Crossing to the other side, I met in the forests an English gentleman, who informed me he was just returning from a two weeks' tour through Sikkim. It was Colonel Manwaring of H. M.'s Indian army, who was engaged in compiling under government orders a dictionary of the Lepcha tongue. Salutations over, Briton like, he pressed me at once to drink, asked if I would try a native beer, and upon my assenting ordered a quantity of chi (a drink made of fermented millet) from a hut near at hand. It proved a nutritious and exhilarating though not intoxicating beverage, and we drank it à la Sikkimite, warm, through a reed a foot in length and from a joint of bamboo holding perhaps a couple of quarts. The colonel informed me that the Lepcha language is very copious, expressive and beautiful, abounding largely in metaphor. The number of words is very extraordinary, and requires a person to be something of a geologist, botanist and zoologist—in short, to understand very many of the sciences and not a few of the arts—in order to learn perfectly this curious tongue. His labors among the people he described as very trying and discouraging. He had been employed upon the dictionary more than three years, and it was not nearly completed. We rode slowly up the hills, and reached the inn late in the evening.
I had waited nearly a week for a clear day on which to view the highest mountain-peaks in the world, and had almost despaired of success when on the last morning of my stay, upon looking from my window at daybreak, I saw that although the valleys and sides of some of the hills were covered with clouds and fog, still a lofty peak near Darjeeling showed its face distinctly and for the first time during my visit. Remembering that this mountain was over two miles in height, perhaps Mount Kanchinjinga might be in sight, but I hardly dared entertain the thought. It was my last chance, for I intended to return to the plains in the afternoon; so, jumping into my clothes, pulling on my hat and snatching up my field-glass, I walked, or rather ran, to the other side of the hill for an unobstructed view. Suddenly turning a sharp bend in the road, I saw through the trees a clearly-defined, substantial-looking cloud—was it a cloud, though?—and rushing forward a dozen paces, lo and behold! one of the highest mountain-summits on the globe stood unveiled before me! I confess never in my travels to have experienced like sensations of awe and reverence. My eyes involuntarily filled with tears, and I stood completely lost in wonder and admiration.
It was early morning. The sun had newly risen, though not yet visible, and threw a flood of rosy light upon the gigantic snow-tipped pinnacles, causing them to glisten like polished white marble. The valley below, four or five thousand feet deep, was filled with an ocean of silvery clouds, which majestically rolled and rose upon the forest-clad sides of the great mountains as far as the limit of perpetual snow; and from this fleecy mass as a border towered aloft against an azure-hued sky the magnificent form of Kanchinjinga. For miles in each direction the thickly-wooded sub-hills were in sight, but all interest centred in the never-by-man-trodden peak before and above me. A dread and awful silence seemed to pervade the air, and the total absence of life or motion lent an almost supernatural glamour to the scene. For nearly two hours I sat as one entranced, until the sun gently lifted the clouds from the valleys, and as with a silver-wrought screen shut off from my eyes the most impressive sight they ever beheld. During this marvelous exhibition the "littleness of man" had been made very painfully lucid. Yet, perhaps, there is nothing so calculated to raise the thoughts, enlarge the mind or purify the heart as the contemplation of the sublime and beautiful in Nature.
