FROM UMBALLAH TO SIMLA.—EXCURSION AMONG THE HIMALAYAS.
It was nine o'clock in the evening when our friends reached Umballah, and they wisely concluded not to begin their journey till the following morning. They found that the carriages would be ready at daylight, and so they retired early in the hotel attached to the railway-station, and had a comfortable sleep. They were called in good season, and by the time their breakfast was finished the baggage had been piled on the top of the vehicles that were to carry them. With the first streak of dawn they were off.
THE DAWK GARRY.
Two garries had been engaged—one for the Doctor alone, and the other for the boys. They were not unlike the vehicles they had already seen in the cities of India, except that they were larger and stronger, in order to adapt them to the rough travel of the mountains. Each carriage is capable of carrying two persons of medium size, and it is arranged so that a bed can be made up on the floor in case of night journeys. For all journeys away from the railways the dawk garry is in universal use, where the roads will permit, and in the days before the completion of the railway across India it was indispensable. It is not a very comfortable conveyance, but a vast improvement on no conveyance at all.
Three horses were attached to each garry, one between the shafts, and one on each side of him. They rattled along at a very fair pace, as the road was good, and the drivers were anxious to finish the journey as soon as possible. There were a good many jolts on account of mud-holes or other inequalities, but, on the whole, the progress was satisfactory, and the boys enjoyed the ride immensely. About every six miles they changed horses; and as there is a good deal of travel on the route, and the carriage company understands its business, the changes were made very quickly.
HORSEBACK-RIDE IN THE HIMALAYAS.
For the first forty miles the road was level, as it lay along the flat valley of the Ganges. They reached Kalka, which is at the base of the foot-hills, and then began to ascend toward Simla. Until a few years ago there was no carriage road beyond Kalka, and travellers were obliged to ride on ponies or be carried by men, and sometimes at present the supply of horses is exhausted, and the old method must be resorted to. When the rush begins for Simla in the early summer there are not sufficient horses for the service, and unless a visitor has made his arrangements beforehand he will be compelled to adopt human locomotion, while others, more fortunate, ride in the rapid garry.
There is a considerable variety of vehicles for man-transport, including the palanquin, sedan-chair, and dhoolie, which have been mentioned already. The conveyances which were new to the eyes of the boys were the bareilly dandy, and the jampan; and while they were looking at them the Doctor said they must get well into the mountains to see another, the ton-jon.
A BAREILLY DANDY.
The bareilly dandy is a cane chair in an oval frame that extends into a pole at each end, and for the convenience of the rider the chair is made to incline a little backward. Four bearers carry the burden, and are relieved at frequent intervals, so that eight men are required for a journey, besides the additional torch-bearers and other attachés. For mountain travel it is desirable to have each team composed of two tall and two short men; in going uphill the short ones take the front position, so that the chair may be kept nearly level, and the arrangement is reversed during a descent. The jampan is much like the dandy, with the addition of a cover like an umbrella, to keep off the heat in the sunshine and the water during a shower or storm.
A TON-JON.
The ton-jon is used in the roughest parts of the mountains, where the dandy and jampan cannot go, and is a very simple contrivance. The largest and strongest of the mountaineers are alone capable of performing the service, and their pay is equal to that of four ordinary men who carry a palanquin or similar vehicle. The ton-jon is a cane chair, strapped to the back of a man, and held in place by a broad band over the forehead; he carries a stout staff, on which he rests his load occasionally; and his pace is very slow, as it must of necessity be sure. A fall would be a serious matter both to himself and his burden, and he takes good care that it does not occur. After reaching Simla the boys had an hour's experience with the ton-jon, and were quite satisfied not to have an extension of time.
"A little ton-jon goes a great way," said Frank, as he descended from his chair.
"Yes," responded Fred, "that may be; but a large one does not go a great way in the time we have had it, and the little one would easily beat it without much exertion."
Frank immediately turned the conversation to something else.
While ascending the hills a few miles out of Kalka, our friends overtook a gentleman they had met on the railway train, and who had given them much valuable information. He was walking behind his garry, which was heavily laden with the materials for a hunting-excursion in the Himalayas, and carried his rifle on his shoulder, in the hope of seeing something worth shooting. He was enjoying his pipe, and his two servants were evidently inclined to follow his example, as they were smoking their hubble-bubbles, and seemed to enjoy them. The hubble-bubble is a curious contrivance, and about as uncomfortable an apparatus for smoking as could well be imagined. It is made as follows:
Two eyes of a cocoa-nut shell are pierced, and through them the meat is carefully extracted. The stein of an upright pipe is inserted in one of the eyes, and carried almost to the bottom of the shell; the stem and bowl of the pipe are at least a foot long, so that when in use the fire is above the level of the smoker's head. The shell is half filled with water; fire is placed on the tobacco in the bowl, and the smoker applies his mouth directly to the hole in the shell or to a short stem protruding from it. The bubbling noise of the smoke as it rises through the water gives the name to the pipe.
