CHAPTER XIV
DEHRA DUN AND LANDOUR
A grey squirrel dropped from the roof on to the table, scrambled over the papers beside the magistrate's hand, and scampered away into the adjoining room.
I was sitting in the Deputy-Magistrate's Court at Dehra Dun, waiting beside the D.-M., while he discussed a matter of land compensation with a stout gentleman in gold-rimmed spectacles, and I learned that "Government" pays compensation of fifteen per cent. plus the market-value, of land taken for engineering works. Our chairs were upon a raised part of the floor, divided from the other two-thirds of the room by a wooden railing, behind which a number of people waited audience, and among them I noticed the round face of a little Goorkha Subadar, with the silver badge of crossed knives on his forage cap. Dehra Dun is the headquarters of the Goorkhas, and, thanks to the kindness of Colonel Crommelin, I was able to see the smart bayonet practice and physical drill of the Second Battalion of the 9th Goorkha Rifles.
Among the military forces, however, a mountain battery interested me most. Dehra Dun is not, of course, a hill station, but there is plenty of hilly ground close to it, and this No. 32 Battery was put through its paces for my benefit on a steep piece of rocky ground, the mules kicking and bucking like creatures possessed.
The guns, painted a pale coffee colour, are worked by Punjabis, and one of these posed for me to paint him in the blazing sun with extraordinary patience. I was told that these troops very rarely suffer from sunstroke, but that when some of them went to China a regular epidemic of heat apoplexy was experienced, due probably in large part to the power of suggestion aroused by two or three cases of such an unusual trouble.
In his khaki turban the Punjabi wears a roll or crest of scarlet cloth which glows far more brightly in the sun than can be represented on canvas. Beside this burning red the most brilliant tint I could command was as far from the true pitch as the dry watercourse in the valley was different from its flooded aspect after rain.
It is not only the Punjabi turban that cries gaiety aloud at Dehra Dun. I saw the dak tree here which bears large scarlet blossoms, and when in flower finely justifies its popular name of "Flame of the Forest." There are many kinds of trees to make the Dun beautiful, and when I started early one February morning for Mussoorie I drove in a tumtum at first through tall bamboos, eucalyptus, fir trees, mangoes, sal, peepul, plum, cherry and a host of others. Before me the great foothills of the Himalayas blushed warm and rosy, and along the crest of the higher ridges above, the white houses of Mussoorie showed in streaks and lines and patches as if a little snow had remained unmelted after a recent fall. I passed the tents of the X-Ray Institute of India and drove steadily on to Rajpur, gradually acquiring a considerable escort of boys from that village mounted on ponies, which they urged me to engage for the ascent to Mussoorie.
Rajpur consists of one long straggling street of small shops, and here I left the tumtum and hired two coolies, to carry my baggage, and a horse for myself. On this road I passed again and again living embodiments of toil—men carrying baulks of timber on their backs. They looked almost dramatically terrible, not like Leighton's exultant Samson bearing the doors of the city gate in triumph to the hilltop, but weary in mute submission to the burden of mortality.
In this matter of bearing burdens of physical material weight the part is played with more universal similarity even than that of going without food. Jean François Millet was reproached with painting his men carrying a calf on a litter as if they were carrying the Host, but the truth is—as he explained in one of his letters—the expression of men carrying depends upon the weight, and whether they had the Ark of the Covenant or a calf, a lump of gold or a stone, the same expression would be the result; the weight of timber was just near enough to breaking strain for these men's bodily tension to produce an air of slow solemn travail impressive as a religious penance and appealing as an heroic endurance.