LIFE ON OUTPOST
The daily routine--Drill in the Indian Army--Hindustani--A
lingua franca--The divers tongues of India--The sepoys'
lodging--Their ablutions--An Indian's fare--An Indian
regiment--Rajput customs--The hospital--The doctor at
work--Queer patients--A vicious bear--The Officers'
Mess--Plain diet--Water--The simple life--A bachelor's
establishment--A faithful Indian--Fighting the
trusts--Transport in the hills--My bungalow--Amusements
in Buxa--Dull days--Asirgarh--A lonely
outpost--Poisoning a General--A storied
fortress--Soldier ghosts--A spectral officer--The
tragedy of isolation--A daring panther--A day on an
elephant--Sport in the jungle--_Gooral_ stalking in the
hills--Strange pets--A friendly deer--A terrified
visitor--A walking menagerie--Elephants tame and
wild--Their training--Their caution--Their rate of
speed--Fondness for water--Quickly reconciled to
captivity--Snakes--A narrow escape--A king-cobra; the
hamadryad--Hindu worship of the cobra--General Sir
Hamilton Bower--An adventurous career--E. F.
Knight--The General's inspection.
"Why, soldiers, why should we be melancholy, boys,
Whose business 'tis to die?"
With the easy philosophy of the soldier we three officers settled down
rapidly in our new surroundings--new at least to my subaltern Creagh and
me. Life was a little monotonous; but we did not grumble more than the
Briton considers is his right. Our daily existence did not vary much.
Before the sun had risen above the Picquet Towers, my white-robed
Mohammedan servant woke me to the labours of the day, as the bugles in
the fort were sounding the "dress for parade." Moving noiselessly about
the room on bare feet he placed on a small table beside my camp bed, the
_chota hazri_ or "little breakfast," the light refreshment of tea,
toast, and fruit with which the good Anglo-Indian begins the morning.
The bad one prefers whisky-and-soda. Then my servitor laid out for me
the dull khaki uniform which in India, except on occasions of ceremony,
replaces the gayer garb of the soldier in England.
Morning and afternoon we drilled our men, watched them at musketry on
the rifle-range, or practised them in mountain warfare up the steep
slopes.
We found it difficult to manoeuvre off the parade ground, as the hills
around were mostly covered with such tangled jungle that one had to hack
a passage through it with a _kukri_ or a _dah_.[1] The drill of the
Indian Army is precisely the same as for British troops. The words of
command are invariably given in English, while only the explanations of
movements are made in the vernacular. Thus in action an officer ignorant
of Hindustani could take command of a native regiment in a crisis when
all its white officers had been killed. Hindustani is a lingua franca
invented in India by the Mohammedan armies of invasion from the north
for intercourse with the peoples of the many conquered States. It is
really a camp language made up of Sanscrit, Persian, Hindi and many
other tongues. Even some military words, such as "_cartouche_,"
"_tambour_," have been borrowed from the French, owing to so many French
adventurers having taken service in the armies of native princes in past
times. Nowadays the English terms for military things or new inventions
are adopted as they stand. Hindustani or Urdu is by no means
universally understood in India, though most Mohammedans throughout the
Peninsula have some knowledge of it; for nearly every race has its own
separate language or dialect and there are probably a hundred and fifty
different tongues spoken in our Indian Empire. Urdu, however, is a _sine
qua non_ for the British officer of the native army; and he has to pass
at least two examinations, the Lower and the Higher Standard, in it. But
in addition he must also qualify in the particular language spoken by
the majority of men in his regiment. A subaltern in a Gurkha regiment,
for instance, must pass in Gurkhali, in a Mahratta regiment in Mahratti;
and so on.
After morning parade I held orderly room, disposed of any
prisoners--rare things in the Indian Army--and took reports from the
native officers commanding the companies. Then I went to my office
where, such is the amount of accounts and correspondence in the Service,
I found at least two hours' work. Then I visited the hospital and went
on to inspect the lines, as the barracks of native troops are called.
The Indian sepoy is not luxuriously lodged. The barrack-rooms in Buxa,
better and more substantial than in most places, were single-storied
stone buildings roughly paved and furnished only with the men's
belongings; for Government does not even provide them with beds. So each
of my sepoys had fitted himself out with a _charpoy_ or native cot, a
four-legged wooden bedstead with a string network bottom which makes a
comfortable couch. On this lay his _dhurri_ or carpet, and his blankets.
Overhead on a rough shelf stood his canvas kit-bag containing his
clothing, while on pegs hung his belt, bayonet, and _puggri_ or turban.
