on the road itself, pink flowers or lavender or white; bright moss,
shrubs and trees in full bloom, and hovering over them birds of changing
hue and golden butterflies.
Towards evening came a storm of hail and snow, from which we took refuge
in a government bungalow, where none but officials have a right to
rest--but we stayed there all the same. The wind was quite a tornado,
sweeping the flowers before it, and the pink and yellow blossoms were
mingled with the snowflakes and the tender green leaves, scarcely
unfolded. Birds were carried past, helpless and screaming with terror.
We could hear the beasts in a stable close by bellowing and struggling;
and then, while the thunder never ceased, repeated by innumerable
echoes, darkness fell, opaque and terrific, slashed by the constant
flare of lightning, and the earth shook under the blast.
And then night, the real night, transparently blue and luminous with
stars, appeared above the last cloud that vanished with the last clap of
thunder. Unspeakable freshness and peace reigned over nature, and in the
limpid air the mountain-chains, the giant Himalayas, extended to
infinity in tones of amethyst and sapphire. Nearer to us, lights
sparkled out in the innumerable huts built even to the verge of the
eternal snows, on every spot of arable ground or half-starved grass
land.
In the evening calm, the silence, broken only by the yelling of the
jackals, weighed heavy on the spirit; and in spite of the twinkling
lights and the village at our feet, an oppressive sense of loneliness,
of aloofness and death, clutched me like a nightmare.
KOHAT
From Kusshalgar we were travelling in a tonga once more. The landscape
was all of steep hills without vegetation; stretches of sand, hills of
clay--lilac or rosy brick-earth scorched in the sun, green or brown
earth where there had been recent landslips, baked by the summer heat to
every shade of red. There was one hill higher than the rest, of a
velvety rose-colour with very gentle undulations, and then a river-bed
full of snowy-white sand, which was salt.
And from every stone, and in the rifts in the rocks, hung stalactites,
like glittering icicles, and these too were of salt.
There was always the same torture of the horses, too small and too lean
for their work, galloping the five miles of the stage and then stopping
dead on the spot, incapable of moving, hustled by the fresh team that
rushed off on its wild career.
At the end of the day one of the beasts could do no more. A shiver ran
through the limbs of the poor thing, which, as soon as it was released
from the shafts, lay down, a stream of blood staining the pale sand;
and in an instant, with a deep sigh, it was stiff in death.
The sun cast broad satin lights on its bay coat, already dry; the light
hoofs, the pretty head with dilated nostrils gave the creature
dignity--it looked like a thoroughbred, really noble in its last rest;
while the vultures and kites hovered round, waiting for us to be gone.
BUNNOO
A plain of dried mud, dull grey, with scarcely a tinge of yellow in
places; all round the horizon softly undulating hills which looked
transparent, here a tender blue, there delicately pink, in flower-like
hues. One of them, rising above all the eastern chain, might be a
fortress, its towers alone left standing amid the general wreck. To the
west the highest summits were lost in the blue of the sky, identically
the same, but that the peaks were faintly outlined with a delicate line
of snow.
As we reached Bunnoo green cornfields extended as far as the eye could
see, under mulberry trees just unfolding their leaves. Numberless
channels of water irrigated the land; the bed of the Kurrum alone,
quite white, was flecked here and there with blue pools, and was
presently lost in the rosy distance of the hills on the Afghan frontier.
The natives here were an even finer race than those at Peshawur, and
more uncultured, never bowing when we met them, but eyeing us as we
passed as if they were meditating some foul blow.
And in the evening at mess--a dinner given in honour of a regiment
marching through--news was brought in that close to Bunnoo, in the
Kurrum valley, two travellers had been murdered in the night.
The dinner-table was covered with flowers--Maréchal Niel and Gloire de
Dijon roses--but enormous, as big as saucers, and of such a texture,
such a colour! a tissue of frost and light; and round the table, which
was loaded with silver plate, were grey and red uniforms. Strains of
music were wafted in through the open windows from the regimental band
playing slow waltz-tunes a little way off.
