The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1878-06-08 00:00:00

THE INDIAN EXPEDITIONARY FORCE.

The Special Correspondent of the Standard, writing from
Port Said, under date May 24, gives. some interesting particu-
lars respecting the arrival of the Inalan Expeditionary Force;
as also a description of a regimental jester attached to one of
the regiments. The following are extracts from the letter:—

• . . Marryat, mono of his naval novels, advises every
ship's captain to keep a monkey on board; idleness
breeds mischief, and if Jack has a long-tailed pet to
tease he will have no leisure to plot. The officers of
the•3lst Bengal have evidently read Marryat to some
purpose, for they have with them a regimental jester,
an old fellow who had been a famous wrestler in his
prime, but has developed humourous qualities since
that bring him still greater renown. Be is no mere
follower, but a fighting man with many medals, and
halds the rank of ha.vildar. My request to have a taste
of his quality was graciously acceded to ; he was sum-
moned and stood-to attentioni
n the middle of an ordi-
nary group of his comrades, who were anxious to dis-
cover how the performanees of their favourite would
affect the stranger. "Favourite," I repeat, for the
jester is not teased like the monkey, but held in as
much deference as the pipe-major of a kilted regiment;
his privilege is to entertain his companions when they
are well-conducted, his officers when they are weary.
The performance was a curious one. Casting a self-
conscious look around by way of preface he assumed a
stolid air and presently emitted a succession of noises
like the barking of a Pariah dog. The imitation was
perfect. It only required a screen between me and
the jester to make the illusion complete. The barking
was now angry, now plaintive, and by-and-bye
lengthened into a dismal howl. The dog had been
kicked or disturbed from his bone. Then the gamut
changed to the hollow bay of a large hound, the weird
call of .the jackal!, the hoarse gurgling of the camel,
the shrill scream of the peacock, the chorus of
frogs in a marsh, and so on through the voices of
innumerable denizens of the farm-yard and the
forest. No ventriloquist could have done it more
naturally. This man would make his fortune in a
London music-hall. He next gave imitations of

a dancing bear, a comrade leading him with an
unwound turban; of a sowar trying to put an unruly
charger over a fence;* of the musicinaster of his own
regiment leading the band with his bdton ; and, the
most painfully realistic of all, of a drunken European
soldier in the bazaar. He reeled and staggered,
made incoherent mutterings, flung his arms round
imaginary brother topers, and at last fell in a heap.
A comrade tried to hit him, and the drunkard
thanked him by a vicious kick in the stomach.
Another whispered that his captain was coming, and
he made a futile endeavour to pull himself together,
cocking his head knowingly, standing in as upright a
position as he could, swaying backward and forward,
and at last toppling over like a top-heavy sack, and
lying, in helpless stupor. George Cruikshank never
painted a more eloquent sermon on the folly of intem-
perance. The athlete of the regiment was next
called, and gave a fair sample of his skill with the
Indian clubs. He whirled the ponderous blocks round
his skull very easily and prettily, but his per-
formances did not strike me as much as the
previous exhibition. The other was unique; the
club exercise I have seen gone through better by
smaller men at assaults of arms at home. Then
the pipers yes, the pipers ! were brought up
and played a native air on the old, old theme of love.
They puffed away like Tritons on a reed of clarionet
shape with a slender brass mouth-piece, hut the music
they produced had a marvellous resemblance to that
of the Highland bagpipes. There was the piercing
concord of discords dear to the land of "brown heath
and shaggy wood" in every note. As finale they
played "Auld Lang Syne " with variations; the
compliment was neat, but severe truth compels me
to declare that the variations veiled the original so
thickly that the composer would have been puzzled to
recognise his own offspring
May 26.

At last the St. Osyth, the largest vessel of the flotilla,
has reported herself. . . . . She carries the 2nd
Goorkas complete, the only complete regiment, or
battalion rather, in a single vessel. Yesterday, while
the sun was at its height, she steamed in with stately
motion, and was a grand sight, as she threaded her
way—a floating castle with embrasures and parapets
alive with men-at-arms—to her moorings, at a cable's
length from the coal wharf...