Kanchinjinga, properly speaking, consists of three peaks, which are sharp, serrated, precipitous, and apparently composed of solid rock from the snow-limit to the summit. Its immense height is not thoroughly appreciated by the traveler for two causes—its great distance (fifty miles "as the crow flies"), and the fact that the point of observation is itself one-fourth the height of the mountain. Had I risen earlier and ridden to Mount Senchal, fifteen hundred feet above Darjeeling, I might have obtained a view of Mount Everest, which is nearly thirty thousand feet in perpendicular height above the sea (about five and a half miles), and is the supremest point upon our globe, while Mount Kanchinjinga, which until quite recently was supposed to be the higher of the two, is found to be of about eight hundred feet less altitude. Mount Everest is a single peak, a cone, and appears like a small white tent above the clouds, but in grandeur and sublimity it is excelled by Kanchinjinga. Well do the Himalaya Mountains bear out the meaning of their name—the "abode of snow"—for on their southern slopes in some places the snow-line descends to fourteen thousand feet. The mean elevation of this remarkable range is double that of the Alps, and many of its passes to the elevated table-lands of Central Asia are higher than the summit of Mont Blanc. Huge glaciers of smooth ice, though none so vast as those of the Alps, are numerous in parts of this stupendous mountain-chain, and even descend from the regions of perpetual snow to eleven thousand feet. Though the Andes of South America present a mountain-system twice the length of the Himalayas, still in respect to altitude the former are much surpassed by the latter. Mount Dwalaghiri in Nepaul is of nearly the same height as Kanchinjinga: then, there are two peaks which attain twenty-six thousand feet; four about twenty-four thousand feet; and over twenty that reach an elevation exceeding twenty thousand feet!
Leaving Darjeeling, I visited one of the large tea-gardens near the terai at the foot of the hills. The best of land may be purchased at ten rupees per acre, and an average-sized plantation embraces about two hundred acres. The prospective garden must be cleared of its forest and jungle, which is an arduous task, but when once it is in order one native can properly cultivate an acre. The best teas are raised upon the tops of the hills, upward of seven thousand feet above the sea-level. Good tea can only be grown under two conditions: these are moisture and heat, and hence the southern slopes of the Himalayas are admirably adapted to its cultivation, for during the middle of the day the sun is warm, and at night there are very copious dews. The laborers employed are all natives, and one or two Europeans only are necessary to superintend the largest plantation. The indigenous tea-plant was first discovered in Assam (the north-eastern district of Bengal) in the year 1830. From there it was introduced into Cachar and Darjeeling, and from these places into the hills in the north-western part of Hindostan. In 1850 the English government founded plantations in the Kangra Valley, about one hundred and twenty miles from Lahore, on the borders of Cashmere, which proved so successful that many were soon established in various other localities. Cinchona (Cinchona calisaya) also succeeds well upon the hills, and is being extensively grown, as, owing to the prevalence of fevers of all kinds, quinine is in great demand throughout India.
Reaching the Ganges again without accident or noteworthy event, I traveled on westward up its rich valley, and soon entered upon the great plain of Hindostan (embracing an area of half a million square miles), which, though nearly treeless, contains some of the most fertile soil on the globe. There were clusters of huts and dilapidated mosques at short intervals, and the natives might be seen at work in the fields with their antiquated wooden ploughs, the bent limbs of trees, or engaged in cutting paddy (rice in the husk), or hoeing poppy-plants, or digging little drains. Wherever we met them they would stop work, drop everything, and gaze at the railway train, which seemed to them apparently as strange a sight as if it had just dropped down from the clouds.
In Hindostan, land is owned either by government or by the native rajahs and nawabs. That belonging to the former is leased to a class of people called zemindars (the word means "landholder," "landkeeper"), and they sublet it to another class styled ryots (the "husbandmen," "peasants"), who are the real tillers of the soil. A well-to-do zemindar will rent two thousand acres of land, for which he pays about four annas (twelve cents) an acre. The hardships of the ryots are great—they are treated like slaves, and can barely make a subsistence—but among the zemindars are numbered some of the wealthiest men in the country: one, for instance, owns fifty square miles of fertile land, all wrung from the labor of the poor peasants. Formerly these zemindars were merely the superintendents of the land, but latterly they have been declared its hereditary proprietors, and the before fluctuating dues of government have under a permanent settlement been unalterably fixed in perpetuity.
