LIFE IN AN
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AFTER THE PROCLAMATION PARADE.

LIFE IN AN
INDIAN OUTPOST

BY

Major GORDON CASSERLY

(INDIAN ARMY)
AUTHOR OF
"THE LAND OF THE BOXERS; OR CHINA UNDER THE ALLIES"; ETC.
ILLUSTRATED

LONDON
T. WERNER LAURIE LTD.
CLIFFORD'S INN

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

LIFE IN AN INDIAN OUTPOST

CHAPTER I

A FRONTIER POST

Our first view of the Himalayas—Across India in a troop train—A scattered regiment—An elephant-haunted railway—Kinchinjunga—The great Terai Jungle—Rajabhatkawa—In the days of Warren Hastings—Hillmen—Roving Chinese—We arrive at Buxa Road—Relieved officers—An undesirable outpost—March through the forest—The hills—A mountain road—Lovely scenery—Buxa Duar—A lonely Station—The labours of an Indian Army officer—Varied work—The frontier of Bhutan—A gate of India—A Himalayan paradise—The fort—Intrusive monkeys—The cantonment—The Picquet Towers—The bazaar—The cemetery—Forgotten graves—Tragedies of loneliness—From Bhutan to the sea.

Against the blue sky to the north lay a dark blur that, as our troop train ran on through the level plains of Eastern Bengal, rose ever higher and took shape—the distant line of the Himalayas. Around us the restful though tame scenery of the little Cooch Behar State. The chess-board pattern of mud-banked rice fields, long groves of the graceful feathery bamboo, here and there a tiny hamlet of palm-thatched huts—on their low roofs great sprawling green creepers with white blotches that look like skulls but are only ripe melons. But the dark outlines of the distant mountains drew my gaze and brought the heads of my sepoys out of the carriage windows to stare at them.

For somewhere on the face of those hills was Buxa Duar, the little fort that was to be our home for the next two years.

For four days my detachment of two hundred men of the 120th Rajputana Infantry had been whirled across India from west to east towards it. From Baroda we had come—Baroda with its military cantonment set in an English-like park, its vast native city with the gaily painted houses and narrow streets where the Gaikwar's Cavalry rode with laced jackets and slung pelisses like the Hussars of old, and his sentries mounted guard over gold and silver cannons in a dingy backyard. Where in low rooms, set out in glass cases, as in a cheap draper's shop, were the famous pearl-embroidered carpets and gorgeous jewels of the State, worth a king's ransom.

Four days of travel over the plains of India with their closely cultivated fields, mud-walled villages, stony hills and stretches of scrub jungle, where an occasional jackal slunk away from the train or an antelope paused in its bounding flight to look back at the strange iron monster. Across the sacred Ganges where Allahabad lies at its junction with the River Jumna. The regiment was on its way to garrison widely separated posts in outlying parts of the Indian Empire and neighbouring countries. Two companies had already gone to be divided between Chumbi in Tibet and Gantok in the dependent State of Sikkim, and to furnish the guard to our Agent at Gyantse.

The month was December; and they had started in August to cross the sixteen-thousand-feet high passes in the Himalayas before the winter snows blocked them. The regimental headquarters, with four companies, was on its way to embark on the steamers which would convey them a fourteen days' journey on the giant rivers Ganges and Brahmaputra to Dibrugarh and Sadiya in Assam.

At Benares my two companies had parted from the rest and entered another troop train which carried us into Eastern Bengal.

Every day for three or four hours our trains had halted at some little wayside station to enable the men to get out, make their cooking-places, and prepare their food for the day. The previous night my detachment had detrained at Gitaldaha, where we had to change again on to a narrow gauge railway, two feet six inches in width, which would take us through Cooch Behar to our destination. The railway officials informed me that we must stay in the station all night, as the trains on this line ran only by daylight. I asked the reason of this.

"They cannot go by night on account of the wild animals," was the reply.

"The wild animals?" I echoed in surprise.

"Yes; the line runs through a forest, the Terai Jungle, full of elephants and bison. Three months ago one of our engines was derailed by a wild elephant and the driver badly injured. And not long before that another rogue elephant held up a station on the line, stopped a train, blockaded the officials in the buildings, and broke a tusk trying to root up the platform."

And when daylight dawned and I could see the toy engine and carriages, I was not surprised at the fear of encountering an elephant on the line.

Now on our fifth day of travel we were nearing the end of the journey. We had passed the capital of Cooch Behar and were approaching Alipur Duar, the last station before the Terai Forest is reached. Suddenly, high in the air above the now distinct line of hills, stood out in the brilliant sunlight the white crest and snowy peaks of Kinchinjunga, twenty-eight thousand feet high, and nearly one hundred and twenty miles away. Past Alipur Duar, and then hills and snow-clad summits were lost to sight as our little train plunged from the sunny plain into the deep shadows of the famous Terai Forest—the wonderful jungle that stretches east and west along the foot of the Himalayas, and clothes their lowest slopes. In whose recesses roam the wild elephant, the rhinoceros and the bison, true lords of the woods; where deadlier foes to man than these, malaria and blackwater fever hold sway and lay low the mightiest hunter before the Lord. And standing on the back platform of our tiny carriage my subaltern and I strove to pierce its gloomy depths, half hoping to see the giant bulk of a wild elephant or a rhinoceros. But nothing met our gaze save the great orchid-clad trees, the graceful fronds of monster ferns, and the dense undergrowth that would deny a passage to anything less powerful than bisons or elephants.

In a sudden clearing in the heart of the forest, the train stopped at a small station near which stood a few bamboo huts and a gaunt, two-storied wooden house in which, we afterwards learned, an English forest officer lived his lonely life. The place was called Rajabhatkawa, which in the vernacular means, "The Rajah ate his food." It was so named because, nearly one hundred and thirty years before, in the days of Warren Hastings, a Rajah of Cooch Behar ate his first meal there after his release from captivity among the hill tribesmen of Bhutan who had carried him away into their mountain fastnesses. They had released him at the urgent instance of a British captain and two hundred sepoys who had followed them up and captured three of their forts.

Among the crowd of natives on the platform at this station were several of various hill races, Bhuttias and Gurkhas, with the small eyes and flat nose of the Mongolian. I was surprised to see two Chinamen in blue linen suits and straw hats, fanning themselves and smoking cigarettes, as much at home as if they were on the Bund in Shanghai or in Queen's Road in Hong Kong. But later on I learned that Rajabhatkawa led to several tea gardens, where Chinese carpenters are always welcome. These men are generally from Canton, the inhabitants of which city emigrate freely. I have met them in Calcutta, Penang, Singapore, Manila, and San Francisco.

On again through the jungle our train passed for another eight miles, and then drew up at a small station of one low, stone building with a nameboard nearly as big as itself, which bore the words "Buxa Road." It stood in a little clearing in the forest, where the ground was piled high with felled trees, ready to be dispatched to Calcutta. This was the end of our railway journey.

The sepoys tumbled eagerly out of the train, threw their rolls of bedding out of the compartments, fell in on the platform and piled arms, and then turned to with a will to unload the heavy baggage from the brake-vans. A number of tall, bearded Mohammedans, men of the detachment of the Punjabi Regiment we were replacing, were at the station. Their major came forward to welcome me, and expressed his extreme pleasure in meeting the man who was to relieve him and enable him to quit a most undesirable place.

This was a blow to me; for I had pictured life in this little outpost as an ideal existence in a sportsman's paradise.

"What? Don't you like Buxa Duar?" I asked in surprise.

"Like it?" he exclaimed vehemently. "Most certainly not. In my time I have been stationed in some poisonous places in Upper Burmah, when I was in the Military Police; but the worst of them was heaven to Buxa."

I gasped with horror. "Is it as bad as all that? How long have you been here?"

"Three weeks," replied the major; "and that was three weeks too long. Before you have been here a fortnight you will be praying to all your gods to take you anywhere else."

This was pleasant. The subaltern of the Punjabis now came up and was introduced to me. He had been six months in Buxa; and his opinion of it was too lurid to print. My subaltern, who had been superintending the unloading of the baggage, joined us and in his turn was regaled with these cheering criticisms of our new home. His face fell; for, like me, he had been looking forward eagerly to being quartered in this little outpost, where, we had been told, the sport was excellent. Fortunately men's tastes differ; and after eighteen months' experience of this much-abused Buxa, I liked it better than any other place I have ever served in in all my soldiering.

I learned from our new friends that the fort was six miles from the railway and fifteen hundred feet above it; so I inquired for the transport to convey our baggage there.

Before leaving Baroda the quartermaster of our regiment had written to the nearest civil official of the district, requesting him to provide me with a hundred coolies for the purpose. There were also, I knew, three Government transport elephants in charge of the detachment quartered in Buxa Duar. These I saw at the station engaged in conveying the baggage of the Punjabis, who were to leave on the following day. I asked for my hundred coolies.

The major laughed when I told him of our quartermaster's requisition. "Your regimental headquarters," he said, "evidently did not realise what a desolate, uninhabited place this is. A hundred coolies? Why, with difficulty I have procured eight; four of them women. You will have to leave your baggage here under a guard, and have it brought up piecemeal on the elephants after our departure. And now, if you will fall in your men, I'll lead the way up to Buxa and gladly take my last look at it."

A baggage guard having been left at the station with our food and cooking-pots, etc., my detachment fell in, formed fours and followed us. From the clearing near the railway a broad road, cut through the forest, led towards the hills. For the first three miles it was comparatively level; and we swung along at a good pace between the tall trees rising from the dense undergrowth. Breaking the solemn silence of the forest, I eagerly plied our new friends with questions on the chances of sport that Buxa afforded. But I found that they had done little in that way and could give me scant information. The subaltern had shot a tiger on a tea garden, but had hardly ever gone into the jungle. I learned, however, that out of the three transport elephants now at my disposal, two were trained for shooting purposes and were remarkably steady. This at least was good news.