The arrival of the Goorkhas was awaited with in-
tense curiosity. These short, ugly, but strong and active
sharpshooters gave our grandfathers some trouble
before they were broken in to British harness. In the
campaign against them in 1814 they made a deter.
mined stand in their strongholds, cunningly planted
in the most inaccessible passes of the hills ; three suc-
cessive generals failed to get the better of them, and it
was only when Ochterlony rose upon the scene and took
.. their forts of Nalaghur, Maloun, Almora, and Makwan-
pur, that their ruler, the Rajah ol Nepal, consented to
sae for peace. They were organised in our service in
the following year, and have since behaved with
dogged valour at the siege and capture of Bhunpore
in 1825-26, in the battles of Alliwal and Sobraon, and
during the bloody test of the mutiny, when they
were true to their salt and covered themselves with
glory. They have been subdued but not subjugated;
tamed to a degree, but have never lost their spirit.
They are the beau ideal of brisk, wary skirmishers,
as they trot about in dark green uniform with scarlet
facings, similar to the 60th Rifles, with their
characteristic wide-bladed curved daggers or kookais
by their right aide. These daggers are as fierce
instruments of death as ever were labelled "with
care" in that murderous museum, the Prisoners'
Lost Property Office, in Scotland-yard—an excellent
weapon to cut down a hedge, or chop off the head of
an enemy. The Prince of Wales is honorary colonel
of the regiment, and very proud it is of the triune
plume of ostrich feathers which it displays as badge on
the front of its peakless cap. The men are recruited
beyond the frontier, in the Nepal territory, and engage
for fifteen or twenty-one years. They are armed with
the short Snider and the thrust bayonet, in addition
to the Aookri, which has a convenient pocket behind
the sheath for knife, fork, and flint and steel. They
formerly carried the sword bayonet, but it was found
to be an incumbrance when they were marching at the
double. They are " dead " shots, and are in the habit
of going in gangs in search of game when in India, so
that they are not likely to was-te their ammunition in
the field. They do not believe in throwing away a
charge, but make sure to bring down what they aim
at. Their average height is five feet three, and weight
eight stone ten, a fair weight for their size. In religion
they profess liberal Hinduism; they have no delicacy
about greased cartridges, wilt eat almost anything an
European will eat (excepting beef), drink rum and like
it, and mess together. In physiAue they are insignifi-
cant, but they have a gleam of resolution over their
jovial countenances, and they have calves to their legs
which bespeak powers of pedestrianism. They marched
capitally during the Looshia campaign, and bore up
against fatigue with extraordinary endurance. As for
theirfighting capacity, those who remember Delhi and
the way they held the main picquet at Hindu Rao's house
in company with our own 60th, for three months will
bear testimony to that. As a rifle regiment they no
longer carry colours—their former colonel (Sir Charles
Reid) holds the frayed and bullet-riddled old pair in
fond guardianship; but the story of their conduct in
1857 is commemorated in the truncheon which they
obtained instead. This truncheon is surmounted by
a silver crown, supported by three Goorkhas, modelled
from the life, and has an inscription telling that it was
given to the regiment for its prowess at the outposts of
Delhi. A supernumerary officer is detailed to take
charge of it.
The faces of these brave dwarfs are more expressive
than handsome. A cynical Frenchman would com-
pare them to those carved on the bowls of brown
meerschaums, or on the heads of knotty ebon walk-
ing sticks in the Palais Royal. They are of the
Mongolian cast, low and broad in forehead, high.
checked, and coarse in hair; and it would be hard
to single them out from many Chinamen or Erqui-
maux. They are not prone to quarrel, but they
betray anything but the meekness that would
suffer itself to be elbowed off a side path. In the
far-away fastnesses from which they come the
thermometer stood at 110 degrees a month ago ;
they had four days' tramping before they struck the
rail, and eight days' travelling thence to Bombay, but
there was no murmur nor any outbreak of disease.
They had been on a perpetual stare almost since they
started; everything was so new to them; they had
exaggerated notions of the importance of their own
villages, but now they wake to the knowledge that
the world is much larger than their thoughts, and yet
they are hardly out of the tropics They begin to ask
where do those white sahibs live; so far they have
seen more dark faces than fair, snore turbans than
hats. But they will take kindly to civili.ation.
It was amusing to watch them having their new
boots that the Sirkar gave them operated on
by shoeblacks yesterday evening, or proudly
smoking-out of clay pipes precisely like those they
had seen with their English comrades. There is an
unusually friendly feeling between them and our own
Linesmen with whom they have served. There are
three such corns, by the way, at Malta, the 42nd, 71st,
and 101st, so that the Goorkhas rejoin " auld acquaint-
ances," but 1 venture to say there is not one of our
Line regiments, or Guards for the matter of that,
which can furnish such a goodly proportion of seasoned
warriors still fit for work as the Prince of Wales's
Own Goorkhas. I have been shown men who fought
at Sobraon, two-and-thirty years ago, and they are
not only "free, willing, and able," but they are eager
to meet the Maharanse's enemies to-day.

PORTE IT ISN'T.—FROM THE SUBLIME TO
THE RIDICULOUS. -
"The Porte—that is the building which from its gateway
was so called, and in which the Government Offices and
Archives of the Ottoman Empire were housed—has been
burnt, whether by the act of an incendiary is not yet known. '
—Constantinople Letter, May 25th.
"rWAB once strong military Porte,
Then Porte in a storm, tot a doubt of it;
Lastly, Porte in blue blazes, and now
Porte with all the spirit burnt out of it. —Punch.