There are two times in a man's life when he should not speculate: when he
can't afford it, and when he can.
--Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
On Monday and Tuesday at sunrise we again had fair-to-middling views of
the stupendous mountains; then, being well cooled off and refreshed, we
were ready to chance the weather of the lower world once more.
We traveled up hill by the regular train five miles to the summit, then
changed to a little canvas-canopied hand-car for the 35-mile descent. It
was the size of a sleigh, it had six seats and was so low that it seemed
to rest on the ground. It had no engine or other propelling power, and
needed none to help it fly down those steep inclines. It only needed a
strong brake, to modify its flight, and it had that. There was a story
of a disastrous trip made down the mountain once in this little car by
the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal, when the car jumped the track and
threw its passengers over a precipice. It was not true, but the story
had value for me, for it made me nervous, and nervousness wakes a person
up and makes him alive and alert, and heightens the thrill of a new and
doubtful experience. The car could really jump the track, of course; a
pebble on the track, placed there by either accident or malice, at a
sharp curve where one might strike it before the eye could discover it,
could derail the car and fling it down into India; and the fact that the
lieutenant-governor had escaped was no proof that I would have the same
luck. And standing there, looking down upon the Indian Empire from the
airy altitude of 7,000 feet, it seemed unpleasantly far, dangerously far,
to be flung from a handcar.
But after all, there was but small danger-for me. What there was, was
for Mr. Pugh, inspector of a division of the Indian police, in whose
company and protection we had come from Calcutta. He had seen long
service as an artillery officer, was less nervous than I was, and so he
was to go ahead of us in a pilot hand-car, with a Ghurka and another
native; and the plan was that when we should see his car jump over a
precipice we must put on our break [sp.] and send for another pilot.
It was a good arrangement. Also Mr. Barnard, chief engineer of the
mountain-division of the road, was to take personal charge of our car,
and he had been down the mountain in it many a time.
Everything looked safe. Indeed, there was but one questionable detail
left: the regular train was to follow us as soon as we should start, and
it might run over us. Privately, I thought it would.
The road fell sharply down in front of us and went corkscrewing in and
out around the crags and precipices, down, down, forever down, suggesting
nothing so exactly or so uncomfortably as a croaked toboggan slide with
no end to it. Mr. Pugh waved his flag and started, like an arrow from a
bow, and before I could get out of the car we were gone too. I had
previously had but one sensation like the shock of that departure, and
that was the gaspy shock that took my breath away the first time that I
was discharged from the summit of a toboggan slide. But in both
instances the sensation was pleasurable--intensely so; it was a sudden
and immense exaltation, a mixed ecstasy of deadly fright and unimaginable
joy. I believe that this combination makes the perfection of human
delight.
The pilot car's flight down the mountain suggested the swoop of a swallow
that is skimming the ground, so swiftly and smoothly and gracefully it
swept down the long straight reaches and soared in and out of the bends
and around the corners. We raced after it, and seemed to flash by the
capes and crags with the speed of light; and now and then we almost
overtook it--and had hopes; but it was only playing with us; when we got
near, it released its brake, make a spring around a corner, and the next
time it spun into view, a few seconds later, it looked as small as a
wheelbarrow, it was so far away. We played with the train in the same
way. We often got out to gather flowers or sit on a precipice and look
at the scenery, then presently we would hear a dull and growing roar, and
the long coils of the train would come into sight behind and above us;
but we did not need to start till the locomotive was close down upon us
--then we soon left it far behind. It had to stop at every station,
therefore it was not an embarrassment to us. Our brake was a good piece
of machinery; it could bring the car to a standstill on a slope as steep
as a house-roof.
The scenery was grand and varied and beautiful, and there was no hurry;
we could always stop and examine it. There was abundance of time. We
did not need to hamper the train; if it wanted the road, we could switch
off and let it go by, then overtake it and pass it later. We stopped at
one place to see the Gladstone Cliff, a great crag which the ages and the
weather have sculptured into a recognizable portrait of the venerable
statesman. Mr. Gladstone is a stockholder in the road, and Nature began
this portrait ten thousand years ago, with the idea of having the
compliment ready in time for the event.
We saw a banyan tree which sent down supporting stems from branches which
were sixty feet above the ground. That is, I suppose it was a banyan;
its bark resembled that of the great banyan in the botanical gardens at
Calcutta, that spider-legged thing with its wilderness of vegetable
columns. And there were frequent glimpses of a totally leafless tree
upon whose innumerable twigs and branches a cloud of crimson butterflies
had lighted--apparently. In fact these brilliant red butterflies were
flowers, but the illusion was good. Afterward in South Africa, I saw
another splendid effect made by red flowers. This flower was probably
called the torch-plant--should have been so named, anyway. It had a
slender stem several feet high, and from its top stood up a single tongue
of flame, an intensely red flower of the size and shape of a small
corn-cob. The stems stood three or four feet apart all over a great
hill-slope that was a mile long, and make one think of what the Place
de la Concorde would be if its myriad lights were red instead of white
and yellow.