As soon as dessert was removed two lieutenants got up, and seizing a
couple of drums played away with all their might, while some other
officers, under the pretext of dancing a Highland fling, cut the most
amazing capers. When the band had left the fun went on to the sound of
the banjo, lasting late into the cool night, all in the highest spirits.
When I went away home to the fort, where I was living with my friend
Lieutenant F----, the sentinel's challenge, the tall grey walls casting
sharp shadows on the courtyard silvered with moonlight, and another
sentry's cry; and still, in contrast with the cheerful evening, I could
remember nothing but the tonga post-horse--a thing so frequent in this
land of fanatics, so common that no one gives it more than a passing
thought.
Before daybreak, before the _réveillée_, the moollah's prayer roused the
Sikhs, of which two regiments were quartered in the fort; and till it
was broad daylight, till the sun had chased away shadows and sadness, I
still felt the melancholy, the twilight sense of uneasiness left by that
slow and plaintive chant.
In the afternoon the soldiers tilted on horseback, four on a side. They
tried to unhorse each other; two or three would attack one, succeeding
at last in rolling him off under his charger, while they in their turn
were attacked by others, ending in a _mêlée_, where the victors and the
vanquished left fragments of their thin shirts.
Then there were races of baggage-mules, and competitions of speed in
harnessing horses and in striking the tents. Finally the English
officers rode a race, and then the prizes were distributed--money to the
men and blue pugarees with gold thread to the native officers.
In the middle of the course was a stand, and there, with the officers
and civil functionaries, were four English ladies who had accompanied
their husbands to this remote station. They thought of their dress and
took care of their babies, living among these Sikhs whom the native
priests are perpetually inciting to rebellion, and seeming to have not
the least fear of danger.
When the road was made through Bunnoo a pile of stones was heaped up in
the middle of the village. The Moslems finally persuaded themselves that
this was a saint's grave; and they come hither to perform their
devotions, planting round it bamboo flagstaffs with pennons, and adding
to the mound the stones they piously bring to it day by day.
The heat to-day has suddenly become stifling; the low clouds veil the
colourless sun, and the flowers, which yesterday were still lovely, are
now withered and pallid, and only give out their scent in the evening,
when it is cool again.
Two more murders; one a squalid business with no motive--a man killed as
he was on his way to gather his rice-harvest. Sixteen hill-men attacked
him at once, riddling the body with bullets.
The other victim, the night watchman of a neighbouring village, was
suspected of treachery towards the hill-tribes in a recent skirmish. One
ball through the head had killed him, and his arms had been cut off.
At the polo-match in the evening the band played, and three ladies were
present; in sign of the spring having come, a basket was hung to the
branch of a tree, full of straw kept constantly wet by the coolies, and
containing sundry bottles of soda-water.
Next day was kept as the spring festival. Every man had a rose stuck
into his turban, and a shirt embroidered in gold on the shoulders and
breast. The women appeared in stiff and gaudy veil cloths, bedizened
with trumpery jewellery. Everybody was gay; a little excited towards
evening by arrack, and dancing, and singing to the eternal tom-toms.
Even the fiercest men from the hills, with black turbans and enormously
full calico trousers that once were white, and shirts embroidered in
bright silks, had set aside their ferocious looks and stuck roses in
their pugarees, smiling at those they met.
At mess there were two newly-arrived officers, come from Tochi; they had
been attacked on the road in the night by sixteen men. The driver and
the horse were killed; they themselves had not a scratch, and they told
the story very much at their ease, relating the comic features of the
incident--how a bullet had lodged itself in a pot hanging to a mule's
pack, and the frightened creature had kicked "like mad."
After sunset, in every garden, on every hedge, wherever there had been a
scrap of shade during the afternoon, there was a perfect burst of
flowers, opening in the cooler air and scenting the night. Round one
bungalow the rose trees, overloaded with flowers, hardly had a leaf, and
in the grass, violet and lavender larkspurs grew as tall as maize
plants. Yellow stars gleamed in the tangle of creepers over the
verandahs, and on a tree that looked as if it were dead blossoms
glistened in the moonlight like polished steel.
