THE CHUMBI VALLEY
CHUMBI,
_February, 1904._
The Chumbi Valley is inhabited by the Tomos, who are said to be
descendants of ancient cross-marriages between the Bhutanese and
Lepchas. They only intermarry among themselves, and speak a language
which would not be understood in other parts of Tibet. As no Tibetan
proper is allowed to pass the Yatung barrier, the Tomos have the
monopoly of the carrying trade between Phari and Kalimpong. They are
voluntarily under the protection of the Tibetans, who treat them
liberally, as the Lamas realize the danger of their geographical
position as a buffer state, and are shrewd enough to recognise that any
ill treatment or oppression would drive them to seek protection from the
Bhutanese or British.
The Tomos are merry people, hearty, and good-natured. They are
wonderfully hardy and enduring. In the coldest winter months, when the
thermometer is 20° below zero, they will camp out at night in the snow,
forming a circle of their loads, and sleep contentedly inside with no
tent or roofing. The women would be comely if it were not for the cutch
that they smear over their faces. The practice is common to the Tibetans
and Bhutanese, but no satisfactory reason has been found for it. The
Jesuit Father, Johann Grueber, who visited Tibet in 1661, attributed the
custom to a religious whim:--'The women, out of a religious whim, never
wash, but daub themselves with a nasty kind of oil, which not only
causes them to stink intolerably, but renders them extremely ugly and
deformed.' A hundred and eighty years afterwards Huc noticed the same
habit, and attributed it to an edict issued by the Dalai Lama early in
the seventeenth century. 'The women of Tibet in those days were much
given to dress, and libertinage, and corrupted the Lamas to a degree to
bring their holy order into a bad repute.' The then Nome Khan (deputy of
the Dalai Lama), accordingly issued an order that the women should never
appear in public without smearing their faces with a black disfiguring
paste. Huc recorded that though the order was still obeyed, the practice
was observed without much benefit to morals. If you ask a Tomo or
Tibetan to-day why their women smear and daub themselves in this
unbecoming manner, they invariably reply, like the Mussulman or Hindu,
that it is custom. Mongolians do not bother themselves about causes.
The Tomo women wear a flat green distinctive cap, with a red badge in
the front, which harmonizes with their complexion--a coarse, brick red,
of which the primal ingredients are dirt and cutch, erroneously called
pig's blood, and the natural ruddiness of a healthy outdoor life in a
cold climate. A procession of these sirens is comely and picturesque--at
a hundred yards. They wrap themselves round and round with a thick
woollen blanket of pleasing colour and pattern, and wear on their feet
high woollen boots with leather or rope soles. If it was not for their
disfiguring toilet many of them would be handsome. The children are
generally pretty, and I have seen one or two that were really beautiful.
When we left a camp the villagers would generally get wind of it, and
come down for loot. Old newspapers, tins, bottles, string, and cardboard
boxes were treasured prizes. We threw these out of our cave, and the
children scrambled for them, and even the women made dives at anything
particularly tempting. My last impression of Lingmathang was a group of
women giggling and gesticulating over the fashion plates and
advertisements in a number of the _Lady_, which somebody's _memsahib_
had used for the packing of a ham.
The Tomos, though not naturally given to cleanliness, realize the
hygienic value of their hot springs. There are resorts in the
neighbourhood of Chumbi as fashionable as Homburg or Salsomaggiore;
mixed bathing is the rule, without costumes. These healthy folk are not
morbidly conscious of sex. The springs contain sulphur and iron, and
are undoubtedly efficacious. Where they are not hot enough, the Tomos
bake large boulders in the ashes of a log fire, and roll them into the
water to increase the temperature.
Tomos and Tibetans are fond of smoking. They dry the leaves of the wild
rhubarb, and mix them with tobacco leaves. The mixture is called
_dopta_, and was the favourite blend of the country. Now hundreds of
thousands of cheap American cigarettes are being introduced, and a
lucrative tobacco-trade has sprung up. Boxes of ten, which are sold at a
pice in Darjeeling, fetch an anna at Chumbi, and two annas at Phari.
