THE HAPPY VALLEY.
A REMINISCENCE OF THE HIMALAYAS.
The privilege which the families of officers in the service of the State may be said exclusively to possess, of reproducing in Upper India—and especially in the Himalayan stations, and valley of Dhera Dhoon—the stately or cottage homes of England, is perhaps one, to a great extent, unfamiliar to their relatives at home; and it is scarcely too much to say that the general public, which, as a rule, considers the Indian climate an insuperable barrier to all enjoyment, has but a faint idea of that glorious beauty, which is no "fading flower," in this "Happy Valley," with its broad belt of virgin forest, that lies between the Himalayas proper and the sharp ridges of the wild Sewalic range. The latter forms a barrier between the sultry plains and the cool and romantic retreats, where the swords of our gallant defenders may be said to rest in their scabbards, and where, surrounded by the pleasures of domestic life, health and happiness may, in the intervals of piping times of peace, be enjoyed to their fullest extent.
In such favoured spots the exile from home may live, seemingly, for the present only; but, in truth, it is not so, for even under such favoured circumstances the tie with our natal place is never relaxed, and the hope of future return to it adds just that touch of pensiveness—scarcely sadness—which is the delicate neutral tint that brings out more forcibly the gorgeous colours of the picture.
The gaieties of the mountain stations of Mussoorie and Landour were now approaching their periodical close, in the early part of October, when the cold season commences. The attractive archery meetings on the green plateaux of the mountain-spurs had ceased, and balls and sumptuous dinner-parties were becoming fewer and fewer; while daily one group of friends after another, "with lingering steps and slow," on rough hill-ponies or in quaint jam-pans, were wending their way some six or seven thousand feet down the umbrageous mountain-sides, watched from above by those who still lingered behind, until they seemed like toilsome emmets in the far distance.
Now that our summer companions were gone we used to while away many an hour with our glasses, scanning in that clear atmosphere the vast plains stretched out beneath us like a rich carpet of many colours, but in which forms were scarcely to be traced at that distance. Here, twisted silver threads represented some great river; there, a sprinkling of rice-like grains, the white bungalows of a cantonment; while occasionally a sombre mass denoted some forest or mango tope. Around us, and quailing under fierce gusts of wind from the passes of the snowy range rising in peaks to nearly twice the altitude of the Alps, the gnarled oaks, now denuded of their earlier garniture of parasitical ferns, that used to adorn their mossy branches with Nature's own point lace, seemed almost conscious of approaching winter.
Landour, now deserted, save by a few invalid soldiers and one or two resident families, had few attractions. The snow was lying deep on the mountain-sides, and blocking up the narrow roads. But winter in the Himalayas is a season of startling phenomena; for it is then that thunder storms of appalling grandeur are prevalent, and to a considerable extent destructive. During the night, amidst the wild conflict of the elements, would, not unfrequently, be heard the bugles of the soldiers' Sanatorium, calling to those who could sleep to arouse themselves, and hasten to the side of residents whose houses had been struck by the electric fluid.
Still, we clung to our mountain-home to the last, although we knew that summer awaited us in the valley below, and that in an hour and a half we might with ease exchange an almost hyperborean climate for one where summer is perennial, or seems so—for the rainy season is but an interlude of refreshing showers.