As we rolled along, on both sides of the railroad as far as the eye could see were immense fields of wheat and barley, paddy, tobacco, mustard, the castor-oil plant, millet, maize, the poppy, indigo and sugar-cane. Wheat and barley are not sown broadcast as with us, but in drills a few inches apart: both grains are consumed in the country—little or none is exported. The paddy resembles rye or wheat when growing, the rice-kernels being contained in husks at the top of the spires. The plant requires a wet loamy soil (such as is best offered in Cambodia and Siam, the former being styled "the Asiatic storehouse of rice"), and there is but one crop in the year. The mustard-plants which we saw were about two feet in height, and bore small yellow flowers as crests. The oil and the table article of commerce are made by grinding the seeds in mills constructed for the purpose. The castor-oil plant is a green and succulent shoot about six feet in height, with white flowers hanging in bunches like hops. Maize is never fed to cattle as in America, but is all consumed by the poorer classes of natives. But most interesting were the poppy-plants. These are raised in oblong patches of ground surrounded by low mud walls for retaining the water which is essential to their growth. The plants are quite small, with green leaves at the base, from which rise tall stalks with bulb-like tops, the pod of the flower. At the proper season, when ripe, incisions are made in these bulbs—simple scratches—by drawing two needles across them toward evening, and the juice, which exudes during the night, is scraped off in the morning and collected in shells. This operation is performed upon all sides of the bulb, and then the juice is sent in earthenware jars to Bankipore to be manufactured into opium by drying in the sun and various other processes. When quite prepared it is pressed into balls, boxed and exported to China, to the great emolument of the British Indian government, in whose hands the trade is a monopoly (it deriving one-twelfth of its entire income from this traffic alone), and to the fearful moral and physical degradation of the Chinese.
Patna is one of the oldest cities in India. It extends for a mile and a half along the south bank of the Ganges, which is here five miles in width in the rainy season. It consists properly of but a single street eight miles in length and thirty feet in width, with numerous short byways. Patna contains about two hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants, and was formerly a place of such considerable trade that the English, French, Dutch and Danes had factories here, though few European merchants remain at the present day. I found the streets crowded with gayly-dressed, vivacious Mohammedans and Hindoos and solemn, gruff-looking Afghans. Some were on foot; some on horseback, astride splendid horses brought from the Deccan; many rode in eckas, a few in baillies—two varieties of native vehicle. The dwellings in the city, built of mud with tiled roofs, were mostly but one story in height. In those of two stories the lower is rented as a shop to the merchants (or used as such by the owners), and in the upper the family dwells, as is customary in our cities. The stores were of all denominations, but the manufactures were principally of cotton goods and earthenware, which latter is made in feeble imitation of European crockery. The smell of the curry and ghee (clarified butter) in some shops was intensely disagreeable, and the numerous shelves of metai (sweets compounded of sugar, butter and flour, and of which the natives are very fond) looked anything but inviting to a gora-log (a fair-complexioned person). It is generally supposed that the Hindoos never use intoxicating beverages, but I passed several liquor-shops and saw three or four men drunk in the streets. The drink in general request is the fermented juice of the taul or Indian palm tree, which, though mild and soft to the palate, is yet very acrid and baneful to the stomach.
There is an old granary in Patna, a large beehive-shaped structure of brick and plaster, at a guess two hundred feet in diameter by one hundred feet in height and twelve feet in thickness. Two stair-cases of one hundred and fifty steps each wind upward to its summit on either side, giving the building from a distance the appearance of a huge brick cork-screw. These steps were intended to be used for carrying up the grain, the building being filled through a small aperture at the top, and up them Shah Maharaj, the present premier of Nepaul, is said once to have ridden his pony—a most daring feat of horsemanship and nerve. On one side were two large stone tablets with inscriptions—the one in Persian, the other in English. They simply stated that the granary was erected in 1786 as part of a general plan ordered by the governor-general and council of India for the perpetual prevention of famine. It has never yet, however, been filled with grain, but has been employed as a military magazine. From the summit a fine view of the surrounding country is to be had, comprising plains and forests, stately bungalows and flowery "compounds," vegetable gardens, native huts, and in the distance the sacred Ganges, with its stony bed more than half exposed.