Such luxuries as basins and baths are unknown to the sepoy. He strips to
his waist-cloth and even in the coldest weather washes himself under a
stand-pipe or pours water over his body from his _lotah_ or small brass
vessel which he always carries to drink from or use for his ablutions.
In personal cleanliness most Indian races are surpassed only by the
Japanese; and my men were either Mohammedans or Rajputs whose religions
enjoin frequent ablutions.
From the barrack-rooms I passed on to the sepoys' cooking-places. In the
Indian Army rations in peace-time are not provided for the men; but,
instead, they are given a certain allowance of money above their pay
known as "compensation for dearness of provisions." This helps them to
purchase their food, which consists in general of _chupatties_ or cakes
of flour and water, supplemented by _ghee_ or clarified butter, various
grain-stuffs, curry and sometimes a little meat. Many races eat rice
instead of flour. Their method of cooking is primitive. A hole scratched
in the ground and a couple of stones make the _chula_ or fireplace, in
which burn a few bits of wood or a handful of dry twigs. The sepoy mixes
his _atta_, or flour, into a paste with a little water in a large brass
dish, rolls it into balls and flattens them out into thin cakes on a
convex iron plate over the fire, the result being something like crisp,
thick pancakes. Having made a pile of these he grinds between stones
various spices, such as turmeric, chillies, onions and poppy seed,
moistened with water to make his curry, adds some cooked vegetables or a
raw onion, and his simple meal is ready.
Among Hindus, men of different castes cook and eat apart. A Brahmin must
have his separate fireplace, prepare his own food and eat alone. Other
castes are not so particular and can employ cooks. In an Indian regiment
each company or double company is generally composed of men of one race;
and Government allows and pays two cooks and a _bhisti_ or water-carrier
to each company, these menials, with Hindus, being necessarily of the
same caste as the sepoys they serve. Thus in my own battalion we have a
double company of Rajputs, one of Gujars, and one of Rawats--all these
being Hindus. The fourth is composed of Mohammedans. Each company is
officered by men of their own caste, a _Subhedar_ or captain, and a
_Jemadar_ or lieutenant; and every two companies are under a double
company commander and a double company officer, who are British, and
with the commandant, adjutant and quartermaster make up the European
officers of the regiment.
My double company in Buxa was composed of Rajputs; but, having had to
detach signallers, bandsmen, clerks, and other employed men to go with
the headquarters to Dibrugarh, some Mussulmans were temporarily attached
to bring it up to its original strength of two hundred men. The Rajputs'
method of eating their meals is rather peculiar. Before each they must
bathe and put on a clean _dhotie_, a cotton cloth wrapped round the
waist, passing between the legs and falling to the knees. They must eat
inside the _chauka_, a space of ground marked out and swept clean. Food
which they wish to carry away and consume outside the _chauka_, as, for
instance, if they are going on a long march, must be prepared in a
particular way with water instead of _ghee_, which is generally used by
them in cooking.
In my daily visit to the hospital I would find our medical officer,
Smith, hard at work. For, besides the sick of the detachment, he had to
tend any natives from outside who chose to seek the white man's
medicine. To help him he had a young Indian sub-assistant surgeon, who,
despite the scanty medical training he had received, pined to perform
major operations. With little knowledge of surgery he wished to resort
to the knife on every possible occasion. Once, when left in sole charge
of the hospital, he determined to amputate the leg of a Bhuttia
suffering from gangrenous sores. The patient, however, was of a
different opinion and during the night stole silently from the hospital
and fled in terror across the hills to his village. Like most
mountaineers the Bhuttias are very subject to goitre. Two out of every
three are the proud possessors of these enormous appendages, in some
cases nearly as large as the owner's head. They seemed to regard them as
ornaments, and absolutely refused to allow our medico to operate on
them. One day there was carried to the fort from Chunabatti, the only
village for miles round, a Chinaman suffering from beriberi. This man,
who knew no word of any language but his own, had made his way on foot
from China across Tibet and Bhutan over the Himalayas endeavouring to
reach Calcutta in search of work. Stricken down with this fell disease
he had lain for months in the village, living on the charity of the
Bhuttias, and was brought to our hospital only to die. Another
interesting case was a boy about seven years old who was brought in,
absolutely scalped by a blow from the paw of a bear which he had
disturbed when gathering wood in the forest. From brow to nape of neck
his skull had been left bare to the bone, in which were deep
indentations from the animal's claws. The shock of the blow would
probably have killed a European, but with the marvellous tenacity of
life among savage races, the boy soon recovered.
[Illustration: RAJPUT SEPOYS COOKING.]
