáliya have changed into the Hindú Kúsh, there is Abbotabad, which, though a military station and little over four thousand feet, is one of the points which command Kashmir; and it has beside it the sanitarium of Tandali, or Tundiani, which presents more extensive views from the height of nine thousand feet. And here our line of sanitariums comes to an end; for though the plain of our trans-Indus possession is bounded by the most tempting mountains, the lower ranges of the Hindú Kúsh, yet if the tourist makes even the slightest attempt to scale these, he will find that, between the Akoond of Swat, the Amir of Kaubul, and the officers of the British government, he will have an uncommonly bad time of it, and may consider himself fortunate if he is only brought back neck and crop to Pesháwur (Peshawur) and put under surveillance or ordered out of the district.
Simla, as I have indicated, is the beslt starting-point for the inner Himáliya, besides being an interesting place in itself as usually the summer residence of the viceroy and the other chiefs of the suppreme government of India, though this ​year they have been detained in Calcutta by the Bengal famine. But Masúri is more easy of access; that place, or rather the closely adjacent military station of Landaur (Landour), commands a finer view of snowy peaks; and it is not necessary to descend from Masúri to the burning plains in order to reach Simla, as a good bridle-road, passing through the new military station of Chakraota, connects the two places, and can be traversed in fourteen easy marches, which afford very good preliminary experience for a tour in the Himáliya. In April of last year Masúri was the first elevation I made for, and eagerly did I seek its cool breezes after the intense beat of Agra and Delhi. Anglo-Indians are very hospitable towards English travellers; and as the thoughtful kindness of Sir William Muir, the then lieutenant-governor of the North-West Provinces, had furnished me with some valuable letters of introduction, I could not but accede to his wish that I should go to Rúrki (Roorkee) and see the engineering college there, the workshops, and the works of the Ganges Canal. At Saharunpore, the railway-station for Rúrki, there is a botanical garden, and a valuable collection of fossils, under the charge, and created by the labours, of Dr. Jamieson, of the Forest Department, a relative and pupil of the well-known mineralogist, and one of the founders of the science of geology, who for fifty years occupied the post of professor of natural history in the University of Edinburgh. Of Rurki itself, and its invaluable canal, which has done so much to prevent famine in the North-West Provinces, I hope to speak elsewhere. I was fortunate enough there to be the guest of Major Lang, the very able principal of the engineering college, who had formerly been engaged in the construction of the great Hindústhan and Tibet Road, which runs from Simla towards Chinese Tartary; and any doubts as to where I was bound for were soon entirely dissipated by the principals descriptions of Chini and Pangay, the Indian Kailas, and the Parang La. He warned me, indeed, not to attempt Chinese Tibet, lest the fate of the unfortunate Adolph Schlagintweit might befall me, and a paragraph should appear in the Indian papers announcing that a native traveller from Gartok had observed a head adorning the pole of a Tartars tent, which head, there was only too much reason to fear from his description of it, must have been that of the enterprising traveller who lately penetrated into Chinese Tibet by way of Shipki. But then it was not necessary to cross the border in order to see Chini and the Kailas; and even his children kindled with enthusiastic delight as they cried out Pangay! Pangay!
