The Saint Paul globe. (St. Paul, Minn.) 1896-1905, 1904-03-06
Wonderful Mountain City
at Thibet's Gate

IL Only twenty-one hours ago we were swell
tering in Calcutta. Only fifteen hours ago
we were grinding through the hot red land, and
3 crossing the burning Ganges.
And now we climb to Darjeeling-out of the
land of sand and immense sad rivers and palms, into
the land of northern roses and fir trees and rho
dodendrons.
It is wonderful to flee from the overwhelm-
ing throb and thinner of Calcutta and find ones
self over night facing the pure white gateway
into secret Thibet-to feel cold wnds blowing from
thousand miles of virgin mountain-to folk
dressed in heavy stuffs and furs when yesterday
pushed through bronzed figures shining with the
heat under their gauzy, transparent silks.
1t is good to escape for a space from the crying
city-Cacutta, the sleeping, where the
from the seven seas meet the men from the sealed
Jungle and the forbidden hills; where all the races
of earth, the eldest and the youngest, minge for
space, learn from each other versions of the
original stories of the world and part again,
Z each a mystery as before to the other
1t is a magic flight with the North Bengal States
Railway as the enchanted carpet-the new magic
of the Occdent dartng through the home of the old
+ magic of the Orient.
Scarcely has the train reached the open plain and
begun speed by the little stations with the names
I of Kipling-L Land them before the traveller ea-
1 periences that feeling which experiences no.
where else the gobe-the feeling of being among
mortality counted by the million Even on stretches
I OF road where only few natives are in sight the
z ponderous presence throughout the hot land of null
i titudes is heavy The very earth seems to
breathe forth the breath of living perspring patient
humanity The pulses of the millions fill the very
I air. The minutes pregnant with their passing
lives.
Almost due north point the rails through the sun
glare and the dust And presently one hundred
? in The duCl, broo co1,,,
flows the line of flight-the Ganges tremend.
Gus with its ages of worship. Up and down the
stream sounds the echoing scream as the steam train
greetS the steam ferry; it startes tall thin Hindus
who are dipping up the holy water that their an
cestors drank two thousand years ago as they do
r now, with hardly form or an emotion changed
since then in the land-and they look up with fiery
# eyes at the screaming thing that was invented less
than two centuries ago and is conquering their land
and overwhelming the old traditions that twenty
centuries of and craft and ambition and intrigue
have not been able to alter an iota.
Y From the windows the traveller may see croco-
dies botchng the sandy shadows that peer from the
wide water. He may see a corpse or two floating
placldy down the river toward the mighty Brah1ra-
pootra-foating downward unheeded, as the dead
have foated down the Ganges from the dim past
the ancient careless, wanton tribute that an aged
land has paid increasingly from its overcrowded
life
81 At every station squats the material for the
Ganges tribute-the little children like perfect
bronzes, swift to place the backs of their hands to
their foreheads with "Saaam, Sahb' the adults,
leanshanked, with ribs showing like those of grey
IA hounds; and ALL young and DID, squatting patient
with deep eyes staring, they have squatted ever
since history began, for cholera and famine to stoop
to them as regularly the changing seasons stoop
to us.
But now all the rivers that in the night are
flowing due south; from the lands of feudal kings
the mountains of the SHOWS, the land of the Hima-
laya
Y The weary eyes of the Anglo-Indans begin to
brighten; the pale faces of the begin to
color. The life-givng air of the highlands of Six
kim and Nepal is stealing into the train and every
revolution of the wheels makes its breath stronger
and clearer
\ All through the breathless Indian night it grows,
enlarges, sparles; the yellow dawn shines on dews
and at O'Clock the train unoads shiverng passen-
gers in chilly land, to transfer the little two
foot wide mountain road that is to climb to the end
of Indian civilization and the beginning of the vast
Mongoan world-Darjeeling the place of the hang
ing mountains.
II There are other things, too to see in Darjeeling;
anywhere else these other things would be con
sidered worth long trip to see; but Darjeeling
has sight that is SO great, entrancing so over
powering that it leaves for lesser things to
make impression.
4 Over Darjeeng, suspended in the very sky above
it, floating far up in the air. the peaks of the
Himalayas-ffty seventy-fve, hundred miles away
by chart, yet hanging above cloud and mist before
te eyes of the beholder in this little mountain vii
Blage on the edge of Nepal