Towards the end of the third mile the road began to rise; and when it emerged into a small clearing we halted for a few minutes. We were now at the very foot of the hills; and from here we could see them for the first time since our train had entered the forest. High above our heads they towered. At first low, rounded, tree-clad buttresses of the giant ramparts of India, long spurs thrust out from the flanks of the mountains. Then lofty rugged walls of rock, jagged peaks, dark even in the brilliant sunshine, precipitous cliffs over which thin threads of water leapt and seemed to hang wavering down the steep sides.

In the clearing stood two or three wooden huts; and a hundred yards farther on was a long and lofty open structure, with a thatched roof supported on rough wood pillars. The flooring was of pounded earth with three brick "standings," with iron rings inserted in them; for this was the Peelkhana or elephant stables of the detachment. The clearing was dignified with the euphonious name of Santrabari. Past the Peelkhana the road entered the hills. At first it wound around their flanks, crossing by wooden bridges over clear streams; then, rising ever higher, it climbed the steep slopes in zigzags. Along above a brawling mountain torrent, tumbling over rounded rocks in a deep ravine it went, across wooded spurs and under stony cliffs. Huge bushes flamed with strange red and purple flowers, thick shrubs hung out great white bells to tempt the giant scarlet and black butterflies hovering overhead. Above our path tall trees stretched out their long limbs covered with the glossy green leaves of orchids. From trunk to trunk swung creepers thick as a ship's hawser, trailing in long festoons or interlacing and writhing around each other like great snakes.

But, as we climbed, the forest fell behind us. The trees stood farther apart, grew fewer and smaller. The undergrowth became denser. Tall brakes of the drooping plumes of the bamboo, thick-growing thorny bushes, plantain trees with their broad leaves and hanging bunches of bananas, the straight slender stems of sago palms with trailing clusters of nut-like fruit springing up from tangled vegetation. A troop of little brown monkeys leapt in alarm from tree to tree and vanished over a cliff. With a measured flapping of wings a brilliantly plumaged hornbill passed over our heads. The road crossed and recrossed the mountain stream and led into a deep cleft among the hills towering precipitously over us. And looking up I saw on the edge of a cliff the corner of a building. It was the fort of Buxa at last. But before we reached it a few hundred feet more of climbing had to be done; and we panted wearily upward. Through a narrow cutting we emerged on a stretch of artificially levelled soil, the parade ground, and halted gladly. We stood in a deep horseshoe among the mountains, nearly two thousand feet above the plains. Before us, peeping out from low trees and flowering bushes, were a few bungalows; and above them towered a conical peak, its summit another four thousand feet higher still. From it right and left ran down on either side of us two long wooded spurs; and on knolls on them stood three white square towers. Behind us, on a long mound, were fortified barracks with loopholed walls. These formed the fort; and this was Buxa Duar. We had reached our destination.

The major first showed our men to their new quarters; and I told them off to their different barrack-rooms, and saw them settled down. Then he and his subaltern led us to the Mess where we met a third officer, the doctor, a young lieutenant in the Indian Medical Service named Smith, who was to remain on in Buxa in medical charge of my detachment. Then ensued the wearisome task of taking over charge of all the Government property in the Station, from the rifle-range and the ammunition in the magazine to picks and shovels, buckets and waterproof coats. We had next to do our own bargaining over the buying of the store of tinned provisions, jams, pickles and wines in the Mess, as well as the scanty furniture in it. Among other things we purchased were two Bhutanese mountain sheep—huge creatures with horns. Meat being a rare commodity in Buxa, the major had bought them from a Bhuttia from across the border. Not needing to kill them at once, he had let them roam freely about the Mess garden until, as he said, they had become such pets that he could not harden his heart sufficiently to order them to be killed for food. My subaltern and I mentally resolved not to allow them to become thus endeared to us by long association.

Dinner in the Mess that night was quite a pleasant function, everyone but the doctor being in the best of spirits. As he was not to take his departure on the morrow, he was not as cheerful as the two Punjabi officers, who were delighted to think that they were so soon to leave Buxa. They had, perhaps, reason to rejoice at their return to civilisation and the society of their kind. They had come there from Tibet, where they had been quartered in the wilds from the end of the fighting in the war of 1904 to the evacuation of the country by our troops. They frankly pitied us for the prospect of two years' exile in this isolated post, where a strange white face was rarely seen. They fully expatiated on the loneliness of it. In a Bhuttia village a few miles over the hills there was an elderly American lady missionary. Down in the forest below a few English tea-planters were scattered about, the nearest fifteen or twenty miles from us. During the winter we might expect an occasional visitor, a General or our Colonel on inspection duty, or a Public Works Department Official come to see to the state of the road or the repair of the buildings. During the rainy season, which lasts seven months, from April to the end of October, with a rainfall therein from two hundred to three hundred inches, we would see no stranger and probably be cut off from outside intercourse by the washing away of the roads. As during those months the forest below would be filled with the deadly Terai fever, we could not solace our loneliness by sport which rendered the remainder of the year bearable. And as the jungle around us, which grew to our very doors would, during the Rains, swarm with leeches which fasten in scores on man or beast if given the chance, we would scarcely be able to put foot outside our bungalows, even if tempted to face the awful thunderstorms and torrential Rains.

All this certainly did not sound cheering; so I changed the subject and asked for information regarding my duties in the Station. I learned that, in addition to my work of my detachment, I would hold the proud but unpaid post of Officer Commanding Buxa Duar—an appointment which would entail voluminous routine correspondence on me. I would also, again without extra pay, represent law and order by being Cantonment Magistrate, third class, with power to award imprisonment up to three months' hard labour. Verily, the duties that fall to the lot of the Indian Army Officer are many and various. Besides being a soldier he is also a schoolmaster, having to set and correct examination papers for certificates of education. He must be something of a master tailor to decide on the fit and alteration of his men's new uniforms; a clerk to cope with interminable correspondence; an accountant to wrestle with complicated accounts. He must be an architect and builder to direct and oversee the erection and repair of the barracks, which is done by the sepoys themselves. Bad for him if he is not a good business man, for he must often give out contracts for hundreds or thousands of pounds, and see that they are properly carried out. A lawyer, to sit on or preside at courts martial, or to administer the law to civilians as Cantonment Magistrate. And sometimes it falls to his lot to replace the chaplain in a military Station, read the lessons in church, or, perhaps, the Burial Service over the grave of a comrade.

Next morning the detachment of Punjabis marched off; and as we watched their files disappear down the winding mountain road, we three Britishers certainly felt a little isolated and cut off from our kind. Before the small column passed the last bend which would hide them from our eyes, the major turned to wave us a cheery farewell. Poor fellow, not long after, when in command of his regiment, he died of cholera in Benares.

However, our depression was momentary; and we turned away to begin making ourselves acquainted with our new surroundings. Buxa Duar stands guard over one of the gates of India, which opens into it from the little-known country of Bhutan. It commands a pass through the Himalayas into the fertile plains of Eastern Bengal, a pass that has run with blood many a time in the past. Through it fierce raiders have poured to the laying waste of the rich plains below. Back through it weeping women and weary children have passed to slavery in a savage land. And were the strong hand of Briton lifted from it, its jungle-clad hills would see again the blood-dyed columns of fighting men and the sad processions of wailing captives. To-day its gloomy depths are peaceful. But to-morrow, when the menace of a regenerated and aggressive China becomes real, its rocky walls may once more echo to the sounds of war.

Three thousand feet above our heads, two miles away in a straight line, but six by the winding mule track, lay the boundary-line between the Indian Empire and Bhutana—a line that runs along the mountain tops and rarely fringes the plains. It curves round the northern slopes of the conical hill that towers above Buxa, Sinchula, the "Hill of the Misty Pass."

Buxa Duar has been the scene of fierce fighting even in the short history of England's rule in India. It was first taken by the British from the Bhutanese in the days of Warren Hastings, when in 1772 Captain Jones and his small column of sepoys swept them back into their mountainous land. It was given back the following year. In 1864 we again went to war with Bhutan and captured Buxa; and, although throughout the winter of that year, our troops were closely besieged in it, it has remained in our possession ever since. Formerly garrisoned by a whole regiment, it is now occupied merely by a double company—two hundred men—of an Indian Infantry battalion. They are the only troops between the Bhutan border and Calcutta—three hundred miles away.

In all my wanderings I have seldom seen a lovelier spot than this lonely outpost. Nestling in the little hollow on the giant Himalayas, its few bungalows stood in gardens flaming with the brilliant colours of bougainvillias and poinsettias, surrounded by hedges of wild roses, and shaded by clusters of tall bamboos and the dense foliage of mango trees. The encircling arms of the mountains held it closely pressed. The jungle clothed the steep slopes around it, and rioted to our very doors. No sound disturbed its peace, save the shrill notes of our bugles or the chattering of monkeys by day, and the sudden harsh cry of barking deer or the monotonous bell-like note of the night-jar after the sun had set.

The building dignified by the name of fort was in reality an irregular square of one-storied stone barracks, their outer faces and iron-shuttered windows loopholed for rifle fire. They were connected by a low stone wall pierced with three gateways, closed at night or on an alarm by iron gates, which slid into place on wheels. The fort was built on a knoll, which on three sides fell perpendicularly for two or three hundred feet in rocky precipices from ten to forty yards from the walls. On the north face it was only about fifty feet above the parade ground, which was a levelled space two hundred yards long and a hundred broad. This served also for hockey and as a rifle-range; the targets being placed in tiers up the steep hill-side on the east end.

Standing at the front gate and looking northwards towards the mountains, one saw the ground rise sharply to the foot of Sinchula. Dotted about among the trees and set round with orchid-studded, low stone walls or flowering hedges, were four or five single-storied bungalows.

The lowest and nearest to the parade ground of these was the Commanding Officer's Quarters, which I occupied. Higher up to the right, and separated from mine by a deep ravine crossed by a little wooden bridge, was an empty house, known as Married Officers' Quarters. Behind it was a long wooden building raised on pillars, the forest officer's bungalow, to shelter that official in his annual visit. Around it were a few bamboo huts for his native clerks. Past my quarters ran the mountain road which climbed the steep sides of Sinchula, and, degenerating into a narrow mule track, wound round it to the Bhutan frontier. Near my house it was shaded by mango trees which, when the fruit was ripe, were very popular with the wild monkeys. To preserve the mangoes for ourselves, I was then obliged to station a sentry on the road at daybreak to keep the marauders off. In my garden stood a very large mango tree, up which I used in the season to send a small Bhuttia boy to gather the fruit. One day he found a large monkey there before him. It attacked him savagely and I was obliged to shoot it to save him from its fury.