As the greatest mela or religious fair of the Hindus was being held at this time at Hardwar (Hurdwar), where the Ganges is supposed to issue from the Himáliya, I went over there to see that extraordinary scene, and was fortunate enough to hit upon the auspicious day for bathing. That also I must leave undescribed at present, and proceed in a dooly from Hardwar along a jungle-path through the Terai to the Dehra Doon and Masúri. This was my first experience of the Himáliya. In vain had I strained my eyes to catch a glimpse of their snowy summits through the golden haze which filled the hot air. Though visible from Rúrki and many other places in the plains at certain seasons, they are not so in April; but here, at least, was the outermost circle of them the Terai, or, literally, the "wet land", the "belt of death", the thick jungle swarming with wild beasts, which runs along their southern base. It is not quite so thick or so deadly here between the Ganges and the Jumna, as it is farther to the east, on the other side of the former river, and all the way from the Ganges to the Brahmapútra, constituting, I suppose, the longest as well as the deadliest strip of jungle-forest in the world. The greater cold in winter in this north-western portion, and its greater distance from the main range, prevent its trees attaining quite such proportions as they do farther east; but still it has sufficient heat and moisture, and sufficiently little circulation of air, to make it even here a suffocating hothouse, into which the wind does not penetrate to dissipate the moisture transpired by the vegetation; and where, besides the most gigantic Indian trees and plants as the sissoo, the saul-tree, with its shining leaves and thick clusters of flowers, and the most extraordinary interlacing of enormous creepers we have, strange to say, a number of trees and other plants properly belonging to far-distant and intensely tropical parts of the earth, such as the Cassia elata of Burmah, the Marlea begoniæfolia of Java, the Duringia celosiocides of Papua, and the Nerium odorum of Africa. This natural conservatory is a special haunt for wild animals, and for enormous snakes such as the ​python. The rhinoceros exists in the Terai, though not beyond the Ganges; but in the part we now are — that between the Ganges and the Jumna — there are wild elephants, and abundance of tiger, leopard, panther, bear, antelope, and deer of various kinds. My Bombay servant had heard so many stories at Hardwar about the inhabitants of this jungle, that he entered into it with fear and trembling. If the word hatti (elephant) was uttered once by our coolies, it was uttered a hundred times in the course of the morning. Before we had gone very far, my dooly was suddenly placed on the ground, and my servant informed me that there were some wild elephants close by. Now, the idea of being in a canvas dooly when an elephant comes up to trample on it is by no means a pleasant one; so I gathered myself out slowly and deliberately, but with an alacrity which I could hardly have believed possible. Surely enough the heads and backs of a couple of large elephants were visible in the bush; and as they had no howdahs or cloths upon them, the inference was fair that they were wild animals. But a little observation served to show that there were men beside them. They turned out to be tame elephants belonging to a Mr. Wilson, a well-known Himáliyan character, who was hunting in the Terai, and who seems to have been met by every traveller to Masúri for the last twenty years. I did not see him at this time, but afterwards made his acquaintance in the hotel at Masúri, and again in Bombay. It will give some idea of the abundance of game in this part of the Terai to mention, that on this shooting excursion, which lasted only for a very few days, he bagged two tigers, besides wounding another which was lost in the jungle, three panthers, and about thirty deer. Mr. Wilson has been called the "Ranger of the Himáliya," and his history is a curious one. About thirty years ago he wandered up to these mountains on foot from Calcutta with his gun, being a sort of superior "European loafer." There his skill as a hunter enabled him to earn more than a livelihood, by preserving and sending to Calcutta the skins of the golden pheasant and other valuable birds. This traffic soon developed to such proportions that he employed many paharries to procure for him the skins of birds and animals, so that his returns were not solely dependent on the skill of his own hand. He married a native mountain lady, who possessed some land, a few days' marches from Masúri and finally, by a fortunate contract for supplying Indian railways with sleepers from the woods of the Himáliya, he had made so much money that it was currently believed at Masúri when I was there that he was worth more than £150,000. I was interested in his account of the passes leading towards Yarkund and Kashmir, with some of which he had made personal acquaintance. I may mention, also, that he spoke in very high terms of the capacities, as an explorer, of the late Mr. Hayward, the agent of the Geographical Society of London, who was cruelly murdered on the border of Yassin, on his way to the Pamir Steppe, the famous "Roof of the World." It has been rumoured that Mr. Hayward was in the habit of ill-treating the people of the countries through which he passed; but Mr. Wilson, who travelled with him for some time, and is himself a great favourite with the mountaineers, repelled this supposition, and said he had met with no one so well fitted as this unfortunate agent of the Geographical Society for making his way in difficult countries. I do not think that the least importance should be attached to accusations of the kind which have been brought against Mr. Hayward, or rather against his memory. The truth is, it is so absolutely necessary at times in High Asia to carry matters with a high hand — so necessary for the preservation, not only of the traveller's own life, but also of the lives of his attendants — that there is hardly a European traveller in that region against whom, if his mouth were only closed with the dust of the grave, and there was any reason for getting up a. case against him, it could not be proved, in a sort of way, that it was his ill-treatment of the natives which had led to his being murdered. I am sure such a case could have been made out against myself on more than one occasion; and an officer on the staff of the commander-in-chief in India told me that the people of Spiti had complained to him that a Sahib, who knew neither Hindústhani nor English, much less their own Tibetan dialect, had been beating them because they could not understand him. Now this Sahib is one of the mildest and most gentlemanly of the members of the present Yarkund Mission, and the cause of his energy in Spiti was that, shortly before, in Lahoul, several of his coolies had perished from cold, owing to disobedience of his orders, and, being ​a humane man, he was anxious to guard against the recurrence of such an event. But when treating of Kashmir I shall speak more openly about the story of Hayward's death, and only wish to note the testimony in his favour which was borne by the experienced "Ranger of the Himáliya," who has become almost one in feeling with the people among whom he dwells.