Sahibs smoke them, sepoys smoke them, drivers and followers smoke them,
and the Tomo coolies smoke nothing else. Tibetan children of three
appreciate them hugely, and the road from Phari to Rungpo is literally
strewn with the empty boxes.
There is a considerable Chinese element in the Chumbi Valley--a frontier
officer, with the local rank of the Fourth Button, a colonel, clerks of
the Customs House, and troops numbering from one to two hundred. These,
of course, were not in evidence when we occupied the valley in December.
The Chinese are not accompanied by their wives, but take to themselves
women of the country, whose offspring people the so-called Chinese
villages. The pure Chinaman does not remain in the country after his
term of office. Life at Chumbi is the most tedious exile to him, and he
looks down on the Tomos as barbarous savages. He is as unhappy as a
Frenchman in Tonquin, cut off from all the diversions of social and
intellectual life. The frontier officer at Bibi-thang told me that he
had brought his wife with him, and the poor lady had never left the
house, but cried incessantly for China and civilization. Yet to the
uninitiated the Chinese villages of Gob-sorg and Bibi-thang might have
been taken from the far East and plumped down on the Indian frontier.
There is the same far-Eastern smell, the same doss-house, the same
hanging lamps, the same red lucky paper over the lintels of the doors,
and the same red and green abortions on the walls.
Much has been written and duly contradicted about the fertility of the
Chumbi Valley. If one does not expect orange-groves and rice-fields at
12,000 feet, it must be admitted that the valley is, relatively
speaking, fertile--that is to say, its produce is sufficient to support
its three or four thousand inhabitants.
The lower valley produces buckwheat, turnips, potatoes, radishes, and
barley. The latter, the staple food of the Tibetans, has, when ground,
an appetizing smell very like oatmeal. The upper valley is quite
sterile, and produces nothing but barley, which does not ripen; it is
gathered for fodder when green, and the straw is sold at high prices to
the merchants who visit Phari from Tibet and Bhutan. This year the
Tibetan merchants are afraid to come, and the commissariat benefits by
a very large supply of fodder which ought to see them through the
summer.
The idea that the valley is unusually fertile probably arose from the
well-to-do appearance of the natives of Rinchengong and Chumbi, and
their almost palatial houses, which give evidence of a prosperity due to
trade rather than agriculture.
The hillsides around Chumbi produce wild strawberries, raspberries,
currants, and cherries; but these are quite insipid in this sunless
climate.
The Chinese Custom's officer at Yatung tells me that the summer months,
though not hot, are relaxing and enervating. The thermometer never rises
above 70°. The rainfall does not average quite 50 inches; but almost
daily at noon a mist creeps up from Bhutan, and a constant drizzle
falls. In June, July, and August, 1901, there were only three days
without rain.
At Phari I met a venerable old gentleman who gave me some statistics.
The old man, Katsak Kasi by name, was a Tibetan from the Kham province,
acting at Phari as trade agent for the Bhutanese Government. His face
was seared and parchment-like from long exposure to cold winds and rough
weather. His features were comparatively aquiline--that is to say, they
did not look as if they had been flattened out in youth. He wore a very
large pair of green spectacles, with a gold bulb at each end and a red
tassel in the middle, which gave him an air of wisdom and distinction.
He answered my rather inquisitive questions with courtesy and
decision, and yet with such a serious care for details that I felt quite
sure his figures must be accurate.
[Illustration: ROCK SCULPTURES.]
If statistics were any gauge of the benefits Indian trade would derive
from an open market with Tibet, the present mission, as far as
commercial interests are concerned, would be wasted. According to Kasi's
statistics, the cost of two dozen or thirty mules would balance the
whole of the annual revenue on Indian imports into the country. The idea
that duties are levied at the Yatung and Gob-sorg barriers is a mistake.
The only Customs House is at Phari, where the Indian and Bhutanese
trade-routes meet. The Customs are under the supervision of the two
jongpens, who send the revenue to Lhasa twice a year.