A hundred feet above my house and on the left of the road stood in a terraced garden the Officers' Mess, occupied by my subaltern and the doctor. And three hundred feet higher still was the last building in Buxa, the Circuit House, intended as a court-house and temporary residence for any civil official who should chance to come there on duty. The three white square towers, which stood on the spurs running down from Sinchula were known as the Picquet Towers, and, conspicuous against the dark mountains could be seen for many miles from the plains below. They were intended to contain in war time small parties of the garrison and hold points which commanded the fort at close range. From one above the east face of the fort even arrows could be shot into the interior of our defences; so its possession was a necessity to us. They were strongly built of stone and loopholed, the door eight feet from the ground, and reached by a ladder, windowless, the only light coming from the loopholes. To the west of the fort beyond the mountain road and behind another spur, was the bazaar or native town, which consisted of a dozen wooden huts, and three or four brick houses, in which lived the few bunniahs or merchants who resided there to trade grain, salt, and cloth, with the Bhutanese across the border. There were hardly thirty natives in the bazaar, comprising our whole civil population. The "shops" in the one tiny street contained little of use, even for our sepoys' frugal needs, and nothing for ours; so that anything we required had to be sent for from Calcutta—a day and a night by train.

BUXA DUAR. My bungalow in the foreground; the Officers' Mess among the trees.

"THE FORT WAS BUILT ON A KNOLL."

Beside the bazaar was the European cemetery, a mournful enclosure which was dotted with ruinous tombstones of British officers who had been killed or died of disease in this solitary outpost. The most recent grave was that of a former forest officer of Rajabhatkawa who, unable to bear the loneliness of his isolated life, had shot himself in his house in the jungle below. But before our detachment left Buxa another grave was dug here to hold the body of a young captain of my regiment. Though he died of disease, with no doctor there at the time to attend him, yet it was in reality loneliness that killed him; for, depressed by the solitude, he had no heart in him to fight against illness. But the far-flung boundaries of England's Empire are marked everywhere by graves like his.

From the south wall of the fort the ground fell in wooded spurs and rocky cliffs to the forest fifteen hundred feet below. East and west the interminable miles of trees ran on beyond the range of sight, clothing the foot-hills and climbing the steep mountain sides. Here and there a light green island in the darker-hued sea of foliage showed where a tea garden lay in a clearing, the iron-roofed factories, and the planters' bungalows visible through a field-glass. But to the south, beyond the clearly defined edge of the forest, the cultivated plains of Eastern Bengal stretched unbroken to Calcutta—three hundred miles away. South-west, in the Rains when the Indian atmosphere is clearest, we could see the Garo Hills fifty miles away in Assam, lying beyond the broad Brahmaputra where it flows to join the Ganges and pour their united waters through a hundred mouths into the Bay of Bengal—close on four hundred miles to the south of us.

CHAPTER II

LIFE ON OUTPOST

The daily routine—Drill in the Indian Army—Hindustani—A lingua franca—The divers tongues of India—The sepoys' lodging—Their ablutions—An Indian's fare—An Indian regiment—Rajput customs—The hospital—The doctor at work—Queer patients—A vicious bear—The Officers' Mess—Plain diet—Water—The simple life—A bachelor's establishment—A faithful Indian—Fighting the trusts—Transport in the hills—My bungalow—Amusements in Buxa—Dull days—Asirgarh—A lonely outpost—Poisoning a General—A storied fortress—Soldier ghosts—A spectral officer—The tragedy of isolation—A daring panther—A day on an elephant—Sport in the jungle—Gooral stalking in the hills—Strange pets—A friendly deer—A terrified visitor—A walking menagerie—Elephants tame and wild—Their training—Their caution—Their rate of speed—Fondness for water—Quickly reconciled to captivity—Snakes—A narrow escape—A king-cobra; the hamadryad—Hindu worship of the cobra—General Sir Hamilton Bower—An adventurous career—E. F. Knight—The General's inspection.

"Why, soldiers, why should we be melancholy, boys,
Whose business 'tis to die?"

With the easy philosophy of the soldier we three officers settled down rapidly in our new surroundings—new at least to my subaltern Creagh and me. Life was a little monotonous; but we did not grumble more than the Briton considers is his right. Our daily existence did not vary much. Before the sun had risen above the Picquet Towers, my white-robed Mohammedan servant woke me to the labours of the day, as the bugles in the fort were sounding the "dress for parade." Moving noiselessly about the room on bare feet he placed on a small table beside my camp bed, the chota hazri or "little breakfast," the light refreshment of tea, toast, and fruit with which the good Anglo-Indian begins the morning. The bad one prefers whisky-and-soda. Then my servitor laid out for me the dull khaki uniform which in India, except on occasions of ceremony, replaces the gayer garb of the soldier in England.

Morning and afternoon we drilled our men, watched them at musketry on the rifle-range, or practised them in mountain warfare up the steep slopes.

We found it difficult to manœuvre off the parade ground, as the hills around were mostly covered with such tangled jungle that one had to hack a passage through it with a kukri or a dah.[1] The drill of the Indian Army is precisely the same as for British troops. The words of command are invariably given in English, while only the explanations of movements are made in the vernacular. Thus in action an officer ignorant of Hindustani could take command of a native regiment in a crisis when all its white officers had been killed. Hindustani is a lingua franca invented in India by the Mohammedan armies of invasion from the north for intercourse with the peoples of the many conquered States. It is really a camp language made up of Sanscrit, Persian, Hindi and many other tongues. Even some military words, such as "cartouche," "tambour," have been borrowed from the French, owing to so many French adventurers having taken service in the armies of native princes in past times. Nowadays the English terms for military things or new inventions are adopted as they stand. Hindustani or Urdu is by no means universally understood in India, though most Mohammedans throughout the Peninsula have some knowledge of it; for nearly every race has its own separate language or dialect and there are probably a hundred and fifty different tongues spoken in our Indian Empire. Urdu, however, is a sine qua non for the British officer of the native army; and he has to pass at least two examinations, the Lower and the Higher Standard, in it. But in addition he must also qualify in the particular language spoken by the majority of men in his regiment. A subaltern in a Gurkha regiment, for instance, must pass in Gurkhali, in a Mahratta regiment in Mahratti; and so on.

After morning parade I held orderly room, disposed of any prisoners—rare things in the Indian Army—and took reports from the native officers commanding the companies. Then I went to my office where, such is the amount of accounts and correspondence in the Service, I found at least two hours' work. Then I visited the hospital and went on to inspect the lines, as the barracks of native troops are called. The Indian sepoy is not luxuriously lodged. The barrack-rooms in Buxa, better and more substantial than in most places, were single-storied stone buildings roughly paved and furnished only with the men's belongings; for Government does not even provide them with beds. So each of my sepoys had fitted himself out with a charpoy or native cot, a four-legged wooden bedstead with a string network bottom which makes a comfortable couch. On this lay his dhurri or carpet, and his blankets. Overhead on a rough shelf stood his canvas kit-bag containing his clothing, while on pegs hung his belt, bayonet, and puggri or turban. Such luxuries as basins and baths are unknown to the sepoy. He strips to his waist-cloth and even in the coldest weather washes himself under a stand-pipe or pours water over his body from his lotah or small brass vessel which he always carries to drink from or use for his ablutions. In personal cleanliness most Indian races are surpassed only by the Japanese; and my men were either Mohammedans or Rajputs whose religions enjoin frequent ablutions.

From the barrack-rooms I passed on to the sepoys' cooking-places. In the Indian Army rations in peace-time are not provided for the men; but, instead, they are given a certain allowance of money above their pay known as "compensation for dearness of provisions." This helps them to purchase their food, which consists in general of chupatties or cakes of flour and water, supplemented by ghee or clarified butter, various grain-stuffs, curry and sometimes a little meat. Many races eat rice instead of flour. Their method of cooking is primitive. A hole scratched in the ground and a couple of stones make the chula or fireplace, in which burn a few bits of wood or a handful of dry twigs. The sepoy mixes his atta, or flour, into a paste with a little water in a large brass dish, rolls it into balls and flattens them out into thin cakes on a convex iron plate over the fire, the result being something like crisp, thick pancakes. Having made a pile of these he grinds between stones various spices, such as turmeric, chillies, onions and poppy seed, moistened with water to make his curry, adds some cooked vegetables or a raw onion, and his simple meal is ready.

Among Hindus, men of different castes cook and eat apart. A Brahmin must have his separate fireplace, prepare his own food and eat alone. Other castes are not so particular and can employ cooks. In an Indian regiment each company or double company is generally composed of men of one race; and Government allows and pays two cooks and a bhisti or water-carrier to each company, these menials, with Hindus, being necessarily of the same caste as the sepoys they serve. Thus in my own battalion we have a double company of Rajputs, one of Gujars, and one of Rawats—all these being Hindus. The fourth is composed of Mohammedans. Each company is officered by men of their own caste, a Subhedar or captain, and a Jemadar or lieutenant; and every two companies are under a double company commander and a double company officer, who are British, and with the commandant, adjutant and quartermaster make up the European officers of the regiment.

My double company in Buxa was composed of Rajputs; but, having had to detach signallers, bandsmen, clerks, and other employed men to go with the headquarters to Dibrugarh, some Mussulmans were temporarily attached to bring it up to its original strength of two hundred men. The Rajputs' method of eating their meals is rather peculiar. Before each they must bathe and put on a clean dhotie, a cotton cloth wrapped round the waist, passing between the legs and falling to the knees. They must eat inside the chauka, a space of ground marked out and swept clean. Food which they wish to carry away and consume outside the chauka, as, for instance, if they are going on a long march, must be prepared in a particular way with water instead of ghee, which is generally used by them in cooking.

