The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1904-03-06

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them.
L. Only twenty-one hours ago swell
tering in Calcutta. Only fifteen hours ago
we were grinding through the hot red land, and
crossing the burning Gauges
And now we climb to Darjeeling-out of the
land of sand and immense sad rivers and palms. into
the land of northern and FIR trees and rho
dodendrons
1t 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 Thbet-to feel cold winGs blowing from
a 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 space from the crying
city-Calcutta, the sleeping, where the
from the seven seas meet the from the sealed
jungle and the forbidden hills where all the
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,
each mystery before the other.
1t is magic flight with the North Bengal States
Railway the enchanted carpet-the magic
of the Occident dartng through the home of the old
magic of the Orient.
Scarcely has the train reached the open plain and
begun to speed by the little stations with the names
of Kipling-Land on them before the traveller ex-
where else on the gobe-the feeling of being among
mortality counted by the million. Even on stretches
of road where only few natives in sight, the
ponderous presence throughout the hot land of null
ttudes is heavy The very earth seems to
breathe forth the breath of living perspiring patient
humanity. The pulses of the millions fill the very
air. The minutes are pregnant with their passing
lives.
Almost due north point the rails through the sum
OIL nd And
miles gone and in the dusk broad calm river
flows across the line of fght-the Gauges tremend-
GUS with Its ages OF worship. Up and down the
stream sounds the echong as the steam train
greets the steam ferry; it startles tall thin Hindus
who dipping up the holy water that their an
4 cestors drank two thousand years ago as they do
now, with hardly a 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
From the windows the traveller may see croco-
des blotchng the sandy shadows that peer from the
wide water He may see corpse floating
pacdly down the river toward the mighty Brahma-
pootra-foating downward unheeded as the dead
have foated down the Gauges from the dim past
the ancient careless, tribute that an aged
land mas paid increasingly from It's overcrowded
life
At every station squats the raw material for the
Ganges tribute-the little children like perfect
bronzes, swift place the backs of their hands TO
their foreheads with "Salaam, Sahib;" the adults
shanked with ribs showing like those of grew
hounds; and all, young and old, squattng 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
But all the rivers that see in the night are
flowing due south; from the lands of feuda kings
the mountains of the SHOWS the land of the Hima
laya.
The weary eyes of the Ango-Indians begin to
brighten; the pale faces OF the women begin to
color The life-giving air of the highlands of Six
kim and Nepa is stealing into the train and every
revolution of the wheels makes its breath stronger
and clearer
All through the breatheSs Indian night it grows
enarges, sparkles; the yellow dawn shines on dews;
and o o'clock the train unloads shivering passen-
gers in chilly land, transfer to the little two
foot wide mountain road that is to climb the end
of Indian civilization and the beginning of the vast
Monaghan Notwithstanding, the place of the hang
ing mountains.
There are other things, too, to see iii Darjeeling
anywhere else these other things would be CON
sidered as worth long trip see; but Darjeeling
has sight that is so great enhancing SO over
towering that il leaves for lesser things to
make impression.
Over Darjeeling, suspended in the very sky above
it, floating far up in the air, the peaks of the
Himalayas-hfty, seventy-hve, hundred miles away
by chart, yet hanging above cloud and mist before
the eyes of the behoder in this little mountain vii
lage on the edge of Nepa