Excavations are under way all the time at Sarnath, and a museum located at that place contains a large variety of interesting fragments of the early Buddhist temples.
CHAPTER IV.
A start was next made for the Himalayas in a northeasterly direction, seldom traversed by persons going to that section of the mountain country. I was the only white man on the train, and in view of few European travelers taking this route no provision had been made for food. The third-class coaches were packed with natives. We passed through the opium poppy growing country, the sugar-cane and indigo fields, and, further along, reached the jute-growing country in Bengal. The train had left Benares in the morning, but it was twelve hours later before food was available.
At a place known as Katihar I had to remain a day in order to make through connections. One of the sub-stations, located a short distance from the railway track, was alive with passengers, but no one seemed to really care when the trains came and went. Natives eating rice, wheat cakes, bananas, sticks of sugar-cane, thick pieces of candy, rolls like crullers, smoking the hooka (a long pipe with two bowls, through one of which, containing water, the smoke from the tobacco or hemp passes to the stem), gambling, begging; the big Kabuli—who looks like a storm in silent mood—offering for sale alleged rare coins; women with one to three very small children, all untidy and dirty—such is life in India.
The train left Katihar in the evening for Silliguri. An Englishman got in the same coach, and I was much pleased to have a white man with me. This train was not lighted by electricity, and there were doubts about the oil in the lamp being of American brand, for the light went out before we reached the second station, and when the train stopped the Englishman could be heard shouting from the coach for some one to relight it. The trainman had got no further than the rear of the train, when the lamp gave a final flicker. The Britisher again began to shout, but the train was then moving. The three following stops were a repetition of the first, and, the Englishman finally admitting his defeat, we stretched out on berths for the night. Most trains in India have berths in the passenger coaches, but every one furnishes his own bedding. The next morning found us at Silliguri, and in front were spread out the Himalayas. From here a start was made up the mountains.
The Himalaya Mountains rise abruptly out of the flat plains, a striking contrast to those of other countries. One would expect the base of the Indian mountains to be at an altitude of 3,000 to 6,000 feet, but Silliguri, located a few miles from where the ascent begins, is only 400 feet above sea-level.
The interior of the Himalayas is reached by means of a train of small cars, drawn by a ten-ton locomotive over a two-foot railway track. There are three classes of travel—first, second and third. First-class fare is 12 cents a mile, second-class 6 cents, and third-class 3 cents. These fares include a very small baggage allowance. First- and second-class coaches are of the compartment type, third-class having curtained sides, with bare-seated benches across. The schedule is ten miles an hour, either going up or coming down the mountain.
The engine soon starts up an incline through a row of trees on both sides of the track, with every seat in the coaches occupied and the baggage car filled with luggage. The narrow train turns to the left, then to the right; another sharp turn, and puff, puff, puff, as a bend in still another direction is made; down a decline next over culverts spanning rippling brooks and under turnpike bridges, then up, when the grandeur of the great range begins to unfold. Down grade again, the train stopping, after traveling but a comparatively short distance, at a precipitous wall. Backing out over a switchback—there being five of these on the mountain railroad—we next creep up a steep, serpentine grade. Houses above and houses and huts below, surrounded by semi-tropical growth and cultivated ground—there being little rock in the mountain—with stretches of low brush, laid out in regular rows, below us, appear. A house and huts have been built in these bush-like tracts of land; these are tea gardens. A screeching whistle diverts the passengers' gaze from downward to forward—we were pulling into Kurseong, the halfway station, where some passengers get off and others board the train. The locomotive, being supplied with coal and water, again begins to puff, puff, puff, up a steep grade for a short distance, then eases down a decline. The mountain is now so steep that the narrow train can worm its way no longer about the side, coming to another switchback. Backing out and again ascending, a silver streak is seen, far below, winding over the plains—the Teesta River. Above, the sky appears to rest on green mountain-tops. Upward the little locomotive climbs, seeming to make sharp bends at every hundred feet. The mountainside has now become a great tea plantation, and through the hazy atmosphere the plains are but dimly seen. The sky, which from below seemed to be resting on the point now reached, is further beyond. Approaching an ever-receding horizon at distant outposts from time to time leads one occasionally to fancy he were bumping his shoulders against the arch of the sky at sundry points of the outer circle. The narrow train laboriously continues upward, while passengers direct their gaze down gaping caverns, on the rim of which the railway track sometimes rests. Further on, the grade gradually reducing until traveling on a short, level stretch of road, the train stops. We have reached Ghoom, the highest point on the line, where more passengers leave and others get out of the coaches to stretch their legs. Oh! a great white ridge, high above valleys and tea gardens—it is Mount Kinchinjanga, whose summit seems to intrude far into the sky. What seems like trespassing on the sky's domain is explained when the height of the mountain is made known—28,156 feet. The train again proceeds, but down grade now, still winding and twisting—not over a quarter of a mile straight track along the route—until a sharp bend is reached. Then, as far as the eye could reach, the high, white, stalwart peaks of the Himalayas were revealed in their grandest form. Further on the train stops. We are at Darjeeling, the end of the mountain railway, 50 miles from Silliguri.
Baden-Baden, Germany—where one can walk about the splendid grounds for half a day and need not be exposed to the sun half an hour—had appealed to me more than any other place visited during my journeyings until Darjeeling was reached. Here in the State of Sikkim, India, 20,000 feet below the grandest mountain range in the world and built on the woody sides of a lower range, are seen rippling streams on their way to a parent river; attractively laid out tea gardens on steep inclines; a panorama of dwellings spreading out to all points of the city; deep, wooded valleys on either side, with rivers coursing these, flanked by flowering orange groves; parks, botanical gardens, and shady paths cut on the hillsides; observation points and splendid vistas; then, seen through the blue atmosphere, over low mountains, valleys, hills and trees, Jalapa La Pass—17,000 feet above sea level—the route through the Himalayan fastnesses to Lhassa, Thibet; and, now seen and then unseen, as the many-shaped clouds flitted over and away, the noble galaxy of white mountains, half circular in form, to the front and to the right—Darjeeling can claim and deserves a better description.