In the plain the sowars were performing an Indian fantasia. Charging at
a gallop, their wide sleeves flying behind them, they swept past like a
whirlwind, aiming with their lances at a peg of wood stuck into the
ground. Whenever it was speared there were frantic shouts and applause
from a crowd of spectators, packed in the best places. In a cloud of
dust, growing steadily thicker and hanging motionless over the riders,
the performance went on, its centre always this same peg of wood,
replaced again and again, exciting the enthusiasm of connoisseurs till
the last ray of light died away.
The natives, to keep their money safe--it is always in coin, never in
paper, which is not much trusted in these parts--either bury it or have
it wrought into trinkets, worn by the women and children. Quite little
ones of five or six, and perfectly naked, have round their neck
sometimes three or four strings of gold pieces, or pierced silver rods
as thick as a finger--and then one evening the child does not come home,
and in some dark corner the poor little body is found bleeding, the
jewels gone.
A Sikh, an old soldier, not long since bought a few acres of land; to
pay for it he produced 800 rupees in silver, and on his wives, whom he
brought with him, were 3000 rupees' worth of jewels.
A little study of manners, as related to me by my neighbour at dinner:--
A native judge is sitting cross-legged on a little mat in his house. A
petitioner appears of the lowest caste, a _Sudra_. The judge, quite
motionless, watches the man unfasten his sandals, rush up to him, and
with a profound bow touch his feet in sign of submission. For a man of
higher caste, a _Vaysiya_, the ceremonial is the same, only instead of
running forward the visitor walks up to the judge and merely pretends to
touch his slippers. Then comes a kshatriya advancing very slowly; the
judge rises to meet him half-way, and they both bow.
In the case of a Brahmin it is the judge who hurries to the threshold,
and affects to touch the priest's feet.
Colonel C---- went out shooting wild duck on a pool close to Bunnoo with
a native, whose horse, led by a servant, came after them. But when they
came to the native gentleman's village he mounted, and returned the
civility of the salaaming people, who till then had avoided recognizing
him, regarding the fact that a kshatriya had come on foot as sufficient
evidence that he wished to pass incognito. Then, when they were out of
the village, the native gentleman dismounted and walked on with the
colonel.
When a Sikh is beaten and surrenders he takes off his turban and lays it
at the conqueror's feet, to convey that with the turban he also offers
his head.
When a native comes to ask a favour he brings a few rupees in his hand,
and the patron must take them and hold them a few minutes. A retired
Sikh trooper had come to see his son, now a soldier in the regiment, and
met the colonel, who asked him whether he could do anything for him, to
which the other replied:
"Can you suppose I should have insulted you by coming here without
asking you some favour?"
The want of foresight in the people here is amazing. A servant earning
five rupees a month got his son married, a child of fifteen, and for
this event he bought fireworks on credit, and at enormous interest,
which would cost him three years' wages.
"How do you expect to pay?" asked his master, an officer.
"I shall pay as much as I can myself, and by-and-by my son will earn
money, and we shall pay between us."
The highest peak of the chain that overlooks Bunnoo looks like the ruins
of a fortress. A legend, which must have had its origin at some time
when a man-eating tiger lurked in the neighbourhood, relates that it is
the lair of a ferocious ogre always on the look-out for prey. Nothing on
earth would induce any of the natives to go up the mountain; nay, for a
long distance even the plain is not too safe.
All the men carry fighting quails in little cages made of a net
stretched over a wooden tray and cone-shaped at top. Towards evening, in
the shade of the houses, at the street corners, in the
courtyards--everywhere, there is a group betting on the chances of a
fight. The birds taken out of the cages at first turn slowly round each
other, their beaks close together. Then a spring, a flutter of wings and
flying feathers; the quails strike and peck, aiming at the head, and
then suddenly they seem quite indifferent and turn round and round
again, picking up grain from the ground. When a bird is killed at the
end of a battle, its eyes blinded and its breast torn open, it is
considered a fine, a noble spectacle, and amateurs will talk of it for a
long time. As a rule, after a few rounds one of the birds tries to get
away. Then its owner pricks its neck with a knife, and the gasping
creature dies slowly in the dust, the blood oozing drop by drop.
A very good quail that is often the victor, is worth eight or ten
rupees. At a funeral a day or two since one of the bearers had his quail
in a cage hanging from his girdle--a champion bird he would not part
from.
