Arrived at Jalpaiguri I had to wait there a day for my elephant and pony, which were accompanied by my butler and a sepoy orderly, as well as the mahout and a syce; so that with Draj Khan, who was already with me, I had quite a following. Jalpaiguri is built on the west bank of the broad Tista River, which flows from Sikkim through the Himalayas to the plains of Bengal. The civil Station contains the usual Anglo-Indian community of such a town, the deputy commissioner, a judge, a settlement officer, a Public Works Department engineer, a police officer and a few more Europeans. There are no troops there. The engineer who had visited me at Buxa, which was in his charge, kindly offered me the shelter of his bungalow; and I was hospitably entertained by everyone in the Station. I came in for a very merry dinner-party given at the club by a number of planters of the neighbourhood to two members of their community who were leaving India for England. Near midnight we escorted the guests to the railway station and considerably delayed the mail train by our lengthy good-byes and parting libations. In vain the stationmaster, the guard, and the engine-driver in turn stormed, argued, and pleaded with the two departing planters to take their seats and let the train start. Sleepy and irate English passengers put their heads out of the carriage windows and cursed the causes of the delay. One of our party had to be stopped by main force from pouring a whisky-and-soda into the interior mechanism of what he declared to be "a poor thirsty engine that nobody thought of offering a drink to." The native stationmaster, torn between his dread of official reprimand for delaying the mail and his fear of displeasing the Sahibs of his town, almost wept as he implored the party to end their farewells and let the train depart.
My transport having arrived that night I continued on my way next morning. I had to cross the Tista, which here, though the banks were more than a mile or a mile and a half apart, was at that season shrunk to a stream half a mile in breadth flowing between wide stretches of sand, over which I rode on my pony to reach the ferryboat. This was a broad, flat-bottomed craft, loaded with natives, cattle, bullocks and a cart which carried the baggage and camp equipment of a civil official going out to tour his district. The cart was festooned with wicker crates containing hens and ducks destined to supply "master's dinner in jungle," as the servant in charge informed me. With sail, oar and pole the ferry-boat made its way across the stream, until it reached a wide stretch of sand lying between the water and the bank. My pony, after much urging, jumped out; and I mounted. I had ridden four or five hundred yards when the animal stopped suddenly and its legs began to sink. To my horror I found that we were in a quicksand. The pony plunged and struggled wildly. I slipped from the saddle to ease it of my weight and sank at once up to my knees. Visions of a horrible death engulfed in the yielding mass of sand flashed across me as I struggled against the invisible monster that seemed to clutch me and drag me down. Luckily the pony got its forefeet on to firmer ground and fought its way out of the quicksand, pulling me out with it by the reins to which I clung. It stood terrified and quivering while I tried to soothe it. Fifty yards away was a group of natives who had been watching the incident phlegmatically and had made no move to come to our help. When I was safe they called out to me.
"That is a very dangerous place, Sahib. A cow was swallowed up there the other day."
Having told them forcibly what I thought of them for not warning me in time, I cautiously led my pony forward to the firm earth bank, which I was delighted to reach after the treacherous sand. Here the road to Alipur Duar began again. I swung myself into the saddle and continued my sketch on horseback, thus covering the ground much more quickly than on the first days. I was able to get my measurements by having previously counted the number of paces my pony took to cover a distance of a hundred yards at a trot.
In the old days knowledge of map-making was, in the army, confined to the Royal Engineers. A late inspector-general of fortifications, General Sir Richard Harrison, R.E., told me that in the China War of 1860 only two officers, he and Captain, afterwards Lord, Wolseley, in the Anglo-Indian Army there could make a military sketch, and very few others were able to understand it when made. Nowadays every officer can map any country and during the drill season is called upon to furnish at least one sketch. The civil engineers brought out in 1905-6 to Hong Kong to survey the route of the railway to Canton told me that in the British Hinterland they made no maps, and contented themselves with such annual military sketches of the country done by officers of the garrison. And these they found accurate enough for railway laying. The task that I was now engaged on, which was for the purpose of revising the military route-book of Eastern Bengal, was set me as part of my ordinary work; I being the nearest available officer.