The annual income on imports from India, Kasi assured me, is only 6,000
rupees, whereas the income on exports amounts to 20,000. Tibetan trade
with India consists almost entirely of wool, yaks'-tails, and ponies.
There is a tax of 2 rupees 8 annas on ponies, 1 rupee a maund on wool,
and 1 rupee 8 annas a maund on yaks'-tails. Our imports into Tibet,
according to Kasi's statistics, are practically nil. Some piece goods,
iron vessels, and tobacco leaves find their way over the Jelap, but it
is a common sight to see mules returning into Tibet with nothing but
their drivers' cooking utensils and warm clothing.[9]
[9] The only articles imported to the value of £1,000 are cotton
goods, woollen cloths, metals, chinaware, coral, indigo, maize,
silk, fur, and tobacco.
The only exports to the value of £1,000 are musk, ponies, skins,
wool, and yaks'-tails.
Appended are the returns for the years 1895-1902:
Year. Value of Articles Value of Articles Total Value of
Imported into Exported from Imports and
Tibet. Tibet. Exports.
Rs. Rs. Rs.
1895 416,218 634,086 1,050,304
1896 561,395 781,269 1,342,664
1897 674,139 820,300 1,494,436
1898 718,475 817,851 1,536,326
1899 962,637 822,760 1,785,397
1900 730,502 710,012 1,440,514
1901 734,075 783,480 1,517,555
1902 761,837 805,338 1,567,075
_Customs House Returns, Yatung._
At present no Indian tea passes Yatung. That none is sold at Phari
confirms the rumour I mentioned that the Chinese Amban, after signing
the trade regulations between India and Tibet in Darjeeling, 1893,
crossed the frontier to introduce new laws, virtually annulling the
regulations. Indian tea might be carried into Tibet, but not sold there.
Tibet has consistently broken all her promises and treaty obligations.
She has placed every obstacle in the way of Indian trade, and insulted
our Commissioners; yet the despatch of the present mission with its
armed escort has been called an act of aggression.
When I asked Kasi if the Tibetans would be angry with him for helping
us, he said they would certainly cut off his head if he remained in the
fort after we had left. There is some foundation in travellers' stories
about the punishment inflicted on the guards of the passes and other
officials who fail to prevent Europeans entering Tibet or pushing on
towards Lhasa.
Some Chumbi traders who were in Lhasa when we entered the valley are
still detained there, as far as I can gather, as hostages for the good
behaviour of their neighbours. In Tibet the punishment does not fit the
crime. The guards of a pass are punished for letting white men through,
quite irrespective of the opposing odds.
The commonest punishment in Tibet is flogging, but the ordeal is so
severe that it often proves fatal. I asked Kasi some questions about the
magisterial powers of the two jongpens, or district officers, who
remained in the fort some days after we occupied it. He told me that
they could not pass capital sentence, but they might flog the prisoners,
and if they died, nothing was said. Several victims have died of
flogging at Phari.
The natives in Darjeeling have a story of Tibetan methods, which have
always seemed to me the refinement of cruelty. At Gyantse, they say, the
criminal is flung into a dark pit, where he cannot tell whether it is
night or day. Cobras and scorpions and reptiles of various degrees of
venom are his companions; these he may hear in the darkness, for it is
still enough, and seek or avoid as he has courage. Food is sometimes
thrown in to tempt any faint-hearted wretch to prolong his agony. I
asked Kasi if there were any truth in the tale. He told me that there
were no venomous snakes in Tibet, but he had heard that there was a dark
prison in Gyantse, where criminals sometimes died of scorpion bites; he
added that only the worst offenders were punished in this way. The
modified version of the story is gruesome enough.
It is usual for Tibetan and Bhutanese officials to receive their pay in
grain, it being understood that their position puts them in the way of
obtaining the other necessaries of life, and perhaps a few of its
luxuries. Kasi, being an important official, receives from the Bhutan
Government forty maunds of barley and forty maunds of rice annually. He
receives, in addition, a commission on the trade disputes that he
decides in proportion to their importance. He is now an invaluable
servant of the British Government. At his nod the barren solitudes round
Phari are wakening into life. From the fort bastions one sees sometimes
on the hills opposite an indistinct black line, like a caterpillar
gradually assuming shape. They are Kasi's yaks coming from some blind
valley which no one but a hunter or mountaineer would have imagined to
exist. Ponies, grain, and fodder are also imported from Bhutan and sold
to the mutual gratification of the Bhutanese and ourselves. The yaks are
hired and employed on the line of communications.