[Illustration: BRITISH AND INDIAN OFFICERS.]
Our morning's work finished, we climbed up the hill for breakfast in the
Mess. This was a long, single-storied stone building with an iron roof,
erected on pillars which raised it six feet from the ground. From the
tangled wilderness of the garden, bright with the vivid colours of huge
bushes of poinsettia and bougainvillias, a flight of steps led up to the
railed veranda which ran along the front of the building, and on to
which opened the four rooms--the end ones used as quarters by Creagh and
Smith, the centre apartments being the ante-room and dining-room. I
wonder what some writers of military fiction, who prate glibly of the
luxury in which army officers live, would say to the bare rooms and
whitewashed walls of our Mess, furnished only with a few rickety tables
and unsteady chairs. Or my subaltern's abode. One room, an iron cot
borrowed from the hospital, a kitchen table, one dilapidated chair, a
tin bath, and an iron basin on an old packing-case, comprised the
sum-total of his possessions. Other furniture we could not get in Buxa;
for the nearest shops were three hundred miles away in Calcutta. Of
course, crockery, cooking-pots, glassware, linen and cutlery, we had to
provide for ourselves. These we had brought with us. Before long, by
dint of colour-washing the stone walls, hanging curtains and draperies
of native cloth, and decorating the bare walls with the heads of
animals we shot, we succeeded in making the Mess quite habitable and
cosy.
We were not much better off in the bare necessities of life. Buxa
produced little in the way of food. Chickens--more literally, hens of no
uncertain antiquity--and eggs of almost equal age were often procurable
locally. But no meat. Sometimes a Bhuttia from across the frontier
brought a goat for sale; and, although the Asiatic goat is an
abomination, yet such an occasion was a red-letter day for us. Bread was
sent us by rail from a railway refreshment-room twenty-four hours away,
and did not always arrive. Fresh vegetables we never saw until later on
we tried our prentice hands at gardening--and a sorry mess we made of
it. In the winter we could add to the pot by the help of our rifles and
guns; and venison and jungle fowl were a welcome change from the
monotony of our menus. But our staple food consisted of tinned
provisions--an expensive and wearisome diet. I dare say the British
workman would have turned up his nose at our usual fare; and I could not
blame him. Even the water supply in Buxa was a difficult question. Our
Mess got its water from a spring in the hills hundreds of yards away,
led down in bamboos to the kitchen. The fort was supplied from another
spring in the base of the hill on which it was built; and all day long
the _bhistis_[2] toiled up and down bringing the water in goatskin bags.
But a few months after our arrival the springs nearly gave out; and I
was faced with the necessity of abandoning fort and station, and moving
the military and civil population to camp on the banks of a river miles
away in the forest below, when we were saved by timely rain.
Yet despite the simple life we were leading in Buxa my monthly expenses
were more than twenty pounds for the bare necessities of existence. I
had to pay rent to Government for my bungalow, and a share of the rent
for the Mess, as well as my share of the expenses of mess-servants,
lighting, and food. My personal household consisted of my "boy" or
body-servant, a _dhobi_ or washerman, a _bhisti_ or water-carrier, a
_syce_ or groom, and my sword-orderly, a sepoy of the regiment. This
last individual, a Mussulman named Mohammed Draj Khan, had been in my
service for many years and, with the fidelity of the Indian, was
faithfully attached to me. He went with me to China in 1900 with the
Indian Expeditionary Force and returned with me again there five years
later. When I was going from Hong Kong on furlough to the United States,
Canada and Europe, I arranged for him to be given six months' leave to
his home in India. But when he heard of it Draj Khan was exceedingly
wroth.
"What? Am I not to accompany my Sahib?" he demanded indignantly.
"No; I cannot take you with me to Europe," I replied. "But I have got
you leave to go home to your wife whom you have not seen for four
years."
"Oh, my wife does not matter," was the ungallant answer; "she can wait.
But my place is with my Sahib wherever he goes."
And he has never forgiven me for not taking him; although he still
continues to serve me faithfully.
Our sepoys fared better than their British officers. We found on arrival
that the local _bunniahs_ or shop-keepers were in the habit of
supplying the men with very inferior and bad flour and other food-stuffs
and charging a high price for them, relying on the monopoly they
enjoyed. I determined to follow the example of the United States
Government and make war on trusts. So I sent my native officers to Cooch
Behar and other towns fifty miles away to purchase supplies, and ordered
flour in bulk from a mill under English management in Calcutta. I had it
sent by rail to Buxa Road Station, and conveyed thence by our elephants
and Bhuttia coolies. An elephant can carry a weight of ten or twelve
maunds--a maund being equal to eighty pounds. The sturdy Bhuttias, women
as well as men, could come up our steep road, each with a load of two
maunds on his or her back. Their burdens were fixed in two forked sticks
bound to the shoulders in such a way that when the bearers sat down the
ends of the sticks rested on the ground and supported the weight. But
when heavily laden a coolie cannot then rise to his feet unaided, unless
he first lies down, rolls over on his face, then pushes himself on to
his knees with his hands and stands up. In Chemulpo and Seoul in Corea I
have seen coolies employ a similar method of carrying their loads.