Their new acquaintance was Captain Whitney, an officer in the English service in India, and a hunter who had considerable renown among his fellow-officers. While on the railway train he had asked the Doctor to call on him in Simla, and he now renewed the invitation, which was promptly accepted; and the light garries moved briskly on, while the heavy one proceeded leisurely.
VIEW OF THE HIMALAYAS.
Up and up they went, and steeper and steeper grew the road. Simla was reached in due time, and proved to be a pleasant town in the mountains at an elevation of about 7000 feet above the level of the sea. It stands on a long ridge that affords a fine view of the Himalayas, though not of the highest peaks. It was bought, with the section of country around it, in the year 1822, from the native state of Keonthal, and has since been occupied as a sanitarium by the Government. In 1866 Simla was made the seat of the Government of India during the summer months: from April to October the viceroy lives there, and the Government orders and official documents are dated at Simla instead of Calcutta. The movement of the Court brings a large number of Europeans to the little town in the mountains, and for half the year it is crowded to its utmost capacity, while during the other half it is almost deserted.
There are several of these summer resorts in the Himalayas, and the most of them are under Government patronage. Mussoorie, Landour, Nynee Thal, and Darjeeling are among the most noted, and there are others of smaller celebrity. For a long time Darjeeling was the most important, as it was the nearest to Calcutta; but the construction of the railway has brought the others into notice.
Darjeeling is about 300 miles from the capital, and can be easily reached at present, as a railway was opened in 1878 to within twenty miles of its doors. It is about the elevation of Simla, but has the advantage over the latter that the summits of some of the highest peaks of the Himalayas are plainly visible, and in clear weather they appear only a few miles away. The highest peak of all is Mount Everest, 29,000 feet above the sea-level, and claimed as the loftiest mountain in the world; it is not visible from the town itself, owing to an intervening ridge; but can be seen from several points in the neighborhood. The great mountains visible from Darjeeling are Kunchinginga, second to Mount Everest, and then Junnoo and Kubra, each more than 23,000 feet high. Altogether there are twelve peaks, each more than 20,000 feet high, to be seen at a single glance from the public square of Darjeeling, besides many other little fellows of 10,000 or 12,000 feet. There is no town on the globe with such a magnificent mountain view as this.
GATHERING TEA-LEAVES IN INDIA.
The foot-hills of the Himalayas are admirably adapted to the cultivation of tea, and a great many tea plantations have been established there. On the road from Calcutta to Darjeeling many plantations are passed, and the business of tea culture is increasing every year. The forests of the lower slopes of the mountains are fast disappearing, to make way for the less picturesque tea-plant, and the export of the product amounts to many ship-loads annually. The system of cultivation was introduced from China by the East India Company. The tea-leaves are gathered by women, and it is not unusual to see a woman at work in the field with her baby near her, in a basket, shaded by a friendly bush.
Our friends found a comfortable hotel at Simla, and proceeded at once to learn all they could of the Himalayas. Their new acquaintance, Captain Whitney, was at the same hotel, and proved a most admirable companion and entertainer, as he was able to enlighten the boys on many topics of interest. For a whole day they were kept in doors by a sudden and violent storm, and even on the second day the wind and snow had not subsided sufficiently to enable them to stir out to any advantage. The captain was an excellent talker, and the Doctor and the boys were equally good listeners; with this combination of qualifications the quartette was satisfactorily composed, and got along finely.
A MODEL COOK.
On the second morning of their stay Frank took a stroll around the premises while waiting for their early breakfast, and came back with a sketch of the cook at work. He had discovered that worthy engaged in toasting bread, and holding the toasting-fork between his toes, while he grasped his hubble-bubble pipe with both hands. Frank had observed that the natives make many uses of their toes that are unknown to the Occident, but this way of holding a toasting-fork was quite a new sensation.
The boys observed that they were among a new race of men, as there were many of the inhabitants of Simla that had a stronger resemblance to the Chinese than to the people of the plains of India. Captain Whitney told them that the great majority of the hill natives were of Tartar origin, and farther up in the mountains they were hardly to be distinguished from Chinese. Many of them wear their hair in cues, or pig-tails, and their dress is of the Chinese pattern. There are many different tribes of these mountain people, and some of them are not on friendly terms with the English. Hardly a year passes without a war in some part of the mountains, and for twenty years past the principal occupation of the English army in India has been to keep the hill tribes in order. On the extreme north the Afghans have made themselves heard from in recent days, and they may be regarded as the most powerful of all the dwellers in the region of the Himalayas.