In the centre of this Terai, there is an expensively built police chowkie, in which I took refuge from the extreme heat of the day; but what police have to do there, unless to apprehend tigers, does not appear at first sight. It is quite conceivable, however, that the conservatory might become a convenient place of refuge for wild and lawless men, as well as for wild plants and wild beasts. Hence the presence in its midst of these representatives of law and order, who hailed the visit of a Sahib with genuine delight. The delay here prevented my reaching the cultivated valley of the Dehra Doon till midnight, so torches were lit long before we left the thicker part of the Terai; their red light made the wild jungle look wilder than ever, and it was with a feeling of relief that we came upon the first gardens and tea-plantations. There is no place in India, unless perhaps the plateaus of the Blue Mountains, which remind one so much of England as the little valley of the Dehra Doon; and Sir George Campbell has well observed that no district has been so happily designed by nature for the capital of an Anglo-Indian empire. It lies between the Sewalik or sub-Himáliyan range and the Himáliya itself. This former low line of hills, which is composed from the debris of the greater range, has its strata dipping towards the latter in a north-easterly direction, and consists of a few parallel ridges which are high towards the plains, but sloping in the direction of the Himáliya where there is any interval beween. It contains an immense collection of the fossil bones of the horse, bear, camel, hyena, ape, rhinoceros, elephant, crocodile, hippopotamus, and also of the sivatherium, the megatherium, and other enormous animals not now found alive. At some places it rests upon the Himáliya, and at others is separated from them by raised valleys. The Dehra Doon is one of those elevated valleys, with the Upper Ganges and Jumna flowing through it on opposite sides, and is about seventy miles in length and nearly twenty in breadth. It is sometimes spoken of, by enthusiasts for colonization in India, as if the whole Anglo-Saxon race might find room to establish themselves there; but it is really a very small district, with almost all the available land occupied; and from Masúri we see the whole of it lying at our feet and bounded by the two shining rivers. It is a very pleasant place, however. Being so far north, just about 30° of latitude, and at an elevation of a little over two thousand feet, it enjoys a beautiful climate. Even in the hot season the nights and mornings are quite cool, which is the great thing in a hot country; the fall of rain is not so great as in the plains below or in the hills immediately above; and in the cold season the temperature is delightful, and at times bracing. I saw roses in the Dehra Doon growing under bamboos and mango-trees, and beds of fine European vegetables side by side with fields of the tea-shrub. In one plantation which I examined particularly, the whole process of preparing the tea was shown to me. It was under the superintendence of a Celestial, and the process did not differ much from that followed in China, but the plants were smaller than those usually seen in the Flowery Land. After having been for long a rather unprofitable speculation, the cultivation of tea on the slopes of the Himáliya is now a decided monetary success; and the only difficulty is to meet the demand for Indian tea which exists not only in India and Europe but also in Central Asia. Dr. Jamieson of Saharunpore, who has interested himself much in the growth of tea in India, and pressed it on when almost everybody despaired of its ever coming to anything, was kind enough to give me a map showing the tea-districts of the western Himáliya; and I see from it that they begin close to the Nepalese frontier at Pethoragurh in Kumaon. A number of them are to be found from a little below Naini Tal northwards up to Almora and Ránikhet. Besides those in the Dehra Doon, there are some in its neighbourhood immediately below Masúri, and to the east of that hill-station. Next we have those at Kalka on the way to Simla from Ambála (Umballa), at or rather just below Simla itself, at Kotghur in the valley of the Sutlej, and in the Kúlú valley, so famed for the beauty and immorality of its women. And lastly, there is a group at Dharamsala, and in the Kangra valley and its neighbourhood. The cultivation of tea does not seem to get on in the Himáliya above the height ​of six thousand feet, and it flourishes from that height down to about two thousand feet, or perhaps lower. Some people are very fond of Indian tea, and declare it to be equal if not superior, to that of the Middle Kingdom; but I do not agree with them at all. When my supplies ran out in High Asia, tea