After breakfast I returned to my house to pass the hours until the
afternoon parade. After the dilapidated bungalows of most stations in
India, with their thatched roofs sheltering rats, squirrels and even
snakes, and their floors of pounded earth and decayed matting full of
fleas, ants and the myriad plagues of insect life of the East, my small
house seemed luxurious. It was built strongly of rough stone blocks to
withstand the awful mountain storms. The roof was of iron which rang
like a drum to the heavy rain and monster hailstones of the Monsoon.
It contained four small rooms with ceilings and floors of wood, each
with its fireplace. For during the winter we found it cold enough to
have fires going day and night, the jungle around furnishing us with an
ample supply of fuel. The meagre furniture which I had bought from the
major of the Punjabis was soon supplemented with a few more articles
sent from Calcutta. The little garden contained mango trees and a tree
bearing the huge and evil-smelling jack-fruit, of which natives are very
fond, though its sickening odour and oversweet taste repel most
Europeans. The hedges around my compound were of wild roses. At one side
stood my stable and the stone outhouses in which my servants lived; for
in India the domestics are not lodged in the bungalow.
[Illustration: MY DOUBLE COMPANY.]
[Illustration: MY BACHELOR ESTABLISHMENT.]
The afternoon was occupied with drills, signalling practice and military
lectures to the non-commissioned officers.
Buxa offered scant amusement within its limits to us Britishers. We had
hockey-matches with the men two or three times a week. Creagh, being a
keen golfer, tried to make miniature links about the fort; but, after
losing six balls in his first game in the jungle around, he gave it up.
We turned our attention to tennis. A comparatively level space hewed out
of the mountain-side was fixed on as a court. Rocks four or five feet
high were dug out of it; and the elephants were employed for days in
bringing up earth from the plains below to spread on it. But more rocks
seemed to grow in it and shove their heads through the thin covering of
mould, grass came in thick, wiry patches; and altogether our tennis
court could not be pronounced a success.
Evening brought with it the dullest hours of the day. The Calcutta
newspaper, which arrived by post every afternoon, was soon read; and the
English journals sent to us from regimental headquarters were a month
old. None of us were keen card players. Our library was small; and, as
light literature, drill books soon cease to charm. Our daily life was
too uneventful to afford many subjects of conversation; and as topics
the incompetency of Naik Chandu Singh or the slackness on parade of
Sepoy Pem Singh were not engrossing. England seemed too far away for the
discussion of its politics to interest us. The pitiable limitations of
men as talkers was painfully evident. Not being women we had no
ever-ready subjects of conversation in dress, babies and servants'
misdemeanours; and we could not talk scandal about ourselves. So, after
the meagre dinner that our Gurkha cook contrived out of the athletic hen
or tinned sausage, we threw ourselves into long chairs around the fire;
Creagh betook himself to the study of military books for his forthcoming
examination for promotion, and the doctor and I thumbed tattered novels
we had read a dozen times.
But Buxa was not the loneliest spot in which I have been quartered. As a
subaltern I was stationed alone for many months in Asirgarh in the
Central Provinces, an old Indian fortress on a hill lost in the jungle.
That was solitude itself. My nearest European neighbour was forty miles
away. I saw no white face and spoke no word of English for months at a
time. Once a year a General was supposed to pay it the compliment of an
official inspection, although the garrison consisted only of a British
subaltern and fifty sepoys. But I think that after one occasion when the
General and his staff officers nearly died on my hands of ptomaine
poisoning--really contracted on their journey thither, but ascribed by
the uncharitable among my friends to my base devices and resentment at
having my peace disturbed by this officious intrusion--this duty grew
out of favour with generals who valued their lives. This detachment has
since been abolished.
