With a fine moonlight night in our favour we again took the road; and practice slightly assuaging our sufferings, we got on smoothly enough till within a few hours from Hureepore Bungalow, when my machine again broke with a crash, and the nature of the fracture being compound, I walked on and left the executioners to repair the instrument at their leisure.
June 1.—Reached Hureepore at four A.M., and found the place in possession of a crowd of monkeys of all sorts and sizes, taking an early breakfast. Here, chicken and eggs being again written in our destiny, we halted for an hour or [[27]]two, and at eleven again took the road with our cast-iron bearers, and hurried along in the noonday sun, up hill and down dale, through Kussowlie, and on and on till we were once more fairly deposited at the feet of “Mrs. Charybdis.” A slight dinner here, and at 8.30 P.M. we were again in train, shuffling along through several feet of dust, which the bearers, and torch-carriers, and the rest of our numerous train, kicked up about us, in clouds nearly dense enough to cause suffocation.
June 2.—At 8.30 A.M. we arrived again at Umballa, and with nothing to comfort us in our dusty and worried condition but the reflection that our start from Simla was a magnificent triumph of stern determination over present enjoyment and unwonted luxury, we again resumed [[28]]our forced march. At six P.M. we took our departure, in a very magnificent coach, but in an “unpropitious moment,” for the horse was unusually averse to an advance of any sort, and when we did get clear of the station his opinions were borne out by a terrific storm of dust, with a thunder, lightning, and rain accompaniment, which effectually put a stop to all further progress. The horse for once had his wish, and was brought to a regular stand. The wind howled about us, and the dusty atmosphere assumed a dull red appearance, such as I had only once before seen at Cawnpore, and the like of which might possibly have prevailed during the last days of Pompeii. After getting through the worst of the storm, we pushed along, and had reached the twentieth mile-stone, when, catching a flavour of burning wood, I looked out and found the wheel at an angle of some 30 degrees, and rubbing against the side preparatory to taking its leave altogether. Here was another effect of starting in an unpropitious moment. The interruption in the great forced march preyed heavily upon our minds, but, on the principle of doing as “Rome does,” we took a lesson from the religion of “Islam,” and concurring in the views expressed by our attendant blacks, viz. that “whatever is written in a man’s destiny [[29]]that will be accomplished,” we ejaculated “Kismut” with the rest, and resignedly adapted ourselves to the writings in our own particular page of fate. Having sent back to Umballa the news of our distress, a new conveyance in a few hours made its appearance; and hauling it alongside the wreck, we unshipped the stores, reloaded, and eventually reached “Thikanmajura” at eight A.M.
June 3.—Starting at about three o’clock P.M., we found the unpropitious moment still hanging over us: first a violent dust-storm, and then a [[30]]refractory horse, which bolted completely off the road, and nearly upset us down a steep bank, proved to demonstration that our star was still obscured.
About midnight we reached the river “Sutlej,” and exchanged our horse for four fat and humpy bullocks, who managed, with very great labour and difficulty, to drag us through the heavy sands of the river-bed down to the edge of the water. Here we were shipped on board a flat-bottomed boat, with a high peaked bow; and, after an immensity of hauling and grunting, we were fairly launched into the stream, and poled across to the opposite shore. The water appeared quite shallow, and the coolies were most of the time in the water; but its width, including the sands forming its bed, could not have been less [[31]]than two miles and a half. It was altogether a wild and dreary-looking scene, as we paddled along—the wild ducks and jackals, &c. keeping up a concert on their own account, and the patient old bullocks ruminating quietly on their prospects at our feet.
On arriving at what appeared to be the opposite bank, we were taken out, and again pulled and hauled through the deep sand, only to be reshipped again on what seemed a respectable river in its own right; and here, getting out of patience with a stream that had no opposite bank, I fell asleep, and left the bullocks to their sorrows and their destiny.
June 4.—Arrived at Jullundur, where we had to share the bungalow with another traveller and a rising family, who kept us alive by howling vigorously all day. The road from this being “Kucha,” literally uncooked, but here meant to express “unmetalled,” we had yet another form of conveyance to make acquaintance with. It was a palkee, rudely strapped upon the body of a worn-out “Dâk garee;” and although a more unpromising-looking locomotive perhaps never was placed upon wheels, the actual reality proved even worse than the appearance foreboded.
Anybody who has happened to have been run [[32]]away with in a dust-cart through Fenchurch Street, or some other London pavement, the gas pipes being up at the time, might form some idea of our sensations as we pounded along, at full gallop, over some thirty miles of uneven, uncooked road; but to anybody who has not had this advantage, description would be impossible. About half way, it appeared that it was written in my miserable destiny that the off fore-wheel of my shay was to come off, and off it came accordingly; so that once more I became an involuntary disciple of Islam, and went to sleep among the ruins, with rather a feeling of gratitude for the respite than otherwise. On awaking, I found myself again under way; and effecting a junction with my companion, we had a light supper off half a water-melon; and, after crossing the River Beas by a bridge of boats, and being lugged through another waste of sand by bullocks, we once again reached a “cooked” road, and arrived at “Umritsur” at six A.M.