A HUMAN MISCELLANY
The Tibetans stood on the roofs of their houses like a row of
cormorants, and watched the doolie pass underneath. At a little distance
it was hard to distinguish the children, so motionless were they, from
the squat praying-flags wrapped in black skin and projecting from the
parapets of the roof. The very babes were impassive and inscrutable.
Beside them perched ravens of an ebony blackness, sleek and well
groomed, and so consequential that they seemed the most human element of
the group.
My Tibetan bearers stopped to converse with a woman on the roof who wore
a huge red hoop in her hair, which was matted and touzled like a
negress's. A child behind was searching it, with apparent success. The
woman asked a question, and the bearers jerked out a few guttural
monosyllables, which she received with indifference. She was not visibly
elated when she heard that the doolie contained the first victim of the
Tibetan arms. I should like to have heard her views on the political
situation and the question of a settlement. Some of her relatives,
perhaps, were killed in the mêlée at the Hot Springs. Others who had
been taken prisoners might be enlisted in the new doolie corps, and
receiving an unexpected wage; others, perhaps, were wounded and being
treated in our hospitals with all the skill and resources of modern
science; or they were bringing in food-stuffs for our troops, or setting
booby-traps for them, and lying in wait behind sangars to snipe them in
the Red Idol Gorge.
The bearers started again; the hot sun and the continued exertion made
them stink intolerably. Every now and then they put down the doolie, and
began discussing their loot--ear-rings and charms, rough turquoises and
ruby-coloured stones, torn from the bodies of the dead and wounded. For
the moment I was tired of Tibet.
I remembered another exodus when I was disgusted with the country. I had
been allured across the Himalayas by the dazzling purity of the snows. I
had escaped the Avernus of the plains, and I might have been content,
but there was the seduction of the snows. I had gained an upper story,
but I must climb on to the roof. Every morning the Sun-god threw open
the magnificent portals of his domain, dazzling rifts and spires, black
cliffs glacier-bitten, the flawless vaulted roof of Kinchenjunga--
'Myriads of topaz lights and jacinth work
Of subtlest jewellery.'
One morning the roof of the Sun-god's palace was clear and cloudless,
but about its base hung little clouds of snow-dust, as though the
Olympians had been holding tourney, and the dust had risen in the tracks
of their chariots. All this was seen over galvanized iron roofs. The
Sun-god had thrown open his palace, and we were playing pitch and toss
on the steps. While I was so engrossed I looked up. Columns of white
cloud were rising to obscure the entrance. Then a sudden shaft of
sunlight broke the fumes. There was a vivid flash, a dazzle of
jewel-work, and the portals closed. I was covered with bashfulness and
shame. It was a direct invitation. I made some excuse to my companion,
said I had an engagement, went straight to my rooms, and packed.
But while the aroma of my carriers insulted the pure air, and their
chatter over their tawdry spoil profaned the silent precincts of
Chumulari, their mountain goddess, I thought more of the disenchantment
of that earlier visit. I remembered sitting on a hillside near a
lamasery, which was surrounded by a small village of Lamas' houses.
Outside the temple a priest was operating on a yak for vaccine. He had
bored a large hole in the shoulder, into which he alternately buried his
forearm and squirted hot water copiously. A hideous yellow trickle
beneath indicated that the poor beast was entirely perforated. A crowd
of admiring little boys and girls looked on with relish. The smell of
the poor yak was distressing, but the smell of the Lama was worse. I
turned away in disgust--turned my back contentedly and without regret on
the mysterious land and the road to the Forbidden City. At that moment,
if the Dalai Lama himself had sent me a chaise with a dozen outriders
and implored me to come, I would not have visited him, not for a
thousand yaks. The scales of vagabondage fell from my eyes; the spirit
of unrest died within me. I had a longing for fragrant soap, snowy white
linen, fresh-complexioned ladies and clean-shaven, well-groomed men.
And here again I was returning very slowly to civilization; but I was
coming back with half an army corps to shake the Dalai Lama on his
throne--or if there were no throne or Dalai Lama, to do what? I wondered
if the gentlemen sitting snugly in Downing Street had any idea.
At Phari I was snow-bound for a week, and there were no doolie-bearers.
The Darjeeling dandy-wallahs were no doubt at the front, where they were
most wanted, as the trained army doolie corps are plainsmen, who can
barely breathe, much less work, at these high elevations. At last we
secured some Bhutias who were returning to the front.