A man in the fort always struck out the hours on a gong, very slowly, in
the heat of the day. Twelve at noon was interminable--one, two, three
were so feeble as to be scarcely audible. And then when it was cooler
and the tom-toms could be heard in the distance, the strokes had a queer
dislocated rhythm, and sometimes even a stroke too many, smothered in a
hurried roll.
The sweepers, the saises, the bearers, the whole tribe of noisy, idle
servants--men, women, and children--all sleep out of doors in the hotter
weather. And all day long the camp-bed, the two mats, and half a dozen
pots, which constitute the whole furniture of a family, move round the
house with the shade, only settling down after dark.
The moon at night shed an intense light, warm and golden. There was
scarcely any shadow, and in the quivering atmosphere the flowers poured
out their perfume on the cooler air. Frogs croaked a _basso continuo_ to
cries of night birds, and a sort of roar, very loud but very distant,
almost drowned the concert in the fort close by.
White clouds grew opalescent against the deep, infinite, blue-velvet
sky, and their edges next the moon were fringed with silver. The stars,
of a luminous pale green like aqua marine, seemed dead and had no
twinkle.
Then, another day, the air was leaden, too heavy to breathe. The
mountains of the gem-like hues had lost their glory; they were of one
flat tone of dusky grey, and further away were lost to view, invisible
in the dead monotony of the colourless sky. The silence was oppressive;
there was not a bird in the air, and a strange uneasiness scared the
beasts, all seeking a shady refuge.
Music in the evening, in the gardens which surround the library, the
chapel, and the tennis courts. The ladies' dresses and the uniforms
were lustrous in the moonlight. First we had the regimental band, and
then songs to a banjo accompaniment; and all about us in the tall trees,
the minahs and parrots shrieking as if it were broad daylight, finished
the concert by themselves. A huge creeper, swaying between two branches,
hung like a curtain of yellow flowers embroidered, as it seemed, on the
airy tangle of leaves.
Gauze and muslin dresses moved gracefully about against the background
of bamboos and roses. Light footsteps scarcely bent the grass; the
ripple of talk, with its sprinkling of Indian words, was sweet and
musical. Fireflies whirled above the plants making little tendrils of
light; there was dreaminess in the air--an anticipation of fairyland to
which the music seemed the prelude.
And to and fro on the ramparts, the sentry, in an uniform of the same
hue as the sun-baked bricks, paced his beat, invisible but for a needle
of light on his fixed bayonet; till when crossing a patch of light he
was seen like an apparition, lost again in the shadow of the wall.
KOHAT
A station on the road--the delightful days at Bunnoo left far behind.
The night was spent in travelling: an oppressive night of crushing heat,
with leaden clouds on the very top of us; and next day, in the blazing
sunlight, nothing seemed to have any colour--everything was white and
hot against a blue-black sky that seemed low enough to rest on the
earth. Wayfarers slept under every tree, and in the villages every place
was shut, everything seemed dead. It was only where we changed horses
that we saw anyone--people who disappeared again immediately under
shelter from the sun.
Very early in the morning we met a many-coloured caravan of men, women,
and children riding astride on asses, amid baskets and bundles. They
were on their way to a wedding: they had stopped to rest for the last
time; and alone, far from the merry, noisy group, a "bad woman" sat down
on a stone. She was on the way to the same festival, and was allowed to
travel with the caravan for succour in case of need; but she was not
permitted to join the party.
Towards evening the sky turned to a dull, dark green, and in the sudden
gloom down came the rain in floods, tremendous, solid, for about five
minutes; then as suddenly it was as hot as ever again, dry and
overpowering.
Seen through the blue glass under the low, broad carapace that covered
the carriage, the landscape circled past, the colour hardly subdued to
that of Europe; even in the dusk, with the windows open, everything was
still intolerably, crudely white, with reflections of fiery gold.
Everything vibrated in the heat, and at the stations the walls after
baking all day scorched you when you went near.
About Lahore, all among the ruined temples, the crumbling heaps of light
red bricks sparkling with mica, there were fields of roses in blossom
and of ripe corn. Naked coolies were labouring in the fields, gathering
the ears one by one into quite small bunches; they looked like children
playing at harvesting.