It is to be hoped that the Bhutanese, when they hear of our good prices,
will send supplies over the frontier to hasten our advance. But we must
take care than no harm befalls Kasi for his good services. When I asked
him how he stood with the Tibetan Government, he laid his hand in a
significant manner across his throat.
LINGMATHANG,
_February._
Before entering the bare, unsheltered plateau of Tibet, the road to
Lhasa winds through seven miles of pine forest, which recalls some of
the most beautiful valleys of Switzerland.
The wood-line ends abruptly. After that there is nothing but barrenness
and desolation. The country round Chumbi is not very thickly forested.
There are long strips of arable land on each side of the road, and
villages every two or three miles. The fields are terraced and enclosed
within stone walls. Scattered on the hillside are stone-built houses,
with low, over-hanging eaves, and long wooden tiles, each weighed down
with a gray boulder. One might imagine one's self in Kandersteg or
Lauterbrunnen; only lofty praying flags and _mani_-walls brightly
painted with Buddhistic pictures and inscriptions dispel the illusion.
There is no lack of colour. In the winter months a brier with large red
berries and a low, foxy-brown thornbush, like a young osier in March,
lend a russet hue to the landscape. Higher on the hills the withered
grass is yellow, and the blending of these quiet tints, russet, brown,
and yellow, gives the valley a restful beauty; but in cloud it is
sombre enough.
Three years ago I visited Yatung in May. In springtime there is a
profusion of colour. The valley is beautiful, beyond the beauty of the
grandest Alpine scenery, carpeted underfoot with spring flowers, and
ablaze overhead with flowering rhododendrons. To try to describe
mountains and forests is a most unprofitable task; all the adjectives of
scenic description are exhausted; the coinage has been too long debased.
For my own part, it has been almost a pain to visit the most beautiful
parts of the earth and to know that one's sensations are incommunicable,
that it is impossible to make people believe and understand. To those
who have not seen, scenery is either good, bad, or indifferent; there
are no degrees. Ruskin, the greatest master of description, is most
entertaining when he is telling us about the domestic circle at Herne
Hill. But mountain scenery is of all the most difficult to describe. The
sense of the Himalayas is intangible. There are elusive lights and
shades, and sounds and whispers, and unfamiliar scents, and a thousand
fleeting manifestations of the genius of the place that are impossible
to arrest. Magnificent, majestic, splendid, are weak, colourless words
that depict nothing. It is the poets who have described what they have
not seen who have been most successful. Milton's hell is as real as any
landscape of Byron's, and the country through which Childe Roland rode
to the Dark Tower is more vivid and present to us than any of
Wordsworth's Westmoreland tarns and valleys. So it is a poem of the
imagination--'Kubla Khan'--that seems to me to breathe something of the
spirit of the Yatung and Chumbi Valleys, only there is a little less of
mystery and gloom here, and a little more of sunshine and brightness
than in the dream poem. Instead of attempting to describe the
valley--Paradise would be easier to describe--I will try to explain as
logically as possible why it fascinated me more than any scenery I have
seen.
I had often wondered if there were any place in the East where flowers
grow in the same profusion as in Europe--in England, or in Switzerland.
The nearest approach I had seen was in the plateau of the Southern Shan
States, at about 4,000 feet, where the flora is very homelike. But the
ground is not _carpeted_; one could tread without crushing a blossom.