In my daily visit to the hospital I would find our medical officer, Smith, hard at work. For, besides the sick of the detachment, he had to tend any natives from outside who chose to seek the white man's medicine. To help him he had a young Indian sub-assistant surgeon, who, despite the scanty medical training he had received, pined to perform major operations. With little knowledge of surgery he wished to resort to the knife on every possible occasion. Once, when left in sole charge of the hospital, he determined to amputate the leg of a Bhuttia suffering from gangrenous sores. The patient, however, was of a different opinion and during the night stole silently from the hospital and fled in terror across the hills to his village. Like most mountaineers the Bhuttias are very subject to goitre. Two out of every three are the proud possessors of these enormous appendages, in some cases nearly as large as the owner's head. They seemed to regard them as ornaments, and absolutely refused to allow our medico to operate on them. One day there was carried to the fort from Chunabatti, the only village for miles round, a Chinaman suffering from beriberi. This man, who knew no word of any language but his own, had made his way on foot from China across Tibet and Bhutan over the Himalayas endeavouring to reach Calcutta in search of work. Stricken down with this fell disease he had lain for months in the village, living on the charity of the Bhuttias, and was brought to our hospital only to die. Another interesting case was a boy about seven years old who was brought in, absolutely scalped by a blow from the paw of a bear which he had disturbed when gathering wood in the forest. From brow to nape of neck his skull had been left bare to the bone, in which were deep indentations from the animal's claws. The shock of the blow would probably have killed a European, but with the marvellous tenacity of life among savage races, the boy soon recovered.

RAJPUT SEPOYS COOKING.

BRITISH AND INDIAN OFFICERS.

Our morning's work finished, we climbed up the hill for breakfast in the Mess. This was a long, single-storied stone building with an iron roof, erected on pillars which raised it six feet from the ground. From the tangled wilderness of the garden, bright with the vivid colours of huge bushes of poinsettia and bougainvillias, a flight of steps led up to the railed veranda which ran along the front of the building, and on to which opened the four rooms—the end ones used as quarters by Creagh and Smith, the centre apartments being the ante-room and dining-room. I wonder what some writers of military fiction, who prate glibly of the luxury in which army officers live, would say to the bare rooms and whitewashed walls of our Mess, furnished only with a few rickety tables and unsteady chairs. Or my subaltern's abode. One room, an iron cot borrowed from the hospital, a kitchen table, one dilapidated chair, a tin bath, and an iron basin on an old packing-case, comprised the sum-total of his possessions. Other furniture we could not get in Buxa; for the nearest shops were three hundred miles away in Calcutta. Of course, crockery, cooking-pots, glassware, linen and cutlery, we had to provide for ourselves. These we had brought with us. Before long, by dint of colour-washing the stone walls, hanging curtains and draperies of native cloth, and decorating the bare walls with the heads of animals we shot, we succeeded in making the Mess quite habitable and cosy.

We were not much better off in the bare necessities of life. Buxa produced little in the way of food. Chickens—more literally, hens of no uncertain antiquity—and eggs of almost equal age were often procurable locally. But no meat. Sometimes a Bhuttia from across the frontier brought a goat for sale; and, although the Asiatic goat is an abomination, yet such an occasion was a red-letter day for us. Bread was sent us by rail from a railway refreshment-room twenty-four hours away, and did not always arrive. Fresh vegetables we never saw until later on we tried our prentice hands at gardening—and a sorry mess we made of it. In the winter we could add to the pot by the help of our rifles and guns; and venison and jungle fowl were a welcome change from the monotony of our menus. But our staple food consisted of tinned provisions—an expensive and wearisome diet. I dare say the British workman would have turned up his nose at our usual fare; and I could not blame him. Even the water supply in Buxa was a difficult question. Our Mess got its water from a spring in the hills hundreds of yards away, led down in bamboos to the kitchen. The fort was supplied from another spring in the base of the hill on which it was built; and all day long the bhistis[2] toiled up and down bringing the water in goatskin bags. But a few months after our arrival the springs nearly gave out; and I was faced with the necessity of abandoning fort and station, and moving the military and civil population to camp on the banks of a river miles away in the forest below, when we were saved by timely rain.

Yet despite the simple life we were leading in Buxa my monthly expenses were more than twenty pounds for the bare necessities of existence. I had to pay rent to Government for my bungalow, and a share of the rent for the Mess, as well as my share of the expenses of mess-servants, lighting, and food. My personal household consisted of my "boy" or body-servant, a dhobi or washerman, a bhisti or water-carrier, a syce or groom, and my sword-orderly, a sepoy of the regiment. This last individual, a Mussulman named Mohammed Draj Khan, had been in my service for many years and, with the fidelity of the Indian, was faithfully attached to me. He went with me to China in 1900 with the Indian Expeditionary Force and returned with me again there five years later. When I was going from Hong Kong on furlough to the United States, Canada and Europe, I arranged for him to be given six months' leave to his home in India. But when he heard of it Draj Khan was exceedingly wroth.

"What? Am I not to accompany my Sahib?" he demanded indignantly.

"No; I cannot take you with me to Europe," I replied. "But I have got you leave to go home to your wife whom you have not seen for four years."

"Oh, my wife does not matter," was the ungallant answer; "she can wait. But my place is with my Sahib wherever he goes."

And he has never forgiven me for not taking him; although he still continues to serve me faithfully.

Our sepoys fared better than their British officers. We found on arrival that the local bunniahs or shop-keepers were in the habit of supplying the men with very inferior and bad flour and other food-stuffs and charging a high price for them, relying on the monopoly they enjoyed. I determined to follow the example of the United States Government and make war on trusts. So I sent my native officers to Cooch Behar and other towns fifty miles away to purchase supplies, and ordered flour in bulk from a mill under English management in Calcutta. I had it sent by rail to Buxa Road Station, and conveyed thence by our elephants and Bhuttia coolies. An elephant can carry a weight of ten or twelve maunds—a maund being equal to eighty pounds. The sturdy Bhuttias, women as well as men, could come up our steep road, each with a load of two maunds on his or her back. Their burdens were fixed in two forked sticks bound to the shoulders in such a way that when the bearers sat down the ends of the sticks rested on the ground and supported the weight. But when heavily laden a coolie cannot then rise to his feet unaided, unless he first lies down, rolls over on his face, then pushes himself on to his knees with his hands and stands up. In Chemulpo and Seoul in Corea I have seen coolies employ a similar method of carrying their loads.

MY DOUBLE COMPANY.

MY BACHELOR ESTABLISHMENT.

After breakfast I returned to my house to pass the hours until the afternoon parade. After the dilapidated bungalows of most stations in India, with their thatched roofs sheltering rats, squirrels and even snakes, and their floors of pounded earth and decayed matting full of fleas, ants and the myriad plagues of insect life of the East, my small house seemed luxurious. It was built strongly of rough stone blocks to withstand the awful mountain storms. The roof was of iron which rang like a drum to the heavy rain and monster hailstones of the Monsoon. It contained four small rooms with ceilings and floors of wood, each with its fireplace. For during the winter we found it cold enough to have fires going day and night, the jungle around furnishing us with an ample supply of fuel. The meagre furniture which I had bought from the major of the Punjabis was soon supplemented with a few more articles sent from Calcutta. The little garden contained mango trees and a tree bearing the huge and evil-smelling jack-fruit, of which natives are very fond, though its sickening odour and oversweet taste repel most Europeans. The hedges around my compound were of wild roses. At one side stood my stable and the stone outhouses in which my servants lived; for in India the domestics are not lodged in the bungalow.

The afternoon was occupied with drills, signalling practice and military lectures to the non-commissioned officers.

Buxa offered scant amusement within its limits to us Britishers. We had hockey-matches with the men two or three times a week. Creagh, being a keen golfer, tried to make miniature links about the fort; but, after losing six balls in his first game in the jungle around, he gave it up. We turned our attention to tennis. A comparatively level space hewed out of the mountain-side was fixed on as a court. Rocks four or five feet high were dug out of it; and the elephants were employed for days in bringing up earth from the plains below to spread on it. But more rocks seemed to grow in it and shove their heads through the thin covering of mould, grass came in thick, wiry patches; and altogether our tennis court could not be pronounced a success.

Evening brought with it the dullest hours of the day. The Calcutta newspaper, which arrived by post every afternoon, was soon read; and the English journals sent to us from regimental headquarters were a month old. None of us were keen card players. Our library was small; and, as light literature, drill books soon cease to charm. Our daily life was too uneventful to afford many subjects of conversation; and as topics the incompetency of Naik Chandu Singh or the slackness on parade of Sepoy Pem Singh were not engrossing. England seemed too far away for the discussion of its politics to interest us. The pitiable limitations of men as talkers was painfully evident. Not being women we had no ever-ready subjects of conversation in dress, babies and servants' misdemeanours; and we could not talk scandal about ourselves. So, after the meagre dinner that our Gurkha cook contrived out of the athletic hen or tinned sausage, we threw ourselves into long chairs around the fire; Creagh betook himself to the study of military books for his forthcoming examination for promotion, and the doctor and I thumbed tattered novels we had read a dozen times.

But Buxa was not the loneliest spot in which I have been quartered. As a subaltern I was stationed alone for many months in Asirgarh in the Central Provinces, an old Indian fortress on a hill lost in the jungle. That was solitude itself. My nearest European neighbour was forty miles away. I saw no white face and spoke no word of English for months at a time. Once a year a General was supposed to pay it the compliment of an official inspection, although the garrison consisted only of a British subaltern and fifty sepoys. But I think that after one occasion when the General and his staff officers nearly died on my hands of ptomaine poisoning—really contracted on their journey thither, but ascribed by the uncharitable among my friends to my base devices and resentment at having my peace disturbed by this officious intrusion—this duty grew out of favour with generals who valued their lives. This detachment has since been abolished.

