The daily morning journal and courier., 1896-05-16
UP THE HIM4HAYAS BY RAIL.
Story of Remarkable Railway Journey
 in India.
lFrom tho RaItlmore sur

| (From tho Baltimore Sun.l
 After spending some days sightseeing about Calcutta and after witnessing a fine display of the Indian tactics at brilliant military tournament, it was with pleasure that we boarded a coach on the East Bengal railway and, cross ing the Ganges at Damookdea, resumed our journey by the North Bengal State railway until we reached Siliguri, where the Himalayan railway was taken, which has gauge of only two feet and which is the most wonderful piece of engineering in the world, not excepting the railway up the Pilatus, near Lucerne Switzerland, or the one running up Mount Washington, in New Hampshire The locomotives are stur- dy little engines weighing ten tons. Each open carriage holds six in com fortable arm chairs, and the railway is a light tram, the rail weighing about forty pounds a yard The four wheeled bogies wind in and out along the hillsides, running at times exciting ly near the edge of tremendous gorges and precipices, assuming the shape of the letter S for two-t thirds of the jour- ney, At one place the train crosses a bridge, which a moment after it runs under, and rising again the line makes a complete figure s.
 On this toy railway you are now passing through dense primeval for ests, now you look out upon dark green tea gardens that spread for miles along the slopes of the mountains mo- ment afterwards you are looking thou sands of feet below you upon the vast fertile plain of Bengal the meandering rivers rolling through it, flashing like molten silver in the sunlight, and fur ther on, as the train commences to make the sleeper ascent, you are car ried through jungles of cane fifty or sixty feet high, grasses that shoot their blades fifteen feet, and seedstalks twenty-five feet from the ground, with great featlrery tops.
 As the ascent is made it is interesting to notice how the vegetation changes. For the first three thousand feet oaks, banyans, mimosas, acacias, fig, India rubber and the giant bamboo, sixty feet high, with stalks as thick as a mans thigh, are seen in every bend of the serpentine road. About four thou sand feet above the plain the spraying | chestnut and the blooming almond and mango trees come in sight, and now you come into wilderness of graceful Himalayan tree ferns from fifteen to twenty-five feet high,
 The attention is now divided between the natural scenery, which is becoming transcendently grand, and the new types of people that gaze from the doors of their dirt shanties or lie about smoking iron pots hanging over the fire by tripods, quite in gipsy style, partak- ing of their midday meal By the dress, physiognomy and figure three nationalities could be easily distin- guished-the people from Thibet, Nepal and Cashmere, which countries are separated from this part of northern India by the Himalayan mountains. The men were all armed with long swordlike knives, which they carry in the belts which support their single garments. The women, with their bril- liant costume and more brilliant ear, nose and toe rings, are more attractive looking than their southern sisters. and the children, they wear no artificial adornment except rings about their ears, noses and ankles.
 The wild country through which We passed abounds in ferocious animals, and our talkative conductor has just | given us a description of a great Ben gal tiger that was seen by him yester day lying near the railroad track, which as the train approached leisurely arose, quietly gave parting glance at the noisy engine and disappeared in the thick jungles.
 When the ascension is very steep and the curves are sharp we can see from our coach, near the rear, two natives sitting on the cow-catcher sprinkling sand on the rails to prevent the busy little wheels from slipping, and while passing over the many horseshoe turns about the cliffs we frequently find our selves exactly opposite the scarlet-tur- | baned man at the throttle of the en- zine.
 We wind in and out, around and about up and down, and as our snake twisting train passes the white board that marks seven thousand feet above the sea level, the puffing little machine at the front, which has fought bravely and can claim noble victory sends forth a shout of triumph. Sweeping | around a sudden turn, we see the hun- dreds of white houses of Darjeeling | perched upon the sides of the Himalay- as as if they had been dumped from the floating sheets of clouds above, and, lifted far over tier after tier of | moving sky vapors, which hide from 1 view over twenty thousand feet of the l range, the sunlit, snow-covered Kin 1 chiniunga stands forth like the pearl I white palace of the king of kings in the l heaven of heavens.
 l Words seem quite inadequate to de- scribe the stupendous magnifcence of | the view as we entered Darjeeling, | which signifies up in the clouds" It | is located at the end of a long wooded | spur of Sinchul, a mountain about l nine thousand feet high, and from the | peak near my hotel the eye sweeps over l a perfect amphitheater, resting in turn | upon the snow summits of Janu, 26,300 | feet above Calcutta; kabur, 4,000; Pandim, 22, 900: Chomiamo, 24600, and | then a succession of unnamed moun- tains which lead on to Donkhia, 26,00O, and towering above all of them, whose | irregular snow roofs can alone be seen, is the Kinchinjunga, which is more 1 than twenty-eight thousand feet in i baierbt Tn tho valleys of these rno1ID-