was for some time my only artificial beverage, though that, too, failed me at last, and I was obliged to have recourse to roasted barley, from which really very fair coffee can be made, and coffee quite as good as the liquid to be had under that name in half the cafés of Europe. It is in such circumstances that one can really test tea, when we are so dependent on it for its refreshing and invigorating effects; and I found that none of the Indian tea which I had with me — not even that of Kangra, which is the best of all — was to be compared for a moment, either in its effects or in the pleasantness of its taste, with the tea of two small packages from Canton, which were given me by a friend just as I was starting from Simla. The latter, as compared with the Himáliyan tea, was as sparkling hock to home-brewed ale, and yet it was only a fair specimen of the ordinary better-class teas of the Pearl River.
Looking from Rajpore at the foot of the hills up to Masúri, that settlement has a very curious appearance. Many of its houses are distinctly visible along the ridges; but they are so very high up, and so immediately above one, as to suggest that we are in for something like the labours and the experience of Jack on the bean-stalk. In the bazaar at Rajpore, I was reminded of the Alps by noticing several cases of goître: and I afterwards saw instances of this disease at Masúri; at Kalka, at the foot of the Simla hills; at Simla; at Nirth, a very hot place near Rampur in the Sutlej valley; at Lippe, a cool place, above nine thousand feet high, in Upper Kunawur, with abundance of good water; at Kaelang in Lahoul, a similar place, but still higher; at the Ringdom Monastery in Zanskar, about twelve thousand feet high; in the great open valley of Kashmir; and at Pesháwar in the low-lying trans-Indus plains. These cases do not all fit into any particular theory which has been advanced regarding the cause of this hideous disease; and Dr. Bramley has mentioned in the Transactions of the Medical Society of Calcutta, that in Nepal he found goître was more prevalent on the crests of high mountains than in the valleys. The steep ride to Masúri up the vast masses of mountain, which formed only the first and comparatively insignificant spurs of the Himáliya, gave a slight foretaste of what is to be experienced among their giant central ranges.
Masúri, though striking enough, is by no means a picturesque place. It wants the magnificent deodar and other trees of the Simla ridge, and, except from the extreme end of the settlement, it has no view of the Snowy Mountains, though it affords a splendid outlook over the Dehra Doon, the Sewaliks, and the Indian plains beyond. The "Himalayan Hotel" there is the best hotel I have met with in India; and there are also a club-house and a good subscription reading-room and library. Not a few of its English inhabitants live there all the year round, in houses many of which are placed in little shelves scooped out of the precipitous sides of the mountain. The ridges on which it rests afford only about five miles of riding-paths in all, and no table-land. Its height is about seven thousand feet — almost all the houses being between six thousand four hundred and seven thousand two hundred feet above the level of the sea. But this insures a European climate; for on the southern face of the Himáliya the average yearly temperature of London is found at a height of about eight thousand feet. The chief recommendation of Masúri is its equality of temperature, both from summer to winter and from day to night; and in most other respects its disadvantages are rather glaring. In April I found the thermometer in a shaded place in the open air ranged from 60° Fahr. at daybreak, to 71° between two and three o'clock in the afternoon; and the rise and fall of the mercury were very gradual and regular indeed, though there was a good deal of rain. The coldest month is January, which has a mean temperature of about 42° 45m.; and the hottest is July, which has 67° 35m. The transition to the rainy season appears to make very little difference; but while the months of October and November are delightful, with a clear and serene sky, and an average temperature of 54°, the rainy season must be horrible, exposed as Masúri is, without an intervening rock or tree, to the full force of the Indian south-west monsoon. The Baron Carl Hügel mentions that when he was there in 1835, the rain lasted for eighty-five days, with an intermission of ​only a few hours. It cannot always be so bad as that at Masúri in summer, but still the place must be exceedingly wet, cold, and disagreeable during the period of the monsoon; and it is no wonder that, at such a season, the residents of the Dehra Doon much prefer their warmer and more protected little valley below.