Flowers are plentiful, too, on the southern slopes of the Himalayas, and
on the hills on the Siamese side of the Tennasserim frontier, but I had
seen nothing like a field of marsh-marigolds and cuckoo-flowers in May,
or a meadow of buttercups and daisies, or a bank of primroses, or a wood
carpeted with bluebells, or a hillside with heather, or an Alpine slope
with gentians and ranunculus. I had been told that in Persia in
springtime the valleys of the Shapur River and the Karun are covered
profusely with lilies, also the forests of Manchuria in the
neighbourhood of the Great White Mountain; but until I crossed the
Jelapla and struck down the valley to Yatung I thought I would have to
go West to see such things again. Never was such profusion. Besides the
primulas[10]--I counted eight different kinds of them--and gentians and
anemones and celandines and wood sorrel and wild strawberries and
irises, there were the rhododendrons glowing like coals through the pine
forest. As one descended the scenery became more fascinating; the valley
narrowed, and the stream was more boisterous. Often the cliffs hung
sheer over the water's edge; the rocks were coated with green and yellow
moss, which formed a bed for the dwarf rhododendron bushes, now in full
flower, white and crimson and cream, and every hue between a dark
reddish brown and a light sulphury yellow--not here and there, but
everywhere, jostling one another for nooks and crannies in the rock.[11]
[10] Between Gnatong and Gautsa, thirteen different species of
primulas are found. They are: _Primula Petiolaris_, _P. glabra_,
_P. Sapphirina_, _P. pusilia_, _P. Kingii_, _P. Elwesiana_, _P.
Capitata_, _P. Sikkimensis_, _P. Involucra_, _P. Denticulata_,
_P. Stuartii_, _P. Soldanelloides_, _P. Stirtonia_.
[11] The species are: _Rhododendron campanulatum_, purple flowers;
_R. Fulgens_, scarlet; _R. Hodgsonii_, rose-coloured; _R.
Anthopogon_, white; _R. Virgatum_, purple; _R. Nivale_, rose-red;
_R. Wightii_, yellow; _R. Falconeri_, cream-coloured; _R.
cinndbarinum_, brick-red ('The Gates of Tibet,' Appendix I., J.
A. H. Louis).
These delicate flowers are very different from their dowdy cousin, the
coarse red rhododendron of the English shrubbery. At a little distance
they resemble more hothouse azaleas, and equal them in wealth of
blossom.
The great moss-grown rocks in the bed of the stream were covered with
equal profusion. Looking behind, the snows crowned the pine-trees, and
over them rested the blue sky. And here is the second reason--as I am
determined to be logical in my preference--why I found the valley so
fascinating. In contrasting the Himalayas with the Alps, there is always
something that the former is without. Never the snows, and the water,
and the greenery at the same time; if the greenery is at your feet, the
snows are far distant; where the Himalayas gain in grandeur they lose in
beauty. So I thought the wild valley of Lauterbrunnen, lying at the foot
of the Jungfrau, the perfection of Alpine scenery until I saw the valley
of Yatung, a pine-clad mountain glen, green as a hawthorn hedge in May,
as brilliantly variegated as a beechwood copse in autumn, and
culminating in the snowy peak that overhangs the Jelapla. The valley has
besides an intangible fascination, indescribable because it is
illogical. Certainly the light that played upon all these colours seemed
to me softer than everyday sunshine; and the opening spring foliage of
larch and birch and mountain ash seemed more delicate and varied than on
common ground. Perhaps it was that I was approaching the forbidden land.
But what irony, that this seductive valley should be the approach to
the most bare and unsheltered country in Asia!
Even now, in February, I can detect a few salmon-coloured leaf-buds,
which remind me that the month of May will be a revelation to the
mission force, when their veins are quickened by the unfamiliar warmth,
and their eyes dazzled by this unexpected treasure which is now
germinating in the brown earth.
Four miles beyond Chumbi the road passes through the second military
wall at the Chinese village of Gob-sorg. Riding through the quiet
gateway beneath the grim, hideous figure of the goddess Dolma carved on
the rock above, one feels a silent menace. One is part of more than a
material invasion; one has passed the gate that has been closed against
the profane for centuries; one has committed an irretrievable step.
Goddess and barrier are symbols of Tibet's spiritual and material
agencies of opposition. We have challenged and defied both. We have
entered the arena now, and are to be drawn into the vortex of all that
is most sacred and hidden, to struggle there with an implacable foe, who
is protected by the elemental forces of nature.
