From Egypt to Japan

by Henry M. Field

One attraction is the Girls' School, which we might almost call the missionary flower of India. The building, which would be a "Seminary" at home, stands in the midst of ample grounds, where, in the intervals of study, the inmates can find healthful exercise. The pupils are mostly the daughters of native Christians—converted Hindoos or Mohammedans. Some are orphans, or have been forsaken by their parents, and have thus fallen to the care of an institution which is more to them than their natural fathers and mothers. Many of these young girls had very sweet faces, and all were as modest and well behaved as the girls I have seen in any similar institution in our own country. Some are adopted by friends in America, who engage to provide for their education. Wishing to have a part in this good work, we looked about the school till we picked out the veriest morsel of a creature, as small as Dickens's Tiny Tim—but whose eyes were very bright, and her mind as active as her body was frail, and C—— thereupon adopted her and paid down a hundred rupees for a year's board and teaching. She is by birth a Mohammedan, but will be trained up as a Christian. She is very winning in her ways; and, dear me, when the little creature crept up into my lap, and looked up into my face with her great black eyes, it was such an appeal for love and protection as I could not resist; and when she put her thin arms around my neck, I felt richer than if I had been encircled with one of those necklaces of pearl, which the Rajahs were just then throwing around the neck of the Prince of Wales.

Our last day was spent in a visit to the tea plantations. The culture of tea has been introduced into India within a few years, and portions of the country are found so favorable that the tea is thought by many equal to that imported from China. Mr. Woodside took us out in a carriage a few miles, when we left the road and crossed the fields on the back of an elephant, which is a better "coigne of vantage" than the back of a horse, as the rider is lifted up higher into the air, and in passing under trees can stretch out his hand (as we did) and pick blossoms and birds' nests from the branches; but there is a rolling motion a little too much like "life on an ocean wave," and if it were not for the glory of the thing I confess I should rather have under me some steady old trotter, such as I have had at home, or even one of the little donkeys with which we used to amble about the streets of Cairo. But there are times when one would prefer the elephant, as if he should chance to meet a tiger! The beast we were riding this morning was an old tiger hunter, that had often been out in the jungle, and as he marched off, seemed as if he would like nothing better than to smell his old enemy. In a deadly combat the tiger has the advantage in quickness of motion, and can spring upon the elephant's neck, but if the latter can get his trunk around him he is done for, for he is instantly dashed to the ground, and trampled to death under the monster's feet. We had no occasion to test his courage, though, if what we heard was true, he might have found game not far off, for a native village through which we passed was just then in terror because of a tiger who had lately come about and carried off several bullocks only a few days before, and they had sent to Mr. Bell, a tea planter whom we met later in the day, to come and shoot him. He told me he would come willingly, but that the natives were of a low caste, who had not the Hindoos' horror of touching such food, and devoured the half eaten bullock. If, he said, they would only let the carcass alone, the tiger always comes back, and he would plant himself in some post of observation, and with a rifle which never failed would soon relieve them of their terrible enemy.

After an hour of this cross-country riding, our elephant drew up before the door of a large house; a ladder was brought, and we clambered down his sides. Just then we heard the sharp cracks of a gun, and the planter came in, saying that he had been picking off monkeys which were a little troublesome in his garden. This was Mr. Nelson, one of the largest planters in the valley, with whom we had engaged to take tiffin. He took us over his plantation, which is laid out on a grand scale, many acres being set in rows with the tea plant, which is a small shrub, about as large as a gooseberry bush, from which the leaves are carefully picked. The green tea is not a different plant from the black tea, but only differently prepared. From the plantation we were taken to the roasting-house, where the tea lay upon the floor in great heaps, like heaps of grain; and where it is subjected to a variety of processes, to prepare it for use or for exportation. It is first "wilted" in large copper pans or ovens; then "rolled" on a table of stretched matting; then slightly dried, and put back in the ovens; then rolled again; and finally subjected to a good "roasting," by which time every drop of moisture is got out of it, and it acquires the peculiar twist, or shrivelled look, so well known to dainty lovers of the cup which cheers but not inebriates. How perfect was the growing and the preparation appeared when we sat down at the generous table, where we found the flavor as delicate as that of any we had ever sipped that came from the Flowery Land.

Leaving this kind and hospitable family, we rode on to the plantation of Mr. Bell, who had the "engagement" to shoot the tiger. He is a brave Scot, very fond of sport, and had a room full of stuffed birds, which he was going to send off to Australia. Occasionally he had a shot at other game. Once he had brought down a leopard, and, as he said, thought the beast was "deed," and went up to him, when the brute gave a spring, and tore open his leg, which laid him up for two months. But such beasts are really less dangerous than the cobras, which crawl among the rows of plants, and as the field-hands go among them barefoot, some fall victims every year. But an Englishman is protected by his boots, and Mr. Bell strolls about with his dog and his gun, without the slightest sense of danger.

We had now accomplished our visit to the Himalayas, and were to bid adieu to the mountains and the valleys. But how were we to get back to Saharanpur? There was the mail-wagon and the omnibuckus. But these seemed very prosaic after our mountain raptures. Mr. Herron suggested that we should try dooleys—long palanquins in which we could lie down and sleep (perhaps), and thus be carried over the mountains at night. As we were eager for new experiences, of course we were ready for any novelty. But great bodies move slowly, and how great we were we began to realize when we found what a force it took to move us. Mr. Herron sent for the chaudri—a kind of public carrier whose office it is to provide for such services—and an engagement was formally entered into between the high contracting parties that for a certain sum he was to provide two dooleys and a sufficient number of bearers, to carry us over the mountains to Saharanpur, a distance of forty-two miles. This was duly signed and sealed, and the money paid on the spot, with promise of liberal backsheesh at the end if the agreement was satisfactorily performed.

Thus authorized and empowered to enter into negotiations with inferior parties, the chaudri sent forward a courier, or sarbarah, to go ahead over the whole route a day in advance, and to secure the relays, and thus prepare for our royal progress.

This seemed very magnificent, but when our retinue filed into the yard on the evening of our departure, and drew up before the veranda, we were almost ashamed to see what a prodigious ado it took to get us two poor mortals out of the valley. Our escort was as follows: Each dooley had six bearers, or kahars—four to carry it, and two to be ready as a reserve. Besides these twelve, there were two bahangi-wallas to carry our one trunk on a bamboo pole, making fourteen persons in all. As there were five stages (for one set of men could only go about eight miles), it took seventy men (besides the two high officials) to carry our sacred persons these forty-two miles! Of the reserve of four who walked beside us, two performed the function of torch-bearers—no unimportant matter when traversing a forest so full of wild beasts that the natives cannot be induced to cross it at night without lights kept burning.

The torch was made simply by winding a piece of cloth around the end of a stick, and pouring oil upon it from a bottle carried for the purpose (just the mode of the wise virgins in the parable). Our kind friends had put a mattress in each dooley, with pillows and coverlet, so that if we could not quite go to bed, we could make ourselves comfortable for a night's journey. I took off my boots, and wrapping my feet in the soft fur of the skin of the Himalayan goat, which I had purchased in the mountains, stretched myself

Like a warrior taking his rest,

With his martial cloak around him,