The Bhutia is a type I have long known, though not in the capacity of
bearer. These men regarded the doolie with the invalid inside as a piece
of baggage that had to be conveyed from one camp to another, no matter
how. Of the art of their craft they knew nothing, but they battled with
the elements so stoutly that one forgave them their awkwardness. They
carried me along mountain-paths so slippery that a mule could find no
foothold, through snow so deep and clogging that with all their toil
they could make barely half a mile an hour; and they took shelter once
from a hailstorm in which exposure without thick head-covering might
have been fatal. Often they dropped the doolie, sometimes on the edge of
a precipice, in places where one perspired with fright; they collided
quite unnecessarily with stones and rocks; but they got through, and
that was the main point. Men who have carried a doolie over a difficult
mountain-pass (14,350 feet), slipping and stumbling through snow and ice
in the face of a hurricane of wind, deserve well of the great Raj which
they serve.
On the road into Darjeeling, owing to the absence of trained
doolie-bearers, I met a human miscellany that I am not likely to forget.
Eight miles beyond the Jelap lies the fort of Gnatong, whence there is a
continual descent to the plains of India. The neighbouring hills and
valleys had been searched for men; high wages were offered, and at last
from some remote village in Sikkim came a dozen weedy Lepchas, simian in
appearance, and of uncouth speech, who understood no civilized tongue.
They had never seen a doolie, but in default of better they were
employed. It was nobody's fault; bearers must be had, and the
profession was unpopular. I was their 'first job.' I settled myself
comfortably, all unconscious of my impending fate. They started off with
a wild whoop, threw the doolie up in the air, caught it on their
shoulders, and played cup and ball with the contents until they were
tired. I swore at them in Spanish, English, and Hindustani, but it was
small relief, as they didn't take the slightest notice, and I had
neither hands to beat them nor feet to kick them over the _khud_. My
orderly followed and told them in a mild North-Country accent that they
would be punished if they did it again; there is some absurd army
regulation about British soldiers striking followers. For all they knew,
he was addressing the stars. They dropped the thing a dozen times in ten
miles, and thought it the hugest joke in the world. I shall shy at a
hospital doolie for the rest of my natural life.
There is a certain Mongol smell which is the most unpleasant human odour
I know. It is common to Lepchas, Bhutanese, and Tibetans, but it is
found in its purest essence in these low-country, cross-bred Lepchas,
who were my close companions for two days. When we reached the heat of
the valley, they jumped into the stream and bathed, but they emerged
more unsavoury than ever. It was a relief to pass a dead mule. At the
next village they got drunk, after which they developed an amazing
surefootedness, and carried me in without mishap.
After two days with my Lepchas we reached Rungli (2,000 feet), whence
the road to the plains is almost level. Here a friend introduced me to a
Jemadar in a Gurkha regiment.
'He writes all about our soldiers and the fighting in Tibet,' he said.
'It all goes home to England on the telegraph-wire, and people at home
are reading what he says an hour or two after he has given _khubber_ to
the office here.'
'Oh yes,' said the Jemadar in Hindustani, 'and if things are well the
people in England will be very glad; and if we are ill and die, and
there is too much cold, they will be very sorry.'
The Jemadar smiled. He was most sincere and sympathetic. If an
Englishman had said the same thing, he would have been thought
half-witted, but Orientals have a way of talking platitudes as if they
were epigrams.
The Jemadar's speech was so much to the point that it called up a little
picture in my mind of the London Underground and a liveried official
dealing out _Daily Mails_ to crowds of inquirers anxious for news of
Tibet. Only the sun blazed overhead and the stream made music at our
feet.
I left the little rest-hut in the morning, resigned to the inevitable
jolting, and expecting another promiscuous collection of humanity to do
duty as _kahars_. But, to my great joy, I found twelve Lucknow
doolie-wallahs waiting by the veranda, lithe and erect, and part of a
drilled corps. Drill discipline is good, but in the art of their trade
these men needed no teaching. For centuries their ancestors had carried
palanquins in the plains, bearing Rajas and ladies of high estate,
perhaps even the Great Mogul himself. The running step to their strange
rhythmic chants must be an instinct to them. That morning I knew my
troubles were at an end. They started off with steps of velvet,
improvising as they went a kind of plaintive song like an intoned
litany.
The leading man chanted a dimeter line, generally with an iambus in the
first foot; but when the road was difficult or the ascent toilsome, the
metre became trochaic, in accordance with the best traditions of
classical poetry. The hind-men responded with a sing-song trochaic
dimeter which sounded like a long-drawn-out monosyllable. They never
initiated anything. It was not custom; it had never been done. The laws
of Nature are not so immutable as the ritual of a Hindu guild.