The fortress was wonderfully interesting, with a history reaching back to the eighth century. It had passed through the hands of the various masters of India in turn, and every stone of its walls had a story to tell. Taken by the British from the Maharajah of Gwalior twice, it remained in our possession from 1818, and was formerly garrisoned by a company of Artillery, a British regiment and a wing of a native battalion. Fallen from its high estate, a subaltern and half a company were considered enough for it in my time. And the subaltern combined in his own person the important offices of Commandant of Asirgarh Fortress, officer commanding the troops, officer in charge of military treasure chest, Cantonment Magistrate third class, and Church Trustee. For inside the fort were a Protestant Church in disused barracks, a ruined Catholic Chapel on the altar of which wild monkeys perched, and two cemeteries full of graves of English dead. The post was a lonely one for a young officer. I lived in the only habitable European building, formerly the general hospital, for which I paid twenty-four pounds a year to Government. The dead house was just outside my bedroom window. The interior of the fort, the fifty-feet-high walls of which were a mile and a half in circumference, was crowded with the ruins of an ancient palace, a large mosque, an old Moghul prison with wonderful underground passages and cells, and—most depressing of all—the gaunt wrecks of English bungalows with bare rafters and tattered ceiling-cloths. A fit habitation for ghosts. And ghosts there were. No native would venture about the fort alone at night. Weird tales had my sepoys to tell of the Shaitans and bhuts, as they termed the spectral beings that wandered within the walls in the dark hours and were seen again and again by my men. They invariably took the form of British soldiers. And actually one night when I was miles away out shooting in the jungle the sentry at the gate turned out the guard to an approaching white officer, whom he took to be me. The whole guard, eleven men in all, swore next day to the ghostly visitant.

Few English folk at home, who fondly picture an officer's life in India as one long round of social gaieties, of polo, sport, races and balls, realise the tragedies of loneliness of many who serve the Empire. Of the dreary solitude of a military police post in the jungles of Burma, of a fort on the Indian frontier, where a young subaltern lives for months, for years, alone. A boy brought up in the comfort of an English home, used to the pleasant fellowship of a regimental mess, is there condemned to isolation from his kind, to food that a pauper would reject, and a lodging a cottager would scorn. Should one of the many diseases of India lay its grisly hand on him he is far from medical aid. He must fight his illness alone, lying unattended in his comfortless quarters. Outside, a pitiless sun in a sky of brass pours down its rays on the glaring, shadowless desert. Inside, the droning whine of the punkah mocks him throughout the weary day, as it scarcely stirs the heated air. Night brings only the more terrible hours of darkness when sleep is banished from the tired eyes and the fever-racked brain knows no relief. Small wonder that too often in his agony he seeks death by his own hand. I have gone through the hell of sickness in a lonely post, when day after day the awful pains of jungle fever tortured me and night brought no relief. I have known what it is to gaze in my delirium at my revolver and think it the kindly friend that alone could end my misery, until a sane moment made me realise that its touch meant death and I had it taken away from me. But I have known, too, many a poor fellow to whom that saving interval of sanity was denied, to whom a bullet through the tortured brain brought oblivion.

In comparison with Asirgarh, Buxa was quite a gay place. I was seldom alone in it, and generally had at least one other white man with me. We were kept in touch with the outside world by a telegraph line, which, however, was constantly being broken by trees blown down by storms or uprooted by elephants. Once a day a sturdy little Bhuttia postman toiled up the hill with our letters. "His Majesty's Mail" carried for his protection a short spear with bells on it to scare wild beasts; but this did not save him from being occasionally stopped by wild elephants and once being treed by a tiger. For sport we had to descend to the forest; though sometimes a barking deer wandered into our gardens from the jungle, and from the Mess veranda we shot a couple on the hill-side across a deep nullah or ravine.

Between my bungalow and the Married Officers' Quarters ran another nullah. Occasionally, when there was no moon, a panther used to wander down it, calling like a cat in the darkness which was too intense to allow me a shot at the animal. When we came to Buxa we had wondered why the windows of our houses were covered with strong wire netting, and were inclined to be sceptical when told that this was to keep predatory beasts out. But the Punjabi subaltern had been awakened one night by the noise of some animal moving about his room in the Mess, he having left his door open. He seized a handful of matches, struck them and saw a panther scared by the sudden blaze dash out through the door. And twice during our sojourn in Buxa did a similar thing happen.

This particular panther, for we assumed that it was always the same animal, haunted the Station and preyed on the dogs in the bazaar. One day on the road just below the fort it met one of my sepoys who promptly climbed the nearest tree and remained in the topmost branches until his shouts brought some other men to the rescue. Once at night I was roused from sleep by wild cries from a Bhuttia's hut on the spur above our Mess and learned on inquiry that the panther had carried off his dog. Another time, in brilliant moonlight, an Indian doctor then in medical charge of the detachment, who lived in the bungalow next to mine, saw the beast sitting in the small garden intently watching the door of an outhouse in which a milch-goat was kept shut up. The doctor ran indoors to fetch his gun and had an unsuccessful shot at it as it jumped the hedge. Needless to say we made many efforts to compass its death. One night it killed a goat tied up as a bait to a tree within fifteen yards of the fort and was wounded by a native officer waiting for it behind the wall. Yet not long afterwards it climbed into the fort at night and carried off a sepoy's dog. Many a time I sat up in a tree over a bleating goat in the moonlight, but always in vain; and I suppose that panther still lives to afford sport to our successors in Buxa.

Life was well worth living on the days when we could descend into the forest for a shoot. At dawn we started down the three miles of steep road to Santrabari where the elephants awaited us. For work in the jungle these animals, instead of the howdahs or cage-like structures with seats which they carry on shoots in fairly open country, have only their pads, thick, straw-stuffed mattresses bound on their backs by stout ropes. For in dense forest howdahs would soon be swept off. When we arrived at the Peelkhana the mahouts made the huge beasts kneel down, or we clambered up, either by hauling oneself up by the tail, aided by one foot on the hind leg held up for the purpose at the driver's command, or by catching hold of the ears from the front and standing on the curled-up trunk which then raised us up on to the elephant's head. One either sat sideways on the pad or astride above the shoulders and behind the mahout who rode on the neck with his bare feet behind the ears. Then our giant steeds lumbered off into the forest with an awkward, disjointed stride which is sorely trying to the novice. And sitting upright with nothing to rest the back against for eight hours or more, shaken violently all the time by the jerky motion, is decidedly tiring. Prepared for beast or bird, each of us carried a rifle and a shot-gun, and, separating from the others, went his own way through the forest. Sometimes a sambhur, the big Indian stag, was the bag; sometimes a wild boar. Perhaps a khakur, the small, alert barking deer, of which the flesh is infinitely more tender than a sambhur's, or a few jungle fowl, rewarded our efforts. We carried with us food and water for the day and did not return until evening. Then, after leaving the elephants at the Peelkhana, came the fifteen-hundred-feet climb up the steep road to Buxa. And in a long chair in the Mess the fatigues of the day were forgotten in the pleasure of recounting every incident of the sport.

Sometimes we went out among the hills around us to stalk gooral, an active little wild goat. Clambering up the almost sheer sides of the mountains or clinging to the faces of rugged precipices while carrying a heavy rifle was a toilsome task; and too often, after a long and perilous climb, did I arrive in sight of the quarry only to see it disappear in bounding flight over the cliffs.

In our excursions into the forest or by purchase from natives we gradually gathered together a varied collection of pets to solace our loneliness. At different times I possessed half a dozen barking deer fawns, one of which became an institution in Buxa. Scorning confinement she insisted on being allowed to wander loose about the Station, and, soon getting to know the sepoys' meal hours, visited the fort regularly. She was punctual in her attendance at tea-time in my bungalow, being exceedingly fond of buttered toast, and always claiming her share of mine. More than once I have only just been in time to save her from the rifle of one of our rare visitors who, seeing her on the hill-side, took her to be wild. A small green parrot which I had similarly objected to being shut up and flew freely about the Station. From wherever it happened to be its quick eye always marked my servant bringing my afternoon meal to the bungalow from the kitchen; and, having a strange liking for hot tea, it used to fly in through the open door of my sitting-room and perch on my head. It was little use my objecting to this familiarity; for, if I attempted to dislodge it, it would stick its claws into my scalp and hold on to my ear by its sharp beak until I let it drink from my cup. Its propensity for swooping down in the open on any white man was sometimes alarming to strangers. Once a certain civil official visitor to Buxa who was jocularly reputed to be overfond of alcohol and never far from the verge of delirium tremens was approaching my bungalow when the parrot swept down on him and tried to alight on his hat. Uncertain as to the reality of the vision circling around his head, our visitor uttered a cry of terror and tried to brush the phantom aside until I laughingly assured him that it was a real bird. He revenged himself afterwards by encouraging the parrot in a depraved taste for whisky.

A KNEELING ELEPHANT.

In my afternoon walks I used to be accompanied by a small menagerie. Two small barking deer stepped daintily behind me, their long ears twitching incessantly. A monkey loped on all fours ahead, now and then stopping to sit down and scratch himself thoughtfully. A bear cub shambled along, playing with my dogs and being occasionally rolled over by a combined rush of riotous puppies. On our return to the bungalow we would be greeted by no less than five cats; while from its perch on the veranda a young hornbill, scarcely feathered and possessing a beak almost as big as its body, would survey us with a cold and glassy stare from its unwinking eyes. Once in a beat in the forest my orderly caught a sambhur fawn which he bore, shrieking piteously, in his arms to me. In a day or two it was perfectly tame, fed from my hand, and insisted on sleeping on my bed. It was killed by a snake shortly afterwards.