DEHRA DOON
Amid the cool rush of a myriad streams is a garden, the loveliest in the
world; the broad paths are shaded by cedars, banyans, palms, and crotons
with purple and orange leaves. Under the garlands of gorgeous flowered
climbers are hedges of roses of every shade, and shrubs starred with
lavender and blue. In the ditches, above the water-plants strewn with
petals like hoar-frost, grows a carpet of pale lilac cineraria.
The horizon is the Himalaya range; the slopes are covered with the
ribbed velvet of the tea plantations, and on one hill stand the
scattered bungalows of Mussoree, looking no bigger than pebbles.
My friend Captain McT----, with whom I stayed, had a house with a
peaked, reed-thatched roof. Round the verandah where we slept at night
hung festoons of jasmine and bougainvillea. Bamboos, phoenix, and
curtains of creepers at the end of the lawn made a wall of verdure,
fresh and cool; and through this were wafted the perfumes shed on the
air--the scent of roses and verbena, of violet or of rosemary,
according to the side whence the wind blew, mingling with that of the
amaryllis and honeysuckle in bloom close at hand. And in this quiet
garden, far from the bazaar where the darboukhas were twanging, birds
sang all night, and the fireflies danced in mazes from flower to flower.
Captain McT----'s orderly appeared as soon as we stirred in the morning,
shouldering arms--the "arm" an umbrella which the authorities allow as a
privilege off duty to the Ghoorkhas, men from the high plateaux, who are
very sensitive to sunstroke, and who wear only a cap without a pugaree.
The umbrella solemnly resting against his right shoulder, this worthy
stood at attention, serious and motionless, and very upright--a quaint
figure, his age impossible to guess, with his Mongolian face, his little
slits of eyes, and his figure, in spite of his military squareness,
rather too pliant in the yellow khaki uniform.
We visited a temple where the natives treasure the couch of the Guru
Ram-Roy, a very holy and much venerated fakir.
Every year pilgrims set up the tallest tree from the neighbouring jungle
in front of the sanctuary, and twist round it an enormous red flag. The
mast now standing was at least a hundred feet high, and held in place by
guys attached to banyan trees and houses standing near. Close to the
ground ties of coloured worsted, the offerings of the faithful, held the
crimson hanging to the pole.
The front of the temple is covered with paintings. Decorations in the
Persian style divide the panels, on which are depicted the principal
scenes from the sacred books of the Brahmins. There are two perfect
things to be seen here: two nude female figures standing, one white, the
other brown, exquisitely refined in colouring, admirably drawn in a
style reminding me of early Italian art; and then, just beyond these,
tasteless imitations of chromos--goddesses with eyes too large and a
simper like the advertisements of tooth-paste, and some horrible
caricatures of English ladies in the fashion of ten years ago holding
parasols like a nimbus.
And certainly the most comical of all is the representation of a baboo
donor, to whom two servants, prostrate before him, are offering a glass
of water.
To the right of the forecourt is the high priest's room; lustres, glass
shades, gilt chairs, coloured photographs, incongruously surrounding an
antique silk carpet, soiled and stained.
At the end of the court, over which enormous bread-fruit trees cast a
cool shade, above some steps and a marble terrace where some musicians
were performing, stands the holy spot which we dared not go near. In the
dim light we could see a square object, red embroidered in gold--the
couch of Ram-Roy--and hanging to the wall a silver curtain. All this,
though perhaps it is but tinsel, looked at a distance and in the shadow
like brocade and magnificent jewels. Round the main building there are
four kiosks dedicated to the Guru's four wives.
The guardian fakirs who watch the sacred flag sat under a tree in front
of the temple. One of these, quite young, was beautiful beyond words. He
had taken a vow always to stand. Leaning on a long pole he rocked
himself without ceasing; for an instant he allowed his rapt eyes to rest
on the bystanders, and then looked up again at the plume of white
horse-hair that crowns the flagstaff. His legs were rather wide apart
and evidently stiff; he walked without bending his knees, and then as
soon as he stood still he rested his chin on his long cane, and swayed
his body as before.