Our encamping ground, at which we arrived at four in the afternoon, was a short distance from a village called Guniah. Our tents were pitched beneath a clump of trees, and close to a clear stream called the Ram Gunga, in which we caught a quantity of fish with a casting-net. There are some mines between Loba and Kumaon, but we did not go out of our way to visit them. Here an accident happened to the Baron. He sprained his ankle and could not walk; so the next morning we put him into a Dandi, and he was carried along the road by four of the coolies. A Dandi is a pole, upon which is hung by its two ends, which are gathered together, a piece of cloth or canvas, open in the centre. This forms a hollow seat, not a particularly comfortable one, until you get accustomed to it, when the motion is rather pleasurable than otherwise. During this day's march we shot a quantity of black partridge, a hill fox, a deer, and a wild dog of enormous size.
On the third day after leaving Loba we sighted our (then) destination—the town of Almorah. On nearing the place we came upon a hill to the right, which bears the name of Brown's Hill; so called after an officer of the 31st Native Infantry, who, in the Goorkha war, volunteered to take it with his company, though it had a stockade on the top which was obstinately defended. And he did take it, after a very severe loss. A monument is erected on this hill to the memory of those who fell in the engagement. A little further on is a large tree now used as a gallows. This tree was the scene of a well-remembered occurrence, just after the above-mentioned battle. A Goorkha, shot through the leg, had fallen here. The fighting over, a British officer was standing over him, and giving directions to a party of Sepoys to have him taken to the hospital; when, raising himself with his left hand, with his right he cut the officer down with his kookeree—a deadly weapon with which the little Goorkhas now chop up the rebels.
Apropos of a kookeree in the hands of a Goorkha, I must relate a little matter which I now know to be a fact, but which I could scarcely credit when it was first told to me. A party of Goorkhas—say fifteen or twenty—will proceed to a jungle in which they know there is a huge tiger. They will surround the jungle, form a circle, and closing in gradually, hem in the ferocious beast. Every man will then drop down on the right knee, as soldiers do forming a square, and, kookeree in hand, wait for the spring of the tiger, who becomes somewhat bewildered and anxious to make his escape. After moving about for a brief while in this den, of which the bars are human beings (about five feet high), and glaring first at one and then at another, he lashes himself into a fury and makes his spring: then the nearest Goorkha delivers a blow with his kookeree which divides the tiger's skull. Wonderful as this feat is, I once saw at Jutog, near Simlah, a sight that struck me as even more wonderful. A Goorkha battalion was (and now is) quartered at Jutog. There was a festival at which the Goorkhas sacrifice an ox. The adjutant of the battalion asked me if I should like to witness the ceremony; as it was something new to me, I replied in the affirmative, and we walked to the parade ground, where the whole regiment, in undress, was assembled, and surrounding the victim and the executioner. The ox was forced to kneel, and by the side of him knelt the little Goorkha, armed with the kookeree, which is nothing more than a huge curved knife, but very heavy, and as sharp as a razor. At a given signal he struck the ox immediately behind the hump over the shoulder, peculiar to all Indian cattle; and the body was divided into two parts. He had, with a single blow, gone though the ox just as completely and as cleanly as a butcher with his hatchet would remove a chop from a loin of mutton. They are a very odd race of people, those little Goorkhas; wonderfully honest even among themselves; light-hearted almost to childishness; capable of enduring any amount of toil; obedient and respectful, without cringing to, fawning on, or flattering their superior, the white man. The great blot upon their characters is their frightful jealousy of their wives. Woe betide the woman who gives her Goorkha husband the faintest reason to suspect her of infidelity! He at once takes the law and the kookeree into his own hands, and slays both the wife and her (real or supposed) gallant. I am glad to say this is not a frequent occurrence, though it does happen now and then. As a body, the Goorkha women are as virtuous as their husbands are honest and brave.
The Commissioner of Kumaon received us at Almorah, his head-quarters, with great cordiality and kindness, and offered us rooms in his house. This offer we declined, inasmuch as our party consisted of four, and his house was not a large one. Besides, he had other visitors who were putting up at his bungalow. We accepted, however, his invitation to dine, and on our way rode through the town, which is considered the best in the British hill possessions. Bishop Heber writes that Almorah reminds him of Chester. It consists of one street about a mile and a half long, and about sixty feet wide, paved with large slabs of slate, and closed at either end by a gate. One half of the town is much higher than the other, and the street is divided in the middle by a low flight of steps on which the ponies pass up and down with extraordinary self-possession. The houses are small, but neat and whitewashed. They all consist of two or more stories. The lower ones are shaded by wooden verandahs more or less carved. At one end of the town is the old Goorkha fort; at the other end Fort Moira, a small English fortification, near to which were the Sepoy lines. A neat little church has just been erected at Almorah. The people of the place are all fair-complexioned, and some of the children as white as those born of European parents.
RETURNING.
At Almorah I parted company with my foreign friends. They intended crossing the mountains—the snowy range—to pay a visit to Kanawur. This was a journey for which I had not much inclination; besides I was doubtful whether I could breathe at an elevation of eighteen thousand feet above the level of the sea. As it was, several of the coolies died of cold and the rarity of the atmosphere. In fact, both of my friends themselves had, as they informed me afterwards, a very narrow escape. On several occasions they were compelled to huddle themselves amongst the coolies in their tent, and the sheep which they were taking with them for food were kept alive for the sake of the warmth they could impart in the canvas abode. The grandeur of the scenery, they said, would defy any attempt at describing it. What they most wondered at was the impudence of that insect, man, in daring to climb up into such regions.
My friend, the assistant magistrate, had still a fortnight of unexpired leave, and proposed to me that we should pay a visit to a friend of his at an out-of-the-way station, called Bijnore. I had not the least objection, and thither we went. We were most hospitably received, partly out of regard for ourselves in particular, but chiefly because our host had not seen a white face for five weeks.
The cutcherry, or court-house, was undergoing repair, and the magistrate, therefore, was obliged to administer the duties of his office in his own abode, or rather in the verandah; for a large number of half-clad natives in a hot country do not impart to a confined space an agreeable perfume by any means. To me this scene—the native court—was particularly interesting. There sat the covenanted official in an arm-chair, with his solah hat on and a cheroot in his mouth, listening very attentively to the sheristadar, or head clerk, who was reading or singing aloud the entire proceedings in the case then pending.