Notwithstanding the attractions of the "Himalayan Hotel," I would recommend the visitors to Masúri to get out of it as soon as possible, and to follow the example of the American who said to me after forty-eight hours he could stand it no longer, and that he wanted "to hear them panthers growling about my tent." The two great excursions from this place are the Jumnotri and the Gangotri peaks, where the sacred rivers, Jumna and Ganges, may be said to take their rise repesctively. These journeys involve tent-life, and the usual concomitants of Himáliyan travel, but they are well worth making; for the southern side of the sunny Himáliya in this neighbourhood is grand indeed. It is only fifteen marches from Masúri to the glacier from which the Ganges is said to issue, though, in reality, a branch of it descends from much further up among the mountains; and these marches are quite easy except for nine miles near to the glacier, where there is "a very bad road over ladders, scaffolds, &c." It is of importance to the tourist to bear in mind that, in order to pursue his pleasure in the Himáliya, it is not necessary for him to descend from Masúri to the burning plains. The hill-road to Simla I have already spoken of. There is also a direct route from Masúri to Wangtú Bridge, in the Sutlej valley, over the Burand Pass, which is 15,180 feet high, and involving only two marches on which there are no villages to afford supplies. This route to Wangtú Bridge is only fourteen marches, and that place is so near to Chini and the Indian Kailas that the tourist might visit these latter in a few days from it, thus seeing some of the finest scenery in the snowy Himáliya; and he could afterwards proceed to Simla from VVangtú in eleven marches along the cut portion of the Hindústhan and Tibet road. There is another and still more interesting route from Masúri to the valley of the Sutlej over the Nila or Nilung Pass, and then down the wild Buspa valley; but that pass is an exceedingly difficult one, and is somewhere about eighteen thousand feet high, so no one should attempt it without some previous experience of the high Himáliya; and it is quite impassable when the monsoon is raging, as indeed the Burand Pass may be said to be also. The neophyte may also do well to remember that tigers go up to the snow on the south side of the Himáliya; and that, at the foot of the Jumnotri and Gangotri peaks, besides "them panthers," and a tiger or two, he is likely enough to have snow-bears growling about his tent at night.
I had been unfortunate in not having obtained even a single glimpse of the snowy Himáliya from the plains, or from any point of my journey to Masúri, and I learned there that they were only visible in the early morning at that season. Accordingly, I ascended one morning at daybreak to the neighbouring military station of Landaur, and there saw these giant mountains for the first time. Sir Alexander Burnes wrote in his "Travels into Bokhara," &c. — "I felt a nervous sensation of joy as I first gazed on the Himalaya." When Bishop Heber saw them he "felt intense delight and awe in looking on them." Even in these anti-enthusiastic times I fancy most people experience some emotion on first beholding those lofty pinnacles of unstained snow, among which the gods of Hindústhan are believed to dwell. From Landaur a sea of mist stretched from my feet, veiling, but not altogether concealing, - ridge upon ridge of dark mountains, and even covering the lower portions of the distant great wall of snow. No sunlight as yet fell upon this dark yet transparent mist, in which the mountainous surface of the earth, with its black abysses, seemed sunk as in a gloomy ocean, bounded by a huge coral-reef. But above this, dazzling and glorious in the sunlight, high up in the deep blue heavens, there rose a white shining line of gigantic "icy summits reared in air." Nothing could have been more peculiar and striking than the contrast between the wild mountainous country below — visible, but darkened as in an eclipse — and these lofty domes and pinnacles of eternal ice and névé. No cloud or fleck of mist marred their surpassing radiance. Every glacier, snow-wall, icy aigiulle, and smooth-rounded snow-field, gleamed with marvellous distinctness in the morning light, though here and there the sunbeams drew out a more overpowering brightness. These were the Jumnotri and Gangotri peaks, the peaks of Badrinath and of the Hindu Kailas; the ​source of mighty sacred rivers: the very centre of the Himáliya; the Himmel, or heaven of the Teuton Aryans as well as of Hindu mythology. Mount Meru itself may be regarded as raising there its golden front against the sapphire sky; the Kailas, or "Seat of Happiness," is the cæliun of the Latins; and there is the fitting, unapproachable abode of Brahma and of his attendant gods, Gandharvas and Rishis.