I might almost include in our list of pets our three Government elephants, of which we became very fond. They were named Jhansi, Dundora, and Khartoum. I generally used the last in the jungle; though when looking for dangerous game I preferred Dundora. Jhansi was a frivolous and unsteady young lady of forty years of age; and shooting from her back was impossible. I soon learned to drive them, sitting on their necks and guiding them by pressing my feet behind the ears, as the mahouts do. I was sometimes called on to doctor them; and had to perform almost a surgical operation on Jhansi, when wounded by a wild elephant out in the jungle. I had fortunately been taught how to treat their ailments when doing veterinary work in a transport course some years before. Elephants are somewhat delicate animals and liable to a multiplicity of diseases. Accustomed in the wild state to shelter from the noonday heat in thick forests, they suffer greatly if worked in a hot sun and get sore feet if obliged to tramp along hard roads. Domesticated elephants are generally very gentle and docile; though males in a state of musth often become very dangerous. Contrary to the usually received opinion they are not intelligent; but they are very obedient. At the word of command they will kneel, rise, pick up an article from the ground or lift a man on to their necks. When a mahout is gathering fodder for his charge and sees suitable leaves out of reach at the top of a small tree, he orders his elephant to break the tree down. This it does by curling up its trunk and pressing its forehead with all its weight behind it against the stem and thus uprooting it. When crossing a stream they try to sound the depth with their trunks. A bridge they attempt cautiously with one foot, and, if not satisfied with its strength, will resolutely refuse to trust themselves on it. Though good at climbing up steep slopes they are the reverse when descending. On the level they are fast for a short distance only; but they can cover many miles in the day when travelling. They are excellent swimmers and are very fond of water. In the wild state they bathe whenever they can; and tame elephants thoroughly enjoy being taken into the river and lie in the shallows with a look of blissful content while their mahouts wash them and scrub them with bricks. It is extraordinary how quickly they become used to captivity. In a few days they let their keepers feed them, mount them and take them to water. I have seen two, caught only four months before, being driven in a beat for a tiger; and when he was wounded and broke back into thick jungle they followed him unhesitatingly at their mahouts' command.

Like all hill-places Buxa was full of snakes. One night in the hot weather when dining on the veranda, we found a viper climbing up the rough stone wall of the Mess just behind our chairs. We vacated our seats promptly and killed it with long bamboos. Another evening I discovered one on my veranda. Once when camped in the forest with my detachment, the officer who was then with me and I were sitting at a small table having tea when one of the native officers came up. I had a chair brought for him and he sat talking to us until dusk came. My servant placed a lighted lamp on the table. Suddenly the native officer who was sitting a few yards from me said quietly:

"Do not move, Sahib. There is a snake under your chair; and if you try to stand up you may tread on it."

It was difficult to obey him and remain motionless; but, as it was the wisest thing to do, I sat quietly until I saw a small and very poisonous viper emerge between my feet and wriggle off. Then I jumped up, seized the lamp from the table and a cane from my native officer and killed it.

In Buxa one afternoon when I happened to be inspecting the bazaar a native ran up in a state of great excitement to inform me that a "bahut burra samp," a very large snake, was climbing up the precipice on the west side of the hill on which the bazaar stood. I went with him and found two or three Bhuttias looking over the edge at an enormous serpent which was making its way up the steep face, clinging to projecting rocks and bushes. From its size I took it to be a python, which is not poisonous and kills its prey only by compression. We waited until the snake had got its head and a third of its length over the brink and fell upon it with sticks and clubbed it to death. I had it carried to my bungalow where I measured it and found it to be fifteen feet two inches in length. Preparatory to skinning it, I compared it with the coloured plates in a book on Indian reptiles and found to my horror that it was a king-cobra or hamadryad, the most dreaded and dangerous ophidian in Asia. It is very venomous and wantonly attacks human beings; so that it was fortunate for us that we had caught it at a disadvantage. There is a recorded instance of one chasing and overtaking a man on a pony. It is generally to be found only in the forests of Eastern Bengal, Assam, and Burmah.

When one considers the enormous number of snakes in India it is surprising how seldom they are seen. This is due to their rarely venturing out in the daytime. But I have killed one with my sword when returning from a morning parade in Bhuj and another, a black cobra five feet nine inches long, in my bathroom in Asirgarh. Few Europeans ever get over their instinctive horror of these reptiles; but the natives, thousands of whom die every year from snake-bite owing to their going about with bare feet and legs at night, have not the same dread of them. In fact Hindus hold the cobra sacred, and have an annual festival, the Nagpanchmai, in its honour. I have seen in Cutch the Rao (or Rajah) of that State go in solemn procession on that day to worship it in a temple, accompanied by his strangely-uniformed troops, which included soldiers in steel caps and chain mail walking on stilts. They were supposed to be prepared to fight in the salt deserts and sandy wastes which surround Cutch.

Our first visitors from the outside world reached Buxa about a month after our arrival. They were General Bower, commanding the Assam Brigade to which we belonged, and his staff officer, come for the annual inspection of the detachment. Brigadier-General (now Major-General Sir Hamilton) Bower is a man whose paths have lain in strange places and whose career reads like a book of adventures. A keen sportsman and a daring explorer of untrodden ways, he was as a captain ordered by the Government of India to pursue the Mohammedan murderer of an English traveller, Dalgleish, through the savage wilds of Central Asia. For months he chased the assassin through sterile regions where no European had ever before set foot and at last hounded him into the hands of the Russians at Samarcand where he killed himself in jail. His capture was necessary to show the lawless tribesmen of Central Asia that a price must be paid for a white man's blood and that the arm of our Government could reach an Englishman's slayer in any land. Readers of E. F. Knight's fascinating book, "Where Three Empires Meet" will remember the author's meeting with Captain Bower in Kashmir in 1891, after the latter's successful pursuit of this murderer, Dad Mohammed. Bower was then starting on his celebrated journey from India overland to China, which he has described in his work "Across Tibet." And since those days his life has not been tame. Ordered to raise a regiment of Chinamen to garrison Wei-hai-wei, he landed in Shanghai with one follower and soon brought a corps of Northern Chinese into being, which, in two years after its raising, fought splendidly in the bloody struggles around Tientsin in the Boxer War of 1900. He afterwards commanded the British Legation Guard in Pekin and found ample scope for all his tact and good temper in the intercourse with the officers of the Guards of other nationalities in the Chinese capital.

He spent three days with us; and though his inspection was thorough, and entailed fatiguing manœuvres through jungle I had hitherto regarded as impenetrable and up mountains I had considered unscaleable, we were sorry when his visit terminated. As a rule one does not hail a General's inspection as a pleasant function. But General Bower proved the pleasantest and most interesting visitor we ever had. Tired of our own thrice-told tales we revelled in the interesting conversation of a man who had seen and done so much in his adventurous career, who had journeyed along untrodden ways, had fought strange foes and carried his life in his hand in wild lands where no king's writ runs. We talked much of Knight, whom I have the good fortune to know, a man who, like the General, might be the hero of a boy's book of romance. His life had been equally adventurous. He fought for the French in 1870, and against them later in Madagascar. In a small yacht he crossed the Atlantic and visited most countries in South America. In his wanderings beyond the frontier of India he came in for the difficult little Hunza-Nagar campaign and fought in it. Author, traveller, war-correspondent, amateur soldier, he has been everywhere, seen and done everything. And, simple and courageous, he is a type of the adventurers who made England great. Romance is not dead while such men as he and Bower live.

With a General on official inspection one is inclined to speed the parting guest; but as General Bower waved his farewell to us from the back of the elephant which was carrying him downhill we were sorry to part with him, and all three hoped to meet him the following year again in Buxa. But when he came I alone was left. Smith had gone to Calcutta, and Creagh was commanding another detachment of the regiment in the heart of Tibet, even farther from civilisation than Buxa.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Heavy native knives.

[2] Water-carriers.

CHAPTER III

THE BORDERLAND OF BHUTAN

The races along our North-East Border—Tibet—The Mahatmas—Nepal—Bhutan—Its geography—Its founder—Its Government—Religious rule—Analogy between Bhutan and old Japan—Penlops and Daimios—The Tongsa Penlop—Reincarnation of the Shaptung Rimpoche—China's claim to Bhutan—Capture of the Maharajah of Cooch Behar—Bogle's mission—Raids and outrages—The Bhutan War of 1864-5—The Duars—The annual subsidy—Bhutan to-day—Religion—An impoverished land—Bridges—Soldiers in Bhutan—The feudal system—Administration of justice—Tyranny of officials—The Bhuttias—Ugly women—Our neighbours in Buxa—A Bhuttia festival—Archery—A banquet—A dance—A Scotch half-caste—Chunabatti—Nature of the borderland—Disappearing rivers—The Terai—Tea gardens—A planter's life—The club—Wild beasts in the path—The Indian planters—Misplaced sympathy—The tea industry—Profits and losses—Planters' salaries—Their daily life—Bhuttia raids on tea gardens—Fearless planters—An unequal fight.

Along the North-East Frontier of India lie numerous States and races of which the average Britisher is very ignorant. Of late years Tibet has bulked largely in the public eye owing to international and diplomatic intrigues and our little war with it in 1904. But, previously, it was probably best known to the Man in the Street as the country from which according to the Theosophists, "the Mahatmas come from." They must all have deserted it long since; for I never met anyone who had been in Tibet who had ever heard of them there. Travellers like General Bower who had journeyed through the land from end to end, officers of the Anglo-Indian Army that made its way to Lhasa, others of my regiment who had lived in Gyantse, learned to speak the language and mixed much with the people, were all ignorant of the existence of these mysterious and supernaturally gifted beings.

Nepal is best known as the country which supplies us with the popular little Gurkha soldiers. But Bhutan, which lies along our Indian border, is scarcely known even by name to the crowd. Yet, as long ago as in the days of Warren Hastings, we had diplomatic intercourse with it; and half a century has not elapsed since we were at war with the Bhutanese. Yet, to-day, there are not a dozen Englishmen who have crossed its borders.

Bhutan is an exceedingly mountainous country, twenty thousand square miles in extent, lying along the northern boundary of Bengal and Assam, hemmed in on the west by Sikkim, a State under our suzerainty, and on the west and north by Tibet. A Buddhist land, its system of government is very similar to that of Japan before the Meiji, the revolution of 1868. It was founded by a lama who, after establishing himself as supreme ruler, handed over the control of temporal matters to a layman and a council of elders. Until the other day the country was nominally governed by a spiritual head, the Shaptung Rimpoche, an incarnation of the deified founder, known in India as the Durma Raja, and a mundane monarch whom we term the Deb Raja. They were assisted by a council. The analogy between them and the Mikados and Shoguns of Japan was very close. To complete it the real control of the land was practically in the hands of feudal barons called Penlops, who, like the Daimios of old Japan, ruled their own territories, and, when strong enough, defied the Central Government. For the greater part of the last century the Penlops of Tongsa were the most powerful among these. The present holder of the title was recently elected hereditary Maharajah of Bhutan. He is Sir Ugyen Wang-chuk, K.C.I.E.—a most enlightened man and strongly in favour of the British. During the war of 1904 with Tibet, he placed all his influence on our side; and, his efforts to prevent bloodshed being unavailing, he accompanied our troops to Lhasa. The Government of India, in recognition of his services rewarded him with the K.C.I.E., and a present of rifles and ammunition. When our present King-Emperor visited India as Prince of Wales in 1906, Sir Ugyen Wang-chuk was invited to Calcutta and saw for himself the wonders of civilisation and learned something of the might of England. It was shortly after his return from India that he was elected Maharajah. Though he is now the real ruler of the country the pretence is kept up of the Government still being in the hands of the Durma and Deb Rajas. On the death of the incumbent of the former position, his reincarnation is sought for among young boys throughout the land, as happens in the case of the Dalai Lama in Tibet.

