Simla, Tuesday, March 19, 1839.
Don't you see, that now I am come back to Simla, a Journal will be out
of the question; nothing to put into it.
'Pillicock sits on Pillicock's hill, Halloo Loo! Loo!' (which I take to
be a prophecy of our playing at Loo every evening.) We came up in two
days from Barr, a very fatiguing business at all times, though Mrs. A.
had sent me down a hill dhoolie, in which I could lie down, but it makes
all one's bones ache to be jolted in a rough sedan for eight hours. The
second day it poured till we came within sight of Simla, and with a
sharp east wind from the mountains, the misery of all the dripping
Bengalee servants was inconceivable. The gentlemen looked unhappy
enough, as the hill ponies make slow work of the journey; and Dr. D. had
a violent fit of ague before we arrived at Hurripore. X. abjures the
aide-de-camp on these hill excursions, and appears '_en blouse_,' a
mixture of 'a brave Belge' and a German student.
We found Simla very white with snow; the thermometer had been 91° in our
tents that day week. But I do not think it at all uncomfortably cold
here. Giles had preceded us by two days, and had got all the curtains up
and the carpets down, and the house looked more comfortable than ever.
It is a jewel of a little house, and my own room is quite _overcoming_;
so light and cheerful, and then all the little curiosities I have
accumulated on my travels have a sweet effect now they are spread out.
The only misfortune of my room is, that a long insect, much resembling a
gudgeon on six legs, has eaten up your picture frame: the picture I took
with me in my writing-desk, knowing that the gudgeon would have eaten
that forthwith, but the frame, in an unguarded moment, I trusted to his
honour, and this is the result. However, the glass he could not digest,
and a wooden frame our own carpenter can make.
F. left W. O. after his first day's tiger-shooting, and in marching up
from Seharunpore with the K.s and Mrs. L., W. actually shot a tiger ten
days after he had been run over, and he writes me word to-day that he is
quite strong again, and that they had killed eight tigers in five days.
One tiger got on an island about the size of the table, with a swamp all
round it, that the elephants could not pass. The jungle was set on fire,
and W. says it was beautiful to see him try to fight the fire with his
paws, but when he found he could not conquer it, he charged the
elephants, and was shot on the head of W.'s elephant.
Saturday, March 23.
We have had a little more snow and a great deal more rain, but now the
weather is beautiful, and the servants are beginning to thaw and to move
about. F. has had two dreadful days of rain in camp--a warning to her,
and she says she is beginning to give up her love of tents. Q. is gone
down to Barr to fetch her up the hill, but she will not now be here till
Monday.
We have not had a great many visitors. There are forty-six ladies and
twelve gentlemen, independent of our party, and forty more ladies and
six more gentlemen are expected shortly, so how any dancing is to be
managed at our parties we cannot make out. The aides-de-camp are in
despair about it; they are all dancers, and they have engaged a house
for the Miss S.s and their aunt quite close to ours--'Stirling Castle,'
a bleak place that nobody will live in, and that in general is struck by
lightning once a year; but then it is close by, and then they want a
ball. They have got A. and all our married gentlemen to promise to dance
every quadrille, but still we can't make out more than twelve couple,
and it will be dull for the sixty who look on. They are writing to their
friends in the plains, and asking eligible young officers to come up and
lodge with them. E. N. has settled to come here instead of going to
Mussooree, and had taken a house and was to _board_ with us; but Mr. J.
has written to ask him to live with him--_he_ must dance. 'At all
events,' said X. as we were riding home, 'those two little windows in
the gable end of Stirling Castle look well, and when two little female
forms are leaning out of them, I can conceive nothing more interesting.'
Our band twice a week is to be a great resource. G. bought W. O.'s old
house, and has made it over to the aides-de-camp, which saves them some
money, and in the grounds belonging to it we have discovered a beautiful
little terrace for the band, and the others have persuaded P., who is
'laying out the grounds,' to arrange a few pretty paths for two, and
also to make the gates so narrow that jonpauns cannot come through
them, so that the ladies must be handed out and walk up to the music.
Tuesday.
F. arrived yesterday. W. O. writes word that he has just killed his
thirteenth tiger.
Saturday, March 30.
This must go to-day, G. says. It is a shockingly thin concern, but it is
not three weeks since the last went, and, as I tell you, a second Simla
year journalised would inevitably throw you into a deep slumber.
Simla, Wednesday, April 3, 1839.
I feel rather cold and hungry without my Journal. I have got such a
habit of telling you everything, that somehow I cannot hinder myself
from bestowing my tediousness upon you. I rather think I am like Mr.