The fortress was wonderfully interesting, with a history reaching back
to the eighth century. It had passed through the hands of the various
masters of India in turn, and every stone of its walls had a story to
tell. Taken by the British from the Maharajah of Gwalior twice, it
remained in our possession from 1818, and was formerly garrisoned by a
company of Artillery, a British regiment and a wing of a native
battalion. Fallen from its high estate, a subaltern and half a company
were considered enough for it in my time. And the subaltern combined in
his own person the important offices of Commandant of Asirgarh Fortress,
officer commanding the troops, officer in charge of military treasure
chest, Cantonment Magistrate third class, and Church Trustee. For inside
the fort were a Protestant Church in disused barracks, a ruined Catholic
Chapel on the altar of which wild monkeys perched, and two cemeteries
full of graves of English dead. The post was a lonely one for a young
officer. I lived in the only habitable European building, formerly the
general hospital, for which I paid twenty-four pounds a year to
Government. The dead house was just outside my bedroom window. The
interior of the fort, the fifty-feet-high walls of which were a mile and
a half in circumference, was crowded with the ruins of an ancient
palace, a large mosque, an old Moghul prison with wonderful underground
passages and cells, and--most depressing of all--the gaunt wrecks of
English bungalows with bare rafters and tattered ceiling-cloths. A fit
habitation for ghosts. And ghosts there were. No native would venture
about the fort alone at night. Weird tales had my sepoys to tell of the
_Shaitans_ and _bhuts_, as they termed the spectral beings that wandered
within the walls in the dark hours and were seen again and again by my
men. They invariably took the form of British soldiers. And actually one
night when I was miles away out shooting in the jungle the sentry at the
gate turned out the guard to an approaching white officer, whom he took
to be me. The whole guard, eleven men in all, swore next day to the
ghostly visitant.
Few English folk at home, who fondly picture an officer's life in India
as one long round of social gaieties, of polo, sport, races and balls,
realise the tragedies of loneliness of many who serve the Empire. Of the
dreary solitude of a military police post in the jungles of Burma, of a
fort on the Indian frontier, where a young subaltern lives for months,
for years, alone. A boy brought up in the comfort of an English home,
used to the pleasant fellowship of a regimental mess, is there condemned
to isolation from his kind, to food that a pauper would reject, and a
lodging a cottager would scorn. Should one of the many diseases of India
lay its grisly hand on him he is far from medical aid. He must fight his
illness alone, lying unattended in his comfortless quarters. Outside, a
pitiless sun in a sky of brass pours down its rays on the glaring,
shadowless desert. Inside, the droning whine of the punkah mocks him
throughout the weary day, as it scarcely stirs the heated air. Night
brings only the more terrible hours of darkness when sleep is banished
from the tired eyes and the fever-racked brain knows no relief. Small
wonder that too often in his agony he seeks death by his own hand. I
have gone through the hell of sickness in a lonely post, when day after
day the awful pains of jungle fever tortured me and night brought no
relief. I have known what it is to gaze in my delirium at my revolver
and think it the kindly friend that alone could end my misery, until a
sane moment made me realise that its touch meant death and I had it
taken away from me. But I have known, too, many a poor fellow to whom
that saving interval of sanity was denied, to whom a bullet through the
tortured brain brought oblivion.
In comparison with Asirgarh, Buxa was quite a gay place. I was seldom
alone in it, and generally had at least one other white man with me. We
were kept in touch with the outside world by a telegraph line, which,
however, was constantly being broken by trees blown down by storms or
uprooted by elephants. Once a day a sturdy little Bhuttia postman toiled
up the hill with our letters. "His Majesty's Mail" carried for his
protection a short spear with bells on it to scare wild beasts; but this
did not save him from being occasionally stopped by wild elephants and
once being treed by a tiger. For sport we had to descend to the forest;
though sometimes a barking deer wandered into our gardens from the
jungle, and from the Mess veranda we shot a couple on the hill-side
across a deep _nullah_ or ravine.
Between my bungalow and the Married Officers' Quarters ran another
_nullah_. Occasionally, when there was no moon, a panther used to wander
down it, calling like a cat in the darkness which was too intense to
allow me a shot at the animal. When we came to Buxa we had wondered why
the windows of our houses were covered with strong wire netting, and
were inclined to be sceptical when told that this was to keep predatory
beasts out. But the Punjabi subaltern had been awakened one night by the
noise of some animal moving about his room in the Mess, he having left
his door open. He seized a handful of matches, struck them and saw a
panther scared by the sudden blaze dash out through the door. And twice
during our sojourn in Buxa did a similar thing happen.