Inside the wall, above the road, stands the Chinese village of Gob-sorg.
The Chinamen come out of their houses and stand on the revetment to
watch us pass. They are as quiet and ugly as their gods. They gaze down
on our convoys and modern contrivances with a silent contempt that
implies a consciousness of immemorial superiority. Who can tell what
they think or what they wish, these undivinable creatures? They love
money, we know, and they love something else that we cannot know. It is
not country, or race, or religion, but an inscrutable something that may
be allied to these things, that induces a mental obstinacy, an
unfathomable reserve which may conceal a wisdom beyond our philosophy or
mere callousness and indifference. The thing is there, though it has no
European name or definition. It has caused many curious and unexplained
outbreaks in different parts of the world, and it is no doubt symbolized
in their inexpressibly hideous flag. The element is non-conductive, and
receives no current from progress, and it is therefore incommunicable to
us who are wrapped in the pride of evolution. The question here and
elsewhere is whether the Chinese love money more or this inscrutable
dragon element. If it is money, their masks must have concealed a
satisfaction at the prospect of the increased trade that follows our
flag; if the dragon element, a grim hope that we might be cut off in the
wilderness and annihilated by Asiatic hordes.
Unlike the Chinese, the Tomos are unaffectedly glad to see us in the
valley. The humblest peasant is the richer by our presence, and the
landowners and traders are more prosperous than they have been for many
years. Their uncompromising reception of us makes a withdrawal from the
Chumbi Valley impossible, for the Tibetans would punish them
relentlessly for the assistance they have given their enemies.
A mile beyond Gob-sorg is the Tibetan village of Galing-ka, where the
praying-flags are as thick as masts in a dockyard, and streams of paper
prayers are hung across the valley to prevent the entrance of evil
spirits. Chubby little children run out and salute one with a cry of
'Backsheesh!' the first alien word in their infant vocabulary.
A mile further a sudden turn in the valley brings one to a level
plain--a phenomenally flat piece of ground where one can race two miles
along the straight. No one passes it without remarking that it is the
best site for a hill-station in Northern India. Where else can one find
a racecourse, polo-ground, fishing, and shooting, and a rainfall that is
little more than a third of that of Darjeeling? Three hundred feet above
the stream on the west bank is a plateau, apparently intended for
building sites. The plain in the valley was naturally designed for the
training of mounted infantry, and is now, probably for the first time,
being turned to its proper use.
LINGMATHANG,
_March 18._
I have left the discomforts of Phari, and am camping now on the
Lingmathang Plain. I am writing in a natural cave in the rock. The
opening is walled in by a sangar of stones 5 feet high, from which
pine-branches support a projecting roof. On fine days the space between
the roof and wall is left open, and called the window; but when it
snows, gunny-bags are let down as purdahs, and the den becomes very warm
and comfortable. There is a natural hearth, a natural chimney-piece, and
a natural chimney that draws excellently. The place is sheltered by high
cliffs, and it is very pleasant to look out from this snugness on a
wintry landscape, and ground covered deep with snow.
Outside, seventy shaggy Tibetan ponies, rough and unshod, averaging 12·2
hands, are tethered under the shelter of a rocky cliff. They are being
trained according to the most approved methods of modern warfare. The
Mounted Infantry Corps, mostly volunteers from the 23rd and 32nd
Pioneers and 8th Gurkhas, are under the command of Captain Ottley of the
23rd. The corps was raised at Gnatong in December, and though many of
the men had not ridden before, after two months' training they cut a
very respectable figure in the saddle. A few years ago a proposal was
made to the military authorities that the Pioneers, like other
regiments, should go in for a course of mounted infantry training. The
reply caused much amusement at the time. The suggestion was not adopted,
but orders were issued that 'every available opportunity should be taken
of teaching the Pioneers to ride in carts.' A wag in the force naturally
suggests that the new Ekka Corps, now running between Phari and Tuna,
should be utilized to carry out the spirit of this order. Certainly on
the road beyond the Tangla the ekkas would require some sitting.