The country through which my road lay for the next sixty miles was open, level, and well-cultivated, dotted with groves of feathery bamboos and the typical, compact, thatched villages and farm-buildings of Bengal. As usual, in India, the fields were not divided by hedges or any obstacles. Even at that season of the year the country-side looked green, in striking contrast to other parts of the land then when the hot weather was drawing near. And always along and parallel to my route lay the wall of the mountains thirty or forty miles away, rising abruptly from the plains in a confused jumble of rugged hills overtopping each other until they culminated in the long white crest of Kinchinjunga, which now and then at sunset or dawn towered over them all above the clouds and seemed to float detached in the sky.
At the first dâk bungalow which sheltered me after leaving Jalpaiguri we had a splendid view of this magnificent mountain; and I overheard my orderly, Draj Khan, who had been with me in Darjeeling and had seen it from there, explaining to the Rajput sepoy with us that it was composed entirely of ice. The latter, a man from the sandy deserts of Bikanir, never having seen snow or more ice than a small lump in some native liquor-dealer's shop in the bazaar, refused to believe Draj's statement and appealed to me. I found it no easy task to explain the mystery of the Everlasting Snows to the intellect of this more or less untutored savage; and I fear that he understood me even less than he did Draj Khan's explanation. Natural physical phenomena that we accept as articles of belief we find not so easy to make clear to the minds of uneducated people. The Pathan subhedar-major of my regiment rejected my account of the causes of earthquakes in favour of his own theory that they arise from the movements of a dragon slumbering in the centre of the earth and occasionally shaking itself or turning round in its sleep.
I found my journey day by day along the road interesting from the many types of natives whom I passed. Brown-skinned peasants, many clad simply in a cotton cloth wound round the waist and between the legs, and puggris tied loosely about their heads, saluted me respectfully as I rode by. Native women, nose-ringed and glass-braceletted, modestly drew their saris over their dark faces to hide their problematical beauty from my profane gaze. Naked little brown urchins with them stopped to gaze, finger in mouth, at the Sahib and scampered off in simulated fear when I waved my hand to them, but halted at a safe distance to wave back laughingly. Bearded Mohammedans uttered a "Salaam Aleikoum"[8] and grinned with pleasure at the correct reply "Aleikoum salaam."[9] Groups of lean-shanked jungle-dwellers shuffled by, the men unencumbered, the ragged women laden with cooking-pots, babies, and other possessions. Once or twice I passed a tall, stately Pathan, long-haired and hook-nosed, clad in baggy trousers, gold-laced velvet waistcoat and voluminous turban. These gave me a cheery salutation, with no trace of servility; for the Pathan is of a haughty race and thinks himself any man's equal. These individuals had wandered far from their homes among the mountains beyond the North-West Frontier to make small fortunes as usurers among the simple peasants of Bengal. Small boys herding cattle drove their black buffaloes to one side of the road to let me pass, fearlessly beating with shrill cries the savage-looking animals which seemed inclined to charge my pony. Heavy carts, their wheels solid discs of wood, drawn by stolid white bullocks, lumbered noisily along, the drivers twisting the byles' tails to accelerate their speed. Although I was in so-called disaffected Eastern Bengal I met with no rudeness or black looks; for the sedition carefully fostered among the feather-headed young Bengali students has not affected the simple cultivators of the soil, who still respect the white man and look confidently to the Sahibs for justice. Even well-fed babus on the road stopped and closed their umbrellas, a native sign of respect, and were always ready to answer my questions or enter into a chat.
Every day after completing ten or twelve miles of my sketch I halted at a dâk bungalow or pitched my tent. My servants and elephant had usually arrived before me; and I found my breakfast of biscuit, tinned meat and tea, occasionally supplemented by eggs from the nearest village, awaiting me. My orderly, scouting on ahead on my bicycle, had sought for information of sport; and, if the prospects of it were good, I took my gun or rifle and went out in search of something to shoot. But in such well-cultivated country there was very little game.
At one village near which I halted for the night I heard that a man-eating tiger was lurking in the neighbourhood. It had killed two natives on the road within the week. Of course I went out to look for it, but with scant hope of finding it, as I could only stay a day in the place. Mounting my elephant I started after breakfast and beat through all the small patches of jungle for miles round and along the banks of a small stream flowing by the village. But, though I hunted until after dusk, I found no traces of it, and returned disappointed to the dâk bungalow.