This particular panther, for we assumed that it was always the same
animal, haunted the Station and preyed on the dogs in the bazaar. One
day on the road just below the fort it met one of my sepoys who promptly
climbed the nearest tree and remained in the topmost branches until his
shouts brought some other men to the rescue. Once at night I was roused
from sleep by wild cries from a Bhuttia's hut on the spur above our Mess
and learned on inquiry that the panther had carried off his dog. Another
time, in brilliant moonlight, an Indian doctor then in medical charge of
the detachment, who lived in the bungalow next to mine, saw the beast
sitting in the small garden intently watching the door of an outhouse in
which a milch-goat was kept shut up. The doctor ran indoors to fetch his
gun and had an unsuccessful shot at it as it jumped the hedge. Needless
to say we made many efforts to compass its death. One night it killed a
goat tied up as a bait to a tree within fifteen yards of the fort and
was wounded by a native officer waiting for it behind the wall. Yet not
long afterwards it climbed into the fort at night and carried off a
sepoy's dog. Many a time I sat up in a tree over a bleating goat in the
moonlight, but always in vain; and I suppose that panther still lives to
afford sport to our successors in Buxa.
Life was well worth living on the days when we could descend into the
forest for a shoot. At dawn we started down the three miles of steep
road to Santrabari where the elephants awaited us. For work in the
jungle these animals, instead of the howdahs or cage-like structures
with seats which they carry on shoots in fairly open country, have only
their pads, thick, straw-stuffed mattresses bound on their backs by
stout ropes. For in dense forest howdahs would soon be swept off. When
we arrived at the Peelkhana the _mahouts_ made the huge beasts kneel
down, or we clambered up, either by hauling oneself up by the tail,
aided by one foot on the hind leg held up for the purpose at the
driver's command, or by catching hold of the ears from the front and
standing on the curled-up trunk which then raised us up on to the
elephant's head. One either sat sideways on the pad or astride above the
shoulders and behind the _mahout_ who rode on the neck with his bare
feet behind the ears. Then our giant steeds lumbered off into the forest
with an awkward, disjointed stride which is sorely trying to the novice.
And sitting upright with nothing to rest the back against for eight
hours or more, shaken violently all the time by the jerky motion, is
decidedly tiring. Prepared for beast or bird, each of us carried a rifle
and a shot-gun, and, separating from the others, went his own way
through the forest. Sometimes a _sambhur_, the big Indian stag, was the
bag; sometimes a wild boar. Perhaps a _khakur_, the small, alert barking
deer, of which the flesh is infinitely more tender than a _sambhur's_,
or a few jungle fowl, rewarded our efforts. We carried with us food and
water for the day and did not return until evening. Then, after leaving
the elephants at the Peelkhana, came the fifteen-hundred-feet climb up
the steep road to Buxa. And in a long chair in the Mess the fatigues of
the day were forgotten in the pleasure of recounting every incident of
the sport.
Sometimes we went out among the hills around us to stalk _gooral_, an
active little wild goat. Clambering up the almost sheer sides of the
mountains or clinging to the faces of rugged precipices while carrying a
heavy rifle was a toilsome task; and too often, after a long and
perilous climb, did I arrive in sight of the quarry only to see it
disappear in bounding flight over the cliffs.
[Illustration: A KNEELING ELEPHANT.]
In our excursions into the forest or by purchase from natives we
gradually gathered together a varied collection of pets to solace our
loneliness. At different times I possessed half a dozen barking deer
fawns, one of which became an institution in Buxa. Scorning confinement
she insisted on being allowed to wander loose about the Station, and,
soon getting to know the sepoys' meal hours, visited the fort regularly.
She was punctual in her attendance at tea-time in my bungalow, being
exceedingly fond of buttered toast, and always claiming her share of
mine. More than once I have only just been in time to save her from the
rifle of one of our rare visitors who, seeing her on the hill-side, took
her to be wild. A small green parrot which I had similarly objected
to being shut up and flew freely about the Station. From wherever it
happened to be its quick eye always marked my servant bringing my
afternoon meal to the bungalow from the kitchen; and, having a strange
liking for hot tea, it used to fly in through the open door of my
sitting-room and perch on my head. It was little use my objecting to
this familiarity; for, if I attempted to dislodge it, it would stick its
claws into my scalp and hold on to my ear by its sharp beak until I let
it drink from my cup. Its propensity for swooping down in the open on
any white man was sometimes alarming to strangers. Once a certain civil
official visitor to Buxa who was jocularly reputed to be overfond of
alcohol and never far from the verge of delirium tremens was approaching
my bungalow when the parrot swept down on him and tried to alight on his
hat. Uncertain as to the reality of the vision circling around his head,
our visitor uttered a cry of terror and tried to brush the phantom aside
until I laughingly assured him that it was a real bird. He revenged
himself afterwards by encouraging the parrot in a depraved taste for
whisky.