Balquwhidder, who found that the older he grew, and the more his memory
failed, the more easy it was for him to preach a long sermon, only his
congregation would not listen to it. You are my congregation. Our
present set of gentlemen are so _larking_, I hope they will contrive to
keep themselves and Simla alive this year. I think I told E. they had
advertised a pigeon-shooting match for seven o'clock on the 1st of
April, there not being a pigeon within twenty miles of this place.
Mr. C. arrived at the place, which was a mile from any house, armed with
two guns, in a regular shooting dress, and followed by three hirkarus to
pick up the birds, and he was met by one of X.'s servants with a note,
enquiring 'Does your mother know you're out?' As he hates getting up
before nine, he had some merit in taking it good-humouredly.
There are several very pretty people here, but we can hardly make out
any dinners. Most of the ladies send their regular excuse, that they do
not dine out while Captain So-and-so is with the army. Very devoted
wives, but if the war lasts three years, they will be very dull women.
It is wonderful how they contrive to get on together as well as they do.
There are five ladies belonging to the regiment, all with families, who
have now been living six months in one small house, with only one common
sitting-room, and yet they declare they have not quarrelled. I can
hardly credit it--can you?
Friday.
The _recoil_ from the plains to the dry, sharp air has a shocking effect
on the household. Captain Z. has been very ill since Monday, Captain Q.
knocked up with fever, Dr. D. ditto; a very severe case. F.'s ayah
tumbled down a hill, and cut her knee dreadfully. Rosina and her husband
and ten more servants all ill with fever. Mars a bad headache; Giles
ditto. St. Cloup, a confirmed case of liver complaint. That puts us all
in a great fuss; the instant he complains we all think of our dinners,
and are full of little attentions to him; we are now trying to hope that
gout may come out, but the fact is, they have all knocked themselves up
by fancying that, because they are in the hills, they may go out in the
sun without an umbrella, and nobody ever can, with impunity. If
Shakspeare ever said a wrong thing, it was that the sun 'looks upon all
alike.' It is anything but alike; he looks uncommonly askance at you,
and quite full at us. The band played on Wednesday in a new place we
have made for it in our garden. Such a view of the snowy range! and such
a pretty spot altogether! and all the _retired_ ladies come to solace
themselves with a little music, and to take a little tea and coffee and
talk a little.
W. O. has killed his seventeenth tiger. I had a letter from him to-day.
They had been after a great _man-eater_, who has carried off seven or
eight people lately, and the Thanadars of the villages around had begged
them to try and kill it. They took with them a Mr. P., an engineer they
found making a bridge, who had never been out hunting before; and lent
him an elephant and two guns. The first day they saw the tiger at a
great distance, and Mr. A. and W. took care not to fire for fear of
losing his track, but they 'presently heard a tremendous shouting, and
bang, bang, with both guns. This was P. at least half a mile off, and on
his coming up, he said he had seen the tiger in the distance, and it was
"dreadfully exciting work." The next thing we heard of the tiger was
upon my elephant's head, but he was shaken off directly, and after two
or three charges, killed. About five minutes after he was dead, up comes
Mr. P. in an awful state of excitement, with a small umbrella neatly
folded up in his hands, and carried like a gun. "Am I too late? Is he
dead?" "Yes, but where are your guns?" "Good heavens! I thought this was
them. I must have thrown them away in my excitement and taken this
instead." And so he had--and both A.'s and my guns which we had lent
him were found in the jungles, after some trouble.'
Sunday, April 7.
W. and Mr. A. have at last killed another dreadful tiger, or rather
tigress, which they have hunted for and given up several times. She has
carried off twenty-two men in six weeks, and while they were at the
village, took away the brother of the chief man of the place; took him
out of his little native carriage, leaving the bullocks untouched.
They found her lair, and W. says they saw a _leg_ and quantities of
human hair and bones lying about it, and they saw her two cubs, but the
swamps prevented the elephants going near, and the mahouts would not go,
so they gave it up.
But the next day she carried away a boy, and the villagers implored them
to try again. They came to the remains of the boy, and at last found the
tigress, and brought her out by killing one of her cubs, and then shot
her--but the horrid part of the story is that the screams of the boy who
was carried off were heard for about an hour, and it is supposed she
gave him to her cubs to play with. Such a terrible death! Altogether, W.
and Mr. A. (to say nothing of P. and his umbrella) have killed
twenty-six tigers--twenty large ones, and six cubs--which is a great
blessing for the country they are in.