In former times China held a shadowy claim to the suzerainty of Bhutan; and when, after our war with Tibet, we re-established her influence over that country, the Chinese endeavoured to reassert their hold over Bhutan as well. The Tongsa Penlop preferred having the British to deal with and in January, 1910 signed a treaty by which he placed the foreign relations of his country under the control of the Government of India. But otherwise Bhutan is completely independent. We do not interfere in any way in its internal affairs; and while the Bhutanese can enter India freely, no Britisher is allowed into their country without special sanction from our own authorities, which is rarely given.

The first occasion on which the Indian Government was brought into contact with Bhutan was in the time of Warren Hastings. In those days the Bhutanese claimed sovereignty over the forest-clad plains in the north of Eastern Bengal. In 1772 they carried off the Maharajah of Cooch Behar as a prisoner. A small British force pursued them into the hills and made them surrender their captive. Hastings seized the opportunity of their suing for peace to send an Envoy, Bogle, to endeavour to establish trading relations with Bhutan. Bogle entered the country by way of Buxa Duar and was at first well received by the Deb Raja. He gave a flattering account of the people and their customs in his journal; and his description of Bhutan might almost have been written yesterday, so little changed is it. His mission bore little fruit; and the jealousy of strangers, inherent in all Buddhist nations, soon put a stop to any intercourse with India. A long series of raids into our territory and outrages on our subjects along the border was borne with exemplary patience for many years by the East India Company. But at length the ill-treatment of another Envoy, Eden, sent to remonstrate with the Bhutanese, led to our declaring war on them in 1864. Taken by surprise at first, they were driven out of their forts in the Himalayan passes; but they soon rallied, chased one of our columns in disorder out of the country, forcing it to abandon its guns, and penned in our garrisons in the captured forts. But, in the following year, despite their fanatical bravery, they were defeated finally and compelled to beg for peace. The Indian Government deprived them of the Duars, the forest strip of country lying along the base of the Himalayas. The word duar means "door," or "gateway," and originally referred to the passes leading through the mountains into India. The Bhutanese pleaded that this deprived them of their most profitable raiding ground and source of supply of slaves. Our Government, moved by this ingenuous plea, compensated them by the grant of an annual subsidy of fifty thousand rupees (now equal to £3333) which has recently been raised to a lakh, which is one hundred thousand. This sum, like similar but smaller amounts disbursed by us to savage tribes along our frontiers, may be regarded as either a species of blackmail or a reward of good behaviour. Should the recipients displease us in the conduct of their relations with other countries or should they allow their unruly young men to raid across our borders, the payment is suspended until amends are made. It generally has the desired effect, and saves a punitive little war. I was surprised, however, to find that the Bhuttias inside our frontier, who were mostly refugees from the exactions and oppression of their own officials, attributed our paying this subsidy to fear of the might of Bhutan, and held it up to my sepoys as a proof of the greatness of their nation.

Bhutan to-day stands much where it has for centuries past. Its religion is a debased lamaism and idolatry, which replace the high moral teaching of Buddha. Its impoverished peasants and even the lay officials are heavily taxed to support in idleness the innumerable shoals of Buddhist monks and nuns. Praying wheels and prayer flags and the support of lamas are, as in Tibet, all that is necessary to ensure salvation. Arts and handicrafts are decaying. Trade is principally carried on by the primitive method of barter. Owing to the mountainous nature of the country cultivation is much restricted. The only coins I could find struck in Bhutan were a silver piece worth sixpence, and a copper one worth the sixteenth of a penny. British, Tibetan and Chinese coins are used. Most of our annual subsidy finds its way back into India in exchange for cloth and food-stuffs. When paid by us a large portion of it used to go to the ecclesiastical dignitaries in the capital, Punakha, and the rest was distributed among the various Penlops. The Deb Zimpun, the official sent into our territory every year to receive it, now hands it over to the Maharajah, who disburses it.

The roads through Bhutan are mere ill-kept mule tracks. The forests, which are in strong contrast to the usually treeless plateaux of Northern Tibet, though not found at the greatest elevation in the country, are well looked after; and the regulations for their preservation are strictly enforced. A long series of internecine wars has ruined the land; but of late years the predominance of the Tongsa Penlop has ensured internal peace. The only buildings of note are the temples, the gumpas or large monasteries and the jongs or castles, huge rambling edifices of stone and wood. The towns mostly consist of wooden huts. But the Bhutanese are very clever in constructing bridges over the rivers and torrents that traverse their mountainous country. These are sometimes marvels of engineering skill, great wooden structures on the cantilever principle or well-constructed iron suspension bridges, remarkable when one considers the rude appliances at the disposal of the builders.

There is no regular army in Bhutan, each Penlop and important official maintaining his own armed retinue; but every man in the country is liable for service. Their weapons are chiefly single-edged straight swords and bows and arrows. The swords are practically long knives and are universally carried as cutting tools, for use in the forests. There are very few modern fire-arms in the country. The Deb Zimpun, in his visit to Buxa to receive the subsidy, was accompanied by his guard of sixty men without a gun among them. He told me that he possessed a fowling-piece himself which he had left behind, as he had no cartridges for it.

Although Bhutan now possesses a Maharajah, the government is still carried on on feudal lines. The Penlops rule their own territories without much outside interference. Under them are the jongpens or commanders of jongs, who act as governors of districts. Each Penlop has a tarpon or general to command his troops. Under the jongpens are lesser officials known as tumbas. There is no judiciary branch, and justice is rudely administered. A murderer is punished by the loss of a hand and being hamstrung, or sometimes is tied to the corpse of his victim and thrown into a river or over a precipice. The exactions of the officials drive many refugees over our border: and the hills around Buxa were peopled almost entirely by Bhuttias who had fled from slavery and oppression.

The Bhuttia is a cheerful, hard-working and easily contented individual. He is naturally brave, and has the makings of a good soldier in him. He is generally medium-sized, broad and sturdy, with thick muscular legs such as I have only seen equalled in the chair coolies of Hong Kong and the rickshawmen in Japan. The northern Bhutanese are fair and often blue-eyed. Their Tibetan neighbours hold them in dread. The dress of a Bhuttia man is simple and consists of one garment shaped like the Japanese kimono, kilted by a girdle at the waist to leave the legs free. Their heads and feet are generally bare. The costume of the richer folk, except on occasions of ceremony, is very much the same; but they generally wear stockings and shoes or long Chinese boots. But even the Maharajah often goes barelegged. The Bhutanese women are the ugliest specimens of femininity I have ever seen. In the south they cut their hair shorter even than the men do. But when they can they load themselves with ornaments of turquoises or coloured stones.

Around Buxa the Bhuttia inhabitants build, high upon the steepest hills, villages of wooden, palm-thatched huts supported on poles which raise them well off the ground. Their household utensils and drinking vessels are usually made of the useful bamboo. Around their houses they scratch up the ground and plant a little; but their chief employment is as porters or as woodcutters in the Government forests. They never seek for work in the tea gardens near; though on these the coolies are well paid and have to be brought from a long distance away in India. But the Bhuttia is essentially a hill-man; and life in the steamy heat of the Bengal plains would be unendurable to him.

A thousand feet above Buxa, on the slopes of Sinchula, stood a hamlet of a dozen huts. Learning that the inhabitants were celebrating a yearly festival, Smith and I, accompanied by a native officer, set off to visit it. As we climbed the steep hill-side we heard fiendish yells and shrieks, and conjectured that we were coming upon a devil-dance at least. But we only found the men of the village engaged in an archery contest. Two targets were placed about a couple of hundred yards apart; and a party at either end shot at them. The small marks were rarely hit, even when we placed rupees on them to stimulate the competitors; but most of the arrows fell very close to them. A good shot was hailed with vociferous applause by the marksman's team, a bad one by the shrieks, groans and derisive laughter we had heard. When the contest was over we were invited to try our skill and luckily did not disgrace ourselves. Then the bows of the contestants were stacked together on the ground and hung with garlands and leafy branches. The men sat down in two lines forming a lane to the bows; and each drew out from the breast of his kimono a small wooden or metal cup. Several women appeared from the village, bearing food and drink in cane baskets or gaily decorated vessels made of bamboo. We learned that the feast lasted six days and that each one of the principal villagers acted as host and provided the provender a day in turn and his womenfolk dispensed his hospitality. To-day's entertainer began the proceedings by filling his own cup, advancing to the pile of bows, bowing profoundly before it several times and pouring the contents of his cup on the ground. As he did so he muttered some words. Then he turned about and walked back. The other men, as they sat cross-legged on the ground, shouted out a long utterance which I took to be a form of grace before meals, and ended with a series of ear-piercing yells which would have done credit to a pack of mad jackals. The effect of the contrast between the fiendish noises they made and their beaming countenances was comical. Then the hostesses passed down the lines of men, handed them platters and heaped rice and other food on them. The cups were filled first with the vile-smelling and worse-tasting native liquor, and afterwards, when emptied several times, with tea. Undisturbed by our presence the guests made a hearty meal, the host walking up and down the lines and encouraging them to enjoy themselves, while his women brought fresh relays of victuals. But at last their appetites were satisfied. Then the ladies of the hamlet who had been watching their lords and masters from a respectful distance came forward. In addition to their ordinary garments they wore capes of black velveteen, only donned on occasions of ceremony; and their necks were hung with chains of imitation turquoises and large, coloured stone beads. To the monotonous accompaniment of two tiny hand-drums, beaten by men, they performed a mournful and exceedingly proper dance. This the men applauded languidly. Among the women I was struck by the European-like features of the very ugliest of them. She was fair-haired, high-cheek-boned and long-nosed. She contrasted strongly with the Tartar type of features of those around her. I learned that she was the illegitimate daughter of a Scotch military surgeon who had formerly been quartered in Buxa. She was married to a Bhuttia, and, judging from her silver ornaments, was quite a person of importance in the hamlet. But as I saw her afterwards working as a coolie and passing with heavy loads up and down through Buxa, it was evident that her economical father had not left her beyond the necessity of toiling for her daily rice.