CLIMBING-PLANT IN THE HIMALAYAS.
A great many people from Thibet and Nepaul come to the mountain towns of India, partly from curiosity, but mainly for the purpose of making money. They bring the products of those countries to exchange for English goods, and in the seasons when the mountain passes are open they may be seen in considerable numbers in Simla, Darjeeling, and the other fashionable resorts.
As soon as the weather cleared up an excursion among the mountains was arranged by the Doctor, to the great delight of the youths. Mounted on shaggy ponies, they started at an early hour in the morning, and had an exhilarating ride among the gorges and beneath the shadows of the rugged peaks of the second range of mountains. The forests were dense and luxuriant, and sometimes they were an hour or more where little else could be seen than the trees and climbing-plants attached to them. In one place they narrowly escaped a fall down a rocky slope, where a few months before an Englishman was killed, owing to a misstep of his pony. Accidents of this kind are by no means rare, and hardly a year passes without the death of one or more adventurous tourists.
The flora changed as they ascended; the vegetation of the tropics disappeared and was replaced by that of the temperate zone, and with each hundred feet of elevation there was a perceptible change in the temperature. Occasionally they saw some curious climbing-plants that had thrown out numerous tendrils, like arms, around the trunk of a tree, and clung to it with an embrace that could not be shaken off. The tracks of tigers and leopards were visible now and then, and the guide entertained the boys with an account of how a tiger a short time before had rushed upon a travelling party, and carried away one of the servants under the very eyes of his affrighted companions. Every little while a troop of monkeys showed itself, and when they were not visible their chattering was heard among the trees. Peacocks and wild turkeys were encountered, and one of the former was shot by the Doctor and secured by the guide, who said it would make an excellent dish for dinner.
A little before sunset they came in sight of one of the tall peaks of the range, and about dusk the guide brought them to a village where they were to pass the night. It was so cold that all the bed coverings they could get together were insufficient to keep them warm, and in spite of their fatigue they were out long before daylight and ready for the return to Simla. The boys would have been quite willing to undertake the ascent of one of the mountains of the Himalayas, but the party was not equipped for such a journey, and besides, their time would not permit. So they reluctantly turned their backs on the snow-clad mountains, and returned by the way they came.
DOOR OF A TEMPLE, AND PRAYING-MACHINES.
The guide told the boys that if they had had a week to spare he could have taken them among the loftiest mountains of that part of the range and shown them many curious things. He described a Buddhist temple in one of the passes where there were about sixty priests, or lamas, whose chief business was to offer prayers for the safety of travellers, provided they were sufficiently paid for their work. They had an easy way of saying prayers by means of a prayer-mill; it consisted of a cylinder like a small barrel, and was turned by a string fastened to a crooked handle. Every revolution of the cylinder was equivalent to a repetition of the prayer contained in it, and a skilful operator was able to turn out a great many prayers in a short time. Frank said they had seen the same thing in Japan at the entrance of one of the temples in Tokio, as well as in several other places, and the guide added that sometimes the prayers were attached to a small windmill, or to a water-wheel, so that the petition could be repeated many times while the priest in charge of it was sound asleep.
SADDLE-OXEN IN THE HIMALAYAS.
He had hoped to show them some of the saddle-oxen of the Himalayas, but in this he was disappointed, as they did not happen to meet any of them during their journeys. These oxen are the small sturdy animals of the mountains, and though they are no larger than a two-year-old steer in America, they can carry a load of two or three hundred pounds without difficulty. The Buddhist priests at the mountain temples keep several of these oxen, and in parts of the Himalayas they are preferred to other beasts of burden.
The boys were greatly interested in the description of a Thibetan train from the salt-mines on the northern side of the Himalayas, in which every animal that can carry a load is pressed into the service. First comes a string of yaks, or buffaloes, peculiar to the mountain regions, and each of them has a cargo of two hundred pounds of salt, in addition to the pots and pans used in the camps, and possibly a baby or two in a basket hanging at the animal's side. Then comes a long file of sheep and goats, and each of them carries a bag of salt on his back; behind these quiet beasts of burden are two or three huge dogs of a peculiar breed, with long shaggy hair, and with noses flattened in so that they are almost like no noses at all. Every dog carries a bag of salt, and so does every one of the children that bring up the rear of the caravan. The only animals of the train exempt from service are the cats; their freedom from labor is secured, not from any tenderness on the part of their owners, but from the antipathy of the cat to working under the pack-saddle.
A THIBETAN DOG.