But I now felt determined to make a closer acquaintance with these wondrous peaks — to move among them, upon them, and behind them — so I hurried from Masúri to Simla by the shortest route, that of the carriage-road from the foot of the hills through the Sewaliks to Saharunpore; by rail from thence to Ambála, by carriage to Kalka, and from Kalka to Simla in a jhampan, by the old road, which, however, is not the shortest way for that last section, because a mail-cart now runs along the new road. Ambala, and the roads from thence to Simla present a very lively scene in April, when the governor-general, the commander-in-chief, the heads of the supreme government, their baggage and attendants, and the clerks of the different departments, are on their way up to the summer retreat of the government of India. It is highly expedient for the traveller to avoid the days of the great rush, when it is impossible for him to find conveyance of any kind at any price — and I did so; but even coming in among the ragtag and bobtail, — if deputy-commissioners and colonels commanding regiments — men so tremendous in their own spheres — may be thus profanely spoken of, — there was some difficulty in procuring carriage and bungalow accommodation; and there was plenty of amusing company, — from the ton weight of the post-office official, who required twenty groaning coolies to carry him, to the dapper little lieutenant or assistant deputy-commissioner who cantered lightly along parapetless roads skirting precipices; and from the heavy-browed sultana of some Gangetic station, whose stern look palpably interrogates the amount of your monthly paggár, to the more lily-like young Anglo-Indian dame or damsel, who darts at you a Parthian yet gentle glance, though shown "more in the eyelids than the eyes," as she trips from her jhampan or Bareilly dandy into the travellers' bungalow.
In the neighbourhood of Simla there is quite a collection of sanitariums, which are passed, or seen, by the visitors to that more famous place. The first of these, and usually the first stopping-place for the night of those who go by the old bridle-road from Kalka, is Kussowli, famous for its Himáliyan beer, which is not unlike the ordinary beer of Munich. It is more rainy than Simla, more windy, and rather warmer, though as high or a little higher, and is chiefly occupied as a depot for the convalescents of European regiments. Close to it rises the barren hill of Sonawur, where there is the (Sir Henry) Lawrence Asylum, for boys and girls of European or mixed parentage, between four hundred and five hundred being usually supported and educated there at the expense of government. Two other sanitariums, Dagshai (Dugshaie) and Subáthu (Subathoo), are also military depots; the latter having large barracks, and houses with fine gardens and orchards. The British soldier improves greatly in strength and appearance on these heights; but it is said he does not appreciate the advantages of being placed upon them. He does not like having to do so much for himself as falls to his lot when he is sent to the mountains. He misses the Indian camp-followers, who treat him below as a Chota Lord Sahib; and, above all, he misses the varied life of the plains, and the amusement of the bazaar. I am afraid, too, mountains fail to afford him much gratification after his first burst of pleasure on finding himself among and upon them. "Sure, and I've been three times round that big hill to-day, and not another blessed thing is there to do up here!" I heard an Irish corporal indignantly exclaim. To the officers and their families the hills are a delightful change; but to the undeveloped mind of Tommy Atkins they soon become exceedingly tiresome, though I believe the soldiers enjoy much being employed in the working parties upon the roads, where they have the opportunity of laying by a little money.