The present mission is the third 'show' on which the 23rd and 32nd have
been together during the last nine years. In Chitral and Waziristan they
fought side by side. It is no exaggeration to say that these regiments
have been on active service three years out of five since they were
raised in 1857. The original draft of the 32nd, it will be remembered,
was the unarmed volunteer corps of Mazbi Sikhs, who offered themselves
as an escort to the convoy from Lahore to Delhi during the siege. The
Mazbis were the most lawless and refractory folk in the Punjab, and had
long been the despair of Government. On arrival at Delhi they were
employed in the trenches, rushing in to fill up the places of the killed
and wounded as fast as they fell. It will be remembered that they formed
the fatigue party who carried the powder-bags to blow up the Cashmere
Gate. A hundred and fifty-seven of them were killed during the siege.
With this brilliant opening it is no wonder that they have been on
active service almost continually since.
A frontier campaign would be incomplete without the 32nd or 23rd. It was
the 32nd who cut their way through 5 feet of snow, and carried the
battery guns to the relief of Chitral. The 23rd Pioneers were also
raised from the Mazbi Sikhs in the same year of the Mutiny, 1857. The
history of the two regiments is very similar. The 23rd distinguished
themselves in China, Abyssinia, Afghanistan, and numerous frontier
campaigns. One of the most brilliant exploits was when, with the Gordon
Highlanders under Major (now Sir George) White, they captured the Afghan
guns at Kandahar. To-day the men of the two regiments meet again as
members of the same corps on the Lingmathang Plain. Naturally the most
cordial relations exist between the men, and one can hear them
discussing old campaigns as they sit round their pinewood fires in the
evenings. They and the twenty men of the 8th Gurkhas (of Manipur fame)
turn out together every morning for exercise on their diminutive steeds.
They ride without saddle or stirrups, and though they have only been
horsemen for two months, they seldom fall off at the jumps. The other
day, when a Mazbi Sikh took a voluntary into the hedge, a genial Gurkha
reminded him of the eccentric order 'to practise riding in carts.'
At Lingmathang we have had a fair amount of sport of a desultory kind.
The neighbouring forests are the home of that very rare and little-known
animal, the shao, or Sikkim stag. The first animal of the species to
fall to a European gun was shot by Major Wallace Dunlop on the
Lingmathang Hills in January. A month later Captain Ottley wounded a
buck which he was not able to follow up on account of a heavy fall of
snow. Lately one or two shao--does in all cases--have come down to visit
the plain. While we were breakfasting on the morning of the 16th, we
heard a great deal of shouting and halloaing, and a Gurkha jemadar ran
up to tell us that a female shao, pursued by village dogs, had broken
through the jungle on the hillside and emerged on the plain a hundred
yards from our camp. We mounted at once, and Ottley deployed the mounted
infantry, who were ready for parade, to head the beast from the hills.
The shao jinked like a hare, and crossed and recrossed the stream
several times, but the poor beast was exhausted, and, after twenty
minutes' exciting chase, we surrounded it. Captain Ottley threw himself
on the animal's neck and held it down until a sepoy arrived with ropes
to bind its hind-legs. The chase was certainly a unique incident in the
history of sport--a field of seventy in the Himalayas, a clear spurt in
the open, no dogs, and the quarry the rarest zoological specimen in the
world. The beast stood nearly 14 hands, and was remarkable for its long
ears and elongated jaw. The sequel was sad. Besides the fright and
exhaustion, the captured shao sustained an injury in the loin; it pined,
barely nibbled at its food, and, after ten days, died.
Sikkim stags are sometimes shot by native shikaris, and there is great
rivalry among members of the mission force in buying their heads. They
are shy, inaccessible beasts, and they are not met with beyond the wood
limit.
The shooting in the Chumbi Valley is interesting to anyone fond of
natural history, though it is a little disappointing from the
sportsman's point of view. When officers go out for a day's shooting,
they think they have done well if they bring home a brace of pheasants.