In my afternoon walks I used to be accompanied by a small menagerie. Two
small barking deer stepped daintily behind me, their long ears twitching
incessantly. A monkey loped on all fours ahead, now and then stopping to
sit down and scratch himself thoughtfully. A bear cub shambled along,
playing with my dogs and being occasionally rolled over by a combined
rush of riotous puppies. On our return to the bungalow we would be
greeted by no less than five cats; while from its perch on the veranda a
young hornbill, scarcely feathered and possessing a beak almost as big
as its body, would survey us with a cold and glassy stare from its
unwinking eyes. Once in a beat in the forest my orderly caught a
_sambhur_ fawn which he bore, shrieking piteously, in his arms to me. In
a day or two it was perfectly tame, fed from my hand, and insisted on
sleeping on my bed. It was killed by a snake shortly afterwards.
I might almost include in our list of pets our three Government
elephants, of which we became very fond. They were named Jhansi,
Dundora, and Khartoum. I generally used the last in the jungle; though
when looking for dangerous game I preferred Dundora. Jhansi was a
frivolous and unsteady young lady of forty years of age; and shooting
from her back was impossible. I soon learned to drive them, sitting on
their necks and guiding them by pressing my feet behind the ears, as the
_mahouts_ do. I was sometimes called on to doctor them; and had to
perform almost a surgical operation on Jhansi, when wounded by a wild
elephant out in the jungle. I had fortunately been taught how to treat
their ailments when doing veterinary work in a transport course some
years before. Elephants are somewhat delicate animals and liable to a
multiplicity of diseases. Accustomed in the wild state to shelter from
the noonday heat in thick forests, they suffer greatly if worked in a
hot sun and get sore feet if obliged to tramp along hard roads.
Domesticated elephants are generally very gentle and docile; though
males in a state of _musth_ often become very dangerous. Contrary to the
usually received opinion they are not intelligent; but they are very
obedient. At the word of command they will kneel, rise, pick up an
article from the ground or lift a man on to their necks. When a _mahout_
is gathering fodder for his charge and sees suitable leaves out of reach
at the top of a small tree, he orders his elephant to break the tree
down. This it does by curling up its trunk and pressing its forehead
with all its weight behind it against the stem and thus uprooting it.
When crossing a stream they try to sound the depth with their trunks. A
bridge they attempt cautiously with one foot, and, if not satisfied with
its strength, will resolutely refuse to trust themselves on it. Though
good at climbing up steep slopes they are the reverse when descending.
On the level they are fast for a short distance only; but they can cover
many miles in the day when travelling. They are excellent swimmers and
are very fond of water. In the wild state they bathe whenever they can;
and tame elephants thoroughly enjoy being taken into the river and lie
in the shallows with a look of blissful content while their _mahouts_
wash them and scrub them with bricks. It is extraordinary how quickly
they become used to captivity. In a few days they let their keepers feed
them, mount them and take them to water. I have seen two, caught only
four months before, being driven in a beat for a tiger; and when he was
wounded and broke back into thick jungle they followed him
unhesitatingly at their _mahouts'_ command.
Like all hill-places Buxa was full of snakes. One night in the hot
weather when dining on the veranda, we found a viper climbing up the
rough stone wall of the Mess just behind our chairs. We vacated our
seats promptly and killed it with long bamboos. Another evening I
discovered one on my veranda. Once when camped in the forest with my
detachment, the officer who was then with me and I were sitting at a
small table having tea when one of the native officers came up. I had a
chair brought for him and he sat talking to us until dusk came. My
servant placed a lighted lamp on the table. Suddenly the native officer
who was sitting a few yards from me said quietly:
"Do not move, Sahib. There is a snake under your chair; and if you try
to stand up you may tread on it."
It was difficult to obey him and remain motionless; but, as it was the
wisest thing to do, I sat quietly until I saw a small and very poisonous
viper emerge between my feet and wriggle off. Then I jumped up, seized
the lamp from the table and a cane from my native officer and killed it.
In Buxa one afternoon when I happened to be inspecting the bazaar a
native ran up in a state of great excitement to inform me that a "_bahut
burra samp_," a _very_ large snake, was climbing up the precipice on the
west side of the hill on which the bazaar stood. I went with him and
found two or three Bhuttias looking over the edge at an enormous serpent
which was making its way up the steep face, clinging to projecting rocks
and bushes. From its size I took it to be a python, which is not
poisonous and kills its prey only by compression. We waited until the
snake had got its head and a third of its length over the brink and fell
upon it with sticks and clubbed it to death. I had it carried to my
bungalow where I measured it and found it to be fifteen feet two inches
in length. Preparatory to skinning it, I compared it with the coloured
plates in a book on Indian reptiles and found to my horror that it was
a king-cobra or hamadryad, the most dreaded and dangerous ophidian in
Asia. It is very venomous and wantonly attacks human beings; so that it
was fortunate for us that we had caught it at a disadvantage. There is a
recorded instance of one chasing and overtaking a man on a pony. It is
generally to be found only in the forests of Eastern Bengal, Assam, and
Burmah.