We sped on smoothly for eight miles, and when I asked the _kahars_ if
they were tired, they said they would not rest, as relays were waiting
on the road. All the way they chanted their hymn of the obvious:--
'Mountains are steep;
_Chorus_: Yes, they are.
The road is narrow;
Yes, it is.
The sahib is wounded;
That is so.
With many wounds;
They are many.
The road goes down;
Yes, it does.
Now we are hurrying;
Yes, we are.'
Here they ran swiftly till the next rise in the hill.
Waiting in the shade for relays, I heard two Englishmen meet on the
road. One had evidently been attached, and was going down to join his
regiment; the other was coming up on special service. I caught fragments
of our crisp expressive argot.
_Officer going down_ (_apparently disillusioned_): 'Oh, it's the same
old bald-headed maidan we usually muddle into.'
_Officer coming up_: '... Up above Phari ideal country for native
cavalry, isn't it?... A few men with lances prodding those fellows in
the back would soon put the fear of God into them. Why don't they send
up the --th Light Cavalry?'
_Officer going down_: 'They've Walers, and you can't feed 'em, and the
--th are all Jats. They're no good; can't do without a devil of a lot of
milk. They want bucketsful of it. Well, bye-bye; you'll soon get fed up
with it.'
The doolie was hitched up, and the _kahars_ resumed their chant:
'A sahib goes up;
Yes, he does.
A sahib goes down;
That is so.'
The heat and the monotonous cadence induced drowsiness, and one fell to
thinking of this odd motley of men, all of one genus, descended from the
anthropoid ape, and exhibiting various phases of evolution--the
primitive Lepcha, advanced little further than his domestic dog; the
Tibetan _kahar_ caught in the wheel of civilization, and forming part of
the mechanism used to bring his own people into line; the Lucknow
doolie-bearer and the Jemadar Sahib, products of a hoary civilization
that have escaped complexity and nerves; and lord of all these, by
virtue of his race, the most evolved, the English subaltern. All these
folk are brought together because the people on the other side of the
hills will insist on being obsolete anachronisms, who have been asleep
for hundreds of years while we have been developing the sense of our
duty towards our neighbour. They must come into line; it is the will of
the most evolved.
The next day I was carried for miles through a tropical forest. The damp
earth sweated in the sun after last night's thunder-storm, and the
vegetation seemed to grow visibly in the steaming moisture. Gorgeous
butterflies, the epicures of a season, came out to indulge a love of
sunshine and suck nectar from all this profusion. Overhead, birds
shrieked and whistled and beat metal, and did everything but sing. The
cicadas raised a deafening din in praise of their Maker, seeming to
think, in their natural egoism, that He had made the forest, oak, and
gossamer for their sakes. We were not a thousand feet above the sea.
Thousands of feet above us, where we were camping a day or two ago, our
troops were marching through snow.
The next morning we crossed the Tista River, and the road led up through
sal forests to a tea-garden at 3,500 feet. Here we entered the most
perfect climate in the world, and I enjoyed genial hospitality and a
foretaste of civilization: a bed, sheets, a warm bath, clean linen,
fruit, sparkling soda, a roomy veranda with easy-chairs, and outside
roses and trellis-work, and a garden bright with orchids and
wild-turmeric and a profusion of semi-tropical and English flowers--all
the things which the spoilt children of civilization take as a matter of
course, because they have never slept under the stars, or known what it
is to be hungry and cold, or exhausted by struggling against the forces
of untamed Nature.
At noon next day, in the cantonments at Jelapahar, an officer saw a
strange sight--a field-hospital doolie with the red cross, and twelve
_kahars_, Lucknow men, whose plaintive chant must have recalled old days
on the North-West frontier. Behind on a mule rode a British orderly of
the King's Own Scottish Borderers, bearded and weather-stained, and
without a trace of the spick-and-spanness of cantonments. I saw the
officer's face lighten; he became visibly excited; he could not restrain
himself--he swung round, rode after my orderly, and began to question
him without shame. Here was civilization longing for the wilderness, and
over there, beyond the mist, under that snow-clad peak, were men in the
wilderness longing for civilization.
A cloud swept down and obscured the Jelap, as if the chapter were
closed. But it is not. That implacable barrier must be crossed again,
and then, when we have won the most secret places of the earth, we may
cry with Burton and his Arabs, 'Voyaging is victory!'