Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1904-04-23
A MOST FAVORED SPOT
Favorite Resort Of the Citizens
Of India.
FEW OFFICIALS SEEN
LONG AND WINDING RIDE UP
THE MOUNTAIN SIDE.
A City of Hotels, Hospitals and Board
ing Houses-Seeing tho
Sun Rise.
BY WILLIAM E. CURTIS.

BY WILLIAM E. CURTIS.
Special Correspondence Of The Evening Star and
Chicago Record Herald
DARJEELING, India. March %, 1904.
This is one of the most favored spots on
earth, the loveliest place in India, and the
favorite resort and sanitarium of the citizen
element as distinguished from military and
official circles. 1t Is a hard journey, both
going and coming, and traveller gets I'M
patient when he finds that 1t takes him from
o'clock in the afternoon of one day until
nearly 2 O'Clock of the next to make
journey of 246 miles. He leaves Calcutta
with the thinnest clothing he can buy, but
when he arrives here he is glad that ne
brought his overcoat and gloves, and pulls
a second blanket over himself at night. At
the same time 1t is not so cold In DarjeelinS
as one would expect from the altitude OF
400 feet above the sea, and the latitude,
which is about n degrees 80 minutes. You
travel from O'Clock till upon railway
of ordinary gauge, cross the Ganges on
steamboat for an hour, taking your dinner
while ahoat; change into a three-foot gauge
train until 4:3O in the morning, when you
are routed out, given cup or conee ana
q roll, and transferred to a baby carriage on
wheels which crawls up the foothills OF the
Railway UP the Mountain.
The track Is only two-foot gauge, with
forty-pound rails which have been laid upon
the ancient highway over which the cara
vans between China and India have passed
for thirty centuries. 1t winds in and out OF
gorges and defiles. and at several points the
engineers have had to cut foothold FOR II
on the edges Of tremendous precipices. II
doubles on itself repeatedly, describes the
letter and the letter q and the hgure o.
and zgZags about so recklessly that the en-
gineer puts his locomotive first at one emo
Of the train and then at the other. Engllsn-
men who write books on India assert that
it is the grandest railway journey In the
world but we can show them several quite
as picturesque and attractive in our own be-
loved Rocky mountains. The only advan-
tage they have over us here Is the superior
height of the mountains and the superior
size of the trees. But you must remember
that our country Is young yet, and India Is
one Of the oldest nations in the world.
The first few miles Of track lie in dense
Jungle with vegetation Of truly tropical lux
uriance. Cane stalks grow nifty and sixty
feet high. The grass Is fifteen feet Deep and
beautiful bamboo trees, whose foliage is as
fine as feathers, and palms which have
plumage like peacock and a bird of para
disc lift their proud and naughty heads
above an impenetrable growth which, the
guides tell US, is the home of tigers, rhi-
nocer1 panthers, bears wild hogs, bunaloes,
deer and all sorts of beasts, and snakes as
Zig around as barrel Fern trees are love-
ly, and are found here in their greatest
glory, but nevertheless we have foliage at
ZONE, and they are no more beautiful than
our elms, oaks and other trees that might
mention.
Social Rank of Tea Planters.
This ia a great tea country, and the noun
tain sides have been cleared In many places
for plantations. A tea planter in India is a
heavy swell. He may be no more brilliant
or intellectual or virtuous or handsome, but
the fact that he grows tea instead of pota-
toes or wheat or sugar gives him higher
standing in the social scale. was asking
an explanation of this phenomenon from
very wise man the other day, and although
he insisted that his attention had never been
called to it before he was willing to ad-
NIT that it was SO, and he explained it on
the theory that SO many sons of dukes and
earls and lords and the swagger set in Eng
land had come to India to engage In tea
growing that they haG created a caste of
their own, so that whenever man said he
was tea planter the public Immediately
assumed that his father belonged to the no.
bility and treated him accordingly.
The tea planters usually live in good style.
They have beautiful bungalows, gardens
lawns and groves, and although they COM
plain of the depression in the industry, there
is no evidence that they suffer for the want
of the necessities of life. In this immediate
district are about two hundred large planta-
tons, employing from one to two thousand
laborers each, and producing about 12OOO,-
600 pounds a year. Most of the product is
shipped 10 England.
They carry you up the mountains in tiny
little cars seating six people and open all
around so that the passengers can take in
all there is to see, and they have plenty of
scenery. The trains are not allowed to run
faster than six miles an hour as precau-
ton against accidents, which allows plenty
Of time to look about, and they twist
around SO that you can see things from
various points of view. And If a passenger
gets impatient or Is in a hurry he can jump
out Of the car and walk ahead.
View From Darjeeling.
There IL little doubt that the views from
Darjeeling include the most majestic as
semblage OF mountains on the earth's sur
face. For a distance of 200 miles east and
west there arise a succession of peaks not
less than 1900 feet high, and several of
them more than $4,000 In the immediate
vicinity and within sight are the highest
mountains in the world Everest, the king
of mountains, which measures % 200 feet
10 only eighty miles distant; Kinchinjunga,
which is forty-five mics distant is 2S l56
feet high, and also, in the immediate yicin-
ity are the following:
Janu. ........... 25,304 Kabru 2401b
Chumalari $500. 3.943 Pauhanri, ..., 23 1S6
Denkis. 28.176 Baudim. ........ 22O17
Narsingh q, lag Kanhenjhan...... q, 500
Cnoma1no Z3,3W
Between these mountain peaks 10 an al
At