A few miles down the mountain we stopped half an hour to see a Thibetan
dramatic performance. It was in the open air on the hillside. The
audience was composed of Thibetans, Ghurkas, and other unusual people.
The costumes of the actors were in the last degree outlandish, and the
performance was in keeping with the clothes. To an accompaniment of
barbarous noises the actors stepped out one after another and began to
spin around with immense swiftness and vigor and violence, chanting the
while, and soon the whole troupe would be spinning and chanting and
raising the dust. They were performing an ancient and celebrated
historical play, and a Chinaman explained it to me in pidjin English as
it went along. The play was obscure enough without the explanation; with
the explanation added, it was (opake). As a drama this ancient
historical work of art was defective, I thought, but as a wild and
barbarous spectacle the representation was beyond criticism.
Far down the mountain we got out to look at a piece of remarkable
loop-engineering--a spiral where the road curves upon itself with such
abruptness that when the regular train came down and entered the loop, we
stood over it and saw the locomotive disappear under our bridge, then in
a few moments appear again, chasing its own tail; and we saw it gain on
it, overtake it, draw ahead past the rear cars, and run a race with that
end of the train. It was like a snake swallowing itself.
Half-way down the mountain we stopped about an hour at Mr. Barnard's
house for refreshments, and while we were sitting on the veranda looking
at the distant panorama of hills through a gap in the forest, we came
very near seeing a leopard kill a calf.--[It killed it the day before.]
--It is a wild place and lovely. From the woods all about came the songs
of birds,--among them the contributions of a couple of birds which I was
not then acquainted with: the brain-fever bird and the coppersmith. The
song of the brain-fever demon starts on a low but steadily rising key,
and is a spiral twist which augments in intensity and severity with each
added spiral, growing sharper and sharper, and more and more painful,
more and more agonizing, more and more maddening, intolerable,
unendurable, as it bores deeper and deeper and deeper into the listener's
brain, until at last the brain fever comes as a relief and the man dies.
I am bringing some of these birds home to America. They will be a great
curiosity there, and it is believed that in our climate they will
multiply like rabbits.
The coppersmith bird's note at a certain distance away has the ring of a
sledge on granite; at a certain other distance the hammering has a more
metallic ring, and you might think that the bird was mending a copper
kettle; at another distance it has a more woodeny thump, but it is a
thump that is full of energy, and sounds just like starting a bung. So
he is a hard bird to name with a single name; he is a stone-breaker,
coppersmith, and bung-starter, and even then he is not completely named,
for when he is close by you find that there is a soft, deep, melodious
quality in his thump, and for that no satisfying name occurs to you. You
will not mind his other notes, but when he camps near enough for you to
hear that one, you presently find that his measured and monotonous
repetition of it is beginning to disturb you; next it will weary you,
soon it will distress you, and before long each thump will hurt your
head; if this goes on, you will lose your mind with the pain and misery
of it, and go crazy. I am bringing some of these birds home to America.
There is nothing like them there. They will be a great surprise, and it
is said that in a climate like ours they will surpass expectation for
fecundity.
I am bringing some nightingales, too, and some cue-owls. I got them in
Italy. The song of the nightingale is the deadliest known to
ornithology. That demoniacal shriek can kill at thirty yards. The note
of the cue-owl is infinitely soft and sweet--soft and sweet as the
whisper of a flute. But penetrating--oh, beyond belief; it can bore
through boiler-iron. It is a lingering note, and comes in triplets, on
the one unchanging key: hoo-o-o, hoo-o-o, hoo-o-o; then a silence of
fifteen seconds, then the triplet again; and so on, all night. At first
it is divine; then less so; then trying; then distressing; then
excruciating; then agonizing, and at the end of two hours the listener is
a maniac.
And so, presently we took to the hand-car and went flying down the
mountain again; flying and stopping, flying and stopping, till at last we
were in the plain once more and stowed for Calcutta in the regular train.
That was the most enjoyable day I have spent in the earth. For rousing,
tingling, rapturous pleasure there is no holiday trip that approaches the
bird-flight down the Himalayas in a hand-car. It has no fault, no
blemish, no lack, except that there are only thirty-five miles of it
instead of five hundred.