When the sappers and miners began to work on the road below Gautsa, the
blood-pheasants used to come down to the stream to watch the operations,
but now one sees very few game-birds in the valley. The minal is
occasionally shot. The cock-bird, as all sportsmen know, is, with the
exception of the Argus-eye, the most beautiful pheasant in the world.
There is a lamasery in the neighbourhood, where the birds are almost
tame. The monks who feed them think that they are inhabited by the
spirits of the blest. Where the snow melts in the pine-forests and
leaves soft patches and moist earth, you will find the blood-pheasant.
When you disturb them they will run up the hillside and call
vociferously from their new hiding-place, so that you may get another
shot. Pheasant-shooting here is not sport; the birds seldom rise, and
when they do it is almost impossible to get a shot at them in the thick
jungle. One must shoot them running for the pot. Ten or a dozen is not a
bad bag for one gun later in the year, when more snow has fallen.
At a distance the blood-pheasant appears a dowdy bird. The hen is quite
insignificant, but, on a closer acquaintance, the cock shows a delicate
colour-scheme of mauve, pink, and green, which is quite different from
the plumage of any other bird I have seen. The skins fetch a good price
at home, as fishermen find them useful for making flies. A sportsman
who has shot in the Yatung Valley regularly for four years tells me that
the cock-bird of this species is very much more numerous than the hen.
Another Chumbi pheasant is the tracopan, a smaller bird than the minal,
and very beautifully marked. I have not heard of a tracopan being shot
this season; the bird is not at all common anywhere on this side of the
Himalayas.
Snow-partridge sometimes come down to the Lingmathang hills; in the
adjacent Kongbu Valley they are plentiful. These birds are gregarious,
and are found among the large, loose boulders on the hill-tops. In
appearance they are a cross between the British grouse and the
red-legged partridge, having red feet and legs uncovered with feathers,
and a red bill and chocolate breast. The feathers of the back and rump
are white, with broad, defined bars of rich black.
Another common bird is the snow-pigeon. Large flocks of them may be seen
circling about the valley anywhere between Phari and Chumbi. Sometimes,
when we are sitting in our cave after dinner, we hear the tweek of
solitary snipe flying overhead, but we have never flushed any. Every
morning before breakfast I stroll along the river bank with a gun, and
often put up a stray duck. I have frequently seen goosanders on the
river, but not more than two or three in a party. They never leave the
Himalayas. The only migratory duck I have observed are the common teal
and Brahminy or ruddy sheldrake, and these only in pairs. The latter,
though despised on the plains, are quite edible up here. I discredit the
statement that they feed on carrion, as I have never seen one near the
carcasses of the dead transport animals that are only too plentiful in
the valley just now. After comparing notes with other sportsmen, I
conclude that the Ammo Chu Valley is not a regular route for migratory
duck. The odd teal that I shot in February were probably loiterers that
were not strong enough to join in the flight southwards.
Near Lingmathang I shot the ibis bill (_Ibidorhynchus Struthersi_), a
bird which is allied to the oyster catchers. This was the first Central
Asian species I met.
GAUTSA,
_February._
Gautsa, which lies five miles north of Lingmathang, nearly half-way
between Chumbi and Phari, must be added to the map. A week or two ago
the place was deserted and unnamed; it did not boast a single cowherd's
hut. Now it is a busy camp, and likely to be a permanent halting-place
on the road to Phari. The camp lies in a deep, moss-carpeted hollow,
with no apparent egress. On three sides it is flanked by rocky cliffs,
densely forested with pine and silver birch; on the fourth rises an
abrupt wall of rock, which is suffused with a glow of amber light an
hour before sunset. The Ammo Chu, which is here nothing but a 20-foot
stream frozen over at night, bisects the camp. The valley is warm and
sheltered, and escapes much of the bitter wind that never spares Chumbi.
After dinner one prefers the open-air and a camp fire. Officers who have
been up the line before turn into their tents regretfully, for they know
that they are saying good-bye to comfort, and will not enjoy the genial
warmth of a good fire again until they have crossed the bleak Tibetan
tablelands and reached the sparsely-wooded Valley of Gyantse.