A pitiful scene--A struggle to get to Chanden Sing--Brutally
treated--A torturing saddle--Across country at a gallop--A
spirited pony--Sand deposits and hills--Speculation--More
horsemen coming towards us.
JUST then I heard the voice of my servant Chanden Sing calling to me in a
weak agonised tone:
"_Hazur, Hazur, hum murgiaega!_" ("Sir, sir, I am dying!") and, turning
my head in the direction from which these painful sounds came, I
perceived my faithful bearer with his hands bound behind his back,
dragging himself on his stomach towards the door of one of the other
rooms of the mud-house. His poor face was hardly recognisable, it bore
the traces of such awful suffering.
I could stand no more. Pushing my guards aside with my shoulders, I
endeavoured to get to the poor wretch, and had nearly reached him when
the soldiers who stood by sprang upon me, grappling me, and lifting me
bodily off my feet. They threw me on the back of a pony.
Though I now feared the worst, I tried to encourage my brave servant by
shouting to him that I was being taken to Taklakot, and that he would be
brought after me the following day. He had exhausted his last atom of
strength in creeping to the door. He was roughly seized, and brutally
hurled back into the room of the mud-house, so that we could not exchange
a word more. Mansing, the coolie, was placed, with his arms pinioned, on
a bare-backed pony. The saddle of the pony I had been thrown upon is
worthy of description. It was in reality the wooden frame of a very
high-backed saddle, from the back of which some five or six sharp iron
spikes stuck out horizontally. As I sat on this implement of torture, the
spikes caught me in the small of my back.
My guard having been augmented by twenty or thirty mounted men with
muskets and swords, we set off at a furious pace. A horseman riding in
front of me led my pony by means of a cord, as my hands were manacled
behind my back; and thus we travelled across country for miles.
[Illustration: "SIR, SIR, I AM DYING"]
But for those awful spikes in the saddle, the ride would not have been so
very bad, for the pony I rode was a fine spirited animal, and the country
around was curious and interesting. We proceeded along an apparently
endless succession of yellow sandhills, some of them as high as two or
three hundred feet, others not more than twenty or thirty. The sand
seemed to have been deposited more by wind than by water, though it is
also possible that the whole basin, not very high above the level of the
huge stream, may at some time have been altogether under water. The whole
space between the mountain-range to the North of the Brahmaputra and the
river itself was covered with these sand mounds, except in certain places
where the soil was extremely marshy, and where our ponies sank in deep
soft mud. We splashed across several rivulets and skirted a number of
ponds. From the summit of a hill to which they led me, I could see that
the hills were of much greater circumference and height near the river
edge, becoming smaller and smaller as they approached the mountain-range
to the North. Moreover, they increased in number and size the farther we
went in an easterly direction.
[Illustration: SPIKED SADDLE]
The circumstances under which I was now travelling did not permit me to
ascertain the quality of the sand, or make any accurate investigations as
to where the sand came from, but a glance at the country all round made
me feel sure that the sand had been conveyed there from the South. This
one could plainly see from depressions and wavelike undulations, showing
that it had travelled (roughly) in a northerly direction; and although,
having been unable to ascertain this for a fact, I do not wish to be too
certain with regard to the movements and sources of these sand deposits,
I was pretty firmly convinced that the sand had been deposited there by
the wind, which had carried it over the Himahlyan chain from the plains
of India.
My guard scoured the country from the high point of vantage to which we
had ascended. Away in the distance to the East, we saw a large number of
horsemen raising clouds of dust; and, riding down the hill, the ponies
sinking in the soft sand, we set off in the direction of the new comers,
the surface at the bottom of the hill being more compact and harder.