The mountains between Kalka and Simla are wild and picturesque enough, but they give no idea of either the grandeur or the beauty of the Himáliya; and the traveller should be warned against being disappointed with them. No ranges of eternal snow are in sight; no forests of lofty deodar; no thick jungle, like that of the Terai; no smiling valleys, such as the Dehra Doon. We have only the ascending of steep bare mountain-sides, in order to go down them on the other side, or to wind along bare ​mountain-ridges. The hills either rest on each other, or have such narrow gorges between, that there is no room for cultivated valleys; and their faces are so steep, and so exposed to the action of the Indian rains, that all the soil is swept away from them; and so we have nothing to speak of but red slopes of rock and shingle, with only a few terraced patches of cultivation, and almost no trees at all, except in the immediate vicinity of the military stations. The worst parts of Syria would show to advantage compared with the long aproach to Simla. I understand, however, that the actual extent of cultivation is considerably greater than one would readily suppose, and occasionally the creeping vine and the cactus do their best to clothe the rocky surface. On ascending the Simla ridge itself, however, a change comes over the scene. Himáliyan cedars and oaks cover the heights and crowd the glades; rhododendrons, it be their season of bloom, give quite a glory of colour; and both white and red roses appear among the brambles and berberries of the thick underwood: a healthy resinous odour meets one from the forest of mighty pine-trees, mingled with more delicate perfumes; beds of fern with couches of moss lie along the roadside; masses of cloud come rolling down the valleys from the rounded, thickly wooded summit of Hatto; deep glens, also finely wooded, fall suddenly before our feet: on the one side, over a infusion of hills and the edifices of Subáthu and Dagshai, we have glimpses of the yellow burning Indian plain; on the other, through the oak-branches and the tower-like stems of deodar, there shines the long white line of eternal snow upon the giant mountains of Chamba, Kúlú, and Spiti. It was a matter of life or death for me to reach those snowy solitudes, and I found the words of Mignon's song in "Wilhelm Meister" flitting across my brain, and taking a new meaning: —
* Know'st thou the land where towering cedars rise
* In graceful majesty to cloudless skies;
* Where keenest winds from icy summits blow
* Across the deserts of eternal snow?
* Know'st thou it not?
* Oh there! oh there!
* My wearied spirit, let us flee from care!
* Know'st thou the tent, its cone of snowy drill
* Pitch'd on the greensward by the snow-fed rill;
* Where whiter peaks than marble rise around.
* And icy ploughshares pierce the flower-clad ground?
* Know'st thou it well?
* Oh there! oh there!
* Where pipes the marmot — fiercely growls the bear!
* Know'st thou the cliffs above the gorges dread.
* Where the great yaks with trembling footsteps tread,
* Beneath the Alp where frolic ibex play,
* While snow-fields sweep across the perilous way?
* Know'st thou it thus?
* Go there! go there!
* Scale cliffs, and granite avalanches dare!
* Know'st thou the land where man scarce knows decay,
* So nigh the realms of everlasting day;
* Where gleam the splendours of unsullied truth,
* Where Dúrga smiles, and blooms eternal youth?
* Know'st thou it now?
* Oh there! oh there!
* To breathe the sweetness of that heavenly air!
* ↑ The spelling of Indian names is at present in a transition state, though so much has been done to reduce it to one common standard that it is expedient to follow that standard now, which is the official system of spelling adopted by the Indian government and usually followed by Dr. Keith Johnston in his valuable maps. That system partakes of the nature of a compromise, for accents are only used when specially necessary; and in the lists drawn up by Dr. W. W. Hunter they are used very sparingly, and are omitted in some cases where they might have been added with advantage. I have followed these official lists in almost every instance, except in using the word "Himáliya;" and the simple rules to be borne in mind in order to render their system of spelling intelligible are that, — The long d sounds broadly, as in almond. The short a without an accent, has usually somewhat of a u sound, as the a in rural. The i with an accent, is like ee, or the i in ravine. The ú with an accent is like oo, or the u in bull. The e has a broad sound, as the a in dare. The o sounds openly as in note. The ai sounds as in aisle, or the i in high: The au sounds like ou in cloud.
* ↑ These are two names, the spelling of which should have been left unaltered, even according to the Government's own views.