When one considers the enormous number of snakes in India it is
surprising how seldom they are seen. This is due to their rarely
venturing out in the daytime. But I have killed one with my sword when
returning from a morning parade in Bhuj and another, a black cobra five
feet nine inches long, in my bathroom in Asirgarh. Few Europeans ever
get over their instinctive horror of these reptiles; but the natives,
thousands of whom die every year from snake-bite owing to their going
about with bare feet and legs at night, have not the same dread of them.
In fact Hindus hold the cobra sacred, and have an annual festival, the
Nagpanchmai, in its honour. I have seen in Cutch the Rao (or Rajah) of
that State go in solemn procession on that day to worship it in a
temple, accompanied by his strangely-uniformed troops, which included
soldiers in steel caps and chain mail walking on stilts. They were
supposed to be prepared to fight in the salt deserts and sandy wastes
which surround Cutch.
Our first visitors from the outside world reached Buxa about a month
after our arrival. They were General Bower, commanding the Assam Brigade
to which we belonged, and his staff officer, come for the annual
inspection of the detachment. Brigadier-General (now Major-General Sir
Hamilton) Bower is a man whose paths have lain in strange places and
whose career reads like a book of adventures. A keen sportsman and a
daring explorer of untrodden ways, he was as a captain ordered by the
Government of India to pursue the Mohammedan murderer of an English
traveller, Dalgleish, through the savage wilds of Central Asia. For
months he chased the assassin through sterile regions where no European
had ever before set foot and at last hounded him into the hands of the
Russians at Samarcand where he killed himself in jail. His capture was
necessary to show the lawless tribesmen of Central Asia that a price
must be paid for a white man's blood and that the arm of our Government
could reach an Englishman's slayer in any land. Readers of E. F.
Knight's fascinating book, "Where Three Empires Meet" will remember the
author's meeting with Captain Bower in Kashmir in 1891, after the
latter's successful pursuit of this murderer, Dad Mohammed. Bower was
then starting on his celebrated journey from India overland to China,
which he has described in his work "Across Tibet." And since those days
his life has not been tame. Ordered to raise a regiment of Chinamen to
garrison Wei-hai-wei, he landed in Shanghai with one follower and soon
brought a corps of Northern Chinese into being, which, in two years
after its raising, fought splendidly in the bloody struggles around
Tientsin in the Boxer War of 1900. He afterwards commanded the British
Legation Guard in Pekin and found ample scope for all his tact and good
temper in the intercourse with the officers of the Guards of other
nationalities in the Chinese capital.
He spent three days with us; and though his inspection was thorough, and
entailed fatiguing manoeuvres through jungle I had hitherto regarded as
impenetrable and up mountains I had considered unscaleable, we were
sorry when his visit terminated. As a rule one does not hail a General's
inspection as a pleasant function. But General Bower proved the
pleasantest and most interesting visitor we ever had. Tired of our own
thrice-told tales we revelled in the interesting conversation of a man
who had seen and done so much in his adventurous career, who had
journeyed along untrodden ways, had fought strange foes and carried his
life in his hand in wild lands where no king's writ runs. We talked much
of Knight, whom I have the good fortune to know, a man who, like the
General, might be the hero of a boy's book of romance. His life had been
equally adventurous. He fought for the French in 1870, and against them
later in Madagascar. In a small yacht he crossed the Atlantic and
visited most countries in South America. In his wanderings beyond the
frontier of India he came in for the difficult little Hunza-Nagar
campaign and fought in it. Author, traveller, war-correspondent, amateur
soldier, he has been everywhere, seen and done everything. And, simple
and courageous, he is a type of the adventurers who made England great.
Romance is not dead while such men as he and Bower live.
With a General on official inspection one is inclined to speed the
parting guest; but as General Bower waved his farewell to us from the
back of the elephant which was carrying him downhill we were sorry to
part with him, and all three hoped to meet him the following year again
in Buxa. But when he came I alone was left. Smith had gone to Calcutta,
and Creagh was commanding another detachment of the regiment in the
heart of Tibet, even farther from civilisation than Buxa.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Heavy native knives.
[2] Water-carriers.