"THE LADIES OF THE HAMLET CAME FORWARD."

BHUTTIA DRUMMERS.

The dance finished the festivities for the day. We were led in procession by the revellers through the village with songs and beating of drums; and, having bestowed a few rupees on them, we departed amid a loud chorus of thanks.

Some time afterwards I was present at a similar festival in Chunabatti, the large village containing nearly a thousand Bhuttias, a few miles over the hills from Buxa. Here the American lady missionary had resided for over fifteen years; and I asked her for some explanation of the festival. But she confessed that, even after her long residence among the villagers, she knew nothing of their beliefs, religion or ceremonies. I may mention that she had never made a convert. But as far as I could see these cis-border Bhuttias were even more ignorant of their faith than the dwellers in Bhutan. There were a few prayer flags fluttering on the hill above the village; but chortens and praying wheels were conspicuous by their absence, though there was enough water-power in the mountains for the latter to ensure salvation for millions of believers in their efficacy. The village possessed one lama, who was treated with scant respect. I often saw him teaching the small boys to read the Hindi characters, which are the same as used for the written Tibetan language.

This Chunabatti festival was celebrated in the same manner as the one we had seen before, with eating, drinking, dances by the women, and archery contests by the men. Some of the small boys were brought out to practise with the bow; and many of them shot quite well. But there was absolutely no trace of religious celebration.

To-day the boundary-line between Bhutan and India lies generally along the summits of the last mountain-chain above the plains. Dense jungle clothes the sides of the hills and descends to meet the upward waves of the Terai Forest, which stretches along the foot of the Himalayas through Assam, Bengal, and Nepal. The mountains are cloven by deep and gloomy ravines through which swift-flowing rivers like the Menass, Raidak, Torsa, and Tista pour their waters to swell the Brahmaputra and the Ganges. Some of these torrents disappear underground a few hundred yards from the hills and leave a broad river-bed empty for miles, except during the Rains. But farther away they suddenly appear again above the surface and flow to the south. The character of the jungle in the region where they reappear is damper and more tropical than near the mountains, and has earned for the forest the title of Terai, which means "wet." Streams which on the level of Santrabari reached the plains, there vanish, to come again above the ground near Rajabhatkawa.

CHUNABATTI.

The long belt of the Terai Jungle is nowadays patched with clearings for tea gardens; for the Duars' tea is famous. Mixed with tea grown near Darjeeling at an elevation of six thousand or seven thousand feet it forms a favourite blend. But the sportsman, no matter how fond he may be of the "cup that cheers," cannot view without regret the clearing away of thousands of acres of forests that shelter big game. And an artist would not consider the destruction of the giant, orchid-clad trees with the festoons of swinging creepers compensated for by the stretches of more profitable low green tea-bushes in symmetrical and orderly rows.

Nor do the other signs of man's handiwork on a tea garden compensate for the natural beauties they replace. Hideous factories, gaunt drying and engine-houses with stove-pipe like chimneys rising above corrugated iron roofs, villages of dilapidated thatched huts sheltering the hundreds of coolies employed on the estate, and the unbeautiful bungalows of the Europeans in charge. For on each garden there are from one to four Britishers. The larger ones have a manager, two assistants, and an engineer; on the smaller ones the manager perhaps combines the functions of the others in his own person.

A planter's life is a lonely one. The gardens are generally a few miles apart. Men busy, especially in the gathering season, from dawn to dark have little inclination to go visiting after the day's work is done, even if the roads were better and freer from the danger of meeting a wild elephant on them at night. But in each little district a club-house is built in some central spot within comparatively easy reach of all the gardens around. It is generally only a rough wooden shed; but in the small clearing around it a few tennis courts, or perhaps a polo ground, are made. And here once a week all the planters of the neighbourhood, with an occasional lady or two among them, repair on horseback through the jungle. There may be flooded rivers to cross, wild beasts to avoid; but, unless writhing in the grip of the planters' plagues, malarial or blackwater fever, all will be there on club day. Like the Bhuttias in our village feast one of the number takes it in turn to act as host. He sends over from his bungalow, miles away, crockery, glasses, a cold lunch, and, possibly, tea. For planters are not fond of it as a beverage. Then men, who have not seen another white face for a week, foregather, do justice to the lunch, play tennis or polo, and take a farewell drink or two when the setting sun warns them to depart. Then into the saddle again and off by forest road and jungle track to another week of loneliness and labour. What tales they have to tell of the wild beasts they meet on their way home in the deepening gloom! But the planter fears nothing except wild elephants; and not them if he is on horseback and a good road. Two men from the same garden who used to linger longest at the bar came one evening upon a tiger, another time upon a fine specimen of the more dreaded Himalayan bear, right in their path. They were unarmed, but their libations had added to their natural courage. Without hesitation, they dug spurs into their unwilling ponies and with demoniac yells charged straight at the astonished wild beasts. In each case tiger or bear found this too much for his nerves and promptly bolted into the jungle.

There are few finer bodies of men in the world than the planters of India. Educated men, they lead the life of a gaucho. Hard riders, good shots, keen sportsmen, they are the best volunteers we have in the Indian Empire; and more than once some of them have worthily upheld the fame of their class in war.

During the last Abor Expedition of 1912 several of the Assam Valley Light Horse, a Planters' corps, gave up their posts and went to the front as troopers.

It is well to be content with your lot. From our cool hills I used to look down on the bright green patches of the gardens in the dark forests below and pity the poor planters in the humid heat of the summer months. But when I visited them I found that their sympathy went out to us in Buxa. On one occasion my host pointed to the dark wall of hills on which three tiny white specks, the Picquet Towers of my fort, shone out in the sunlight. With a sigh of compassion he said:

"Whenever we look up there and think of you poor fellows shut up in that isolated spot we pity you immensely and wonder how you can bear the dreadful loneliness of it. Down here we are so much better off."

As he spoke we looked towards the mountains, and at that moment a dark cloud was drawn like a pall across their face. Its black expanse was rent by vivid lightning; and the hollow roll of distant thunder in the hills told us that one of the frequent storms was raging over my little Station, while we stood in brilliant sunshine. And certainly at the moment Buxa looked a gloomy spot.

Tea growing seems a profitable industry. I heard of estates which paid a profit of sixty per cent, and noticed with regret fresh inroads being made in the forest for more ground to plant in. Of course with a new garden one must wait five years or so for any return on the capital invested. And the initial expenses of clearing and preparing the soil, buying machinery and erecting factories, are great. The coolies must be brought from a distance, as the country around is too sparsely populated to supply a sufficiency of labour. And before quitting their houses they demand an advance of pay to leave with their relatives, and not infrequently abscond after getting the money. Each company sends a recruiting agent to collect these coolies who are well paid according to the Indian labour-market rates. And the father of a family is better off than a bachelor; for women and children help to gather the leaves, and each worker brings in his or her basket to be weighed, and payment is made by results. One sees the mothers with their babies on their hips moving among the bushes and plucking the tender green shoots. The whole process of manufacturing, from the planting and pruning, the gathering of the leaf, and the withering and drying, down to the packing of the tea ready for the market is interesting. Little goes to waste. The floors of the factories are regularly swept, and the tea-dust thus collected is pressed into blocks to form the brick-tea popular in Central Asia and used as currency in the absence of money.

But tea growing is not all profit. Sometimes a hailstorm ruins the year's crop, frost blights the plants, and losses occur in other ways. The planters rarely own their gardens, but are usually in the service of companies in England. They are not overpaid; a manager in the Duars generally receives six hundred rupees a month, together with a house, allowances for his horse and certain servants which make his salary up to another hundred, in all about forty-seven pounds. But an assistant begins on less than twenty pounds a month. Engineers, who look after the machinery, are better paid; and some economically minded companies promote the engineer to be manager, and so save a salary. The expenses of living are not great, and a frugal planter—if such a being exists—can save money.

To those fond of an outdoor existence the work is pleasant enough. Early in the morning manager and assistants mount their ponies and set out to ride over the hundreds of acres of the estate, inspect the plants, visit the nurseries, and watch the coolies at work among the bushes or clearing the jungle. Then through the factory and, if it be the season, see the baskets of leaves brought in and weighed. And back to a late breakfast, where tea rarely finds its way to the table, and a siesta until the afternoon calls them forth to ride round the garden again. It sounds an easy life and idyllic, but the planters say it is not.

In any land the sight of the rich plains stretching away from the foot of the barren hills is always a tempting sight to the fierce mountain dwellers. And for the Bhutanese it must have been a sore struggle to curb their predatory instincts and cease from their profitable descents on the unwarlike inhabitants of Bengal. Wealth and women were the prizes of the freebooter until the shield of the Briton was thrust between him and his timorous prey. Yet even to-day, although their nation is at peace with us, the temptation sometimes proves too much for lawless borderers. And parties of raiders from across the frontier swoop down on the Duars. A tea garden, when a store of silver coin is brought to pay the wages of the hundreds of coolies, is their favourite mark. The few police scattered far apart over the north of Eastern Bengal are powerless to stop a rush of savage swordsmen who suddenly emerge from the forest, loot the bunniahs and the huts on a garden, and disappear long before an appeal for succour can reach the nearest troops. With the fear of the white man before their eyes they do not seek to meddle with the Europeans in their factories and bungalows. But the fearless planters do not imitate their forbearance. In one garden a terrified coolie rushed to the manager's house to inform him that Bhuttias were raiding the village. Without troubling to inquire the number of the dacoits the planter called his one assistant; and taking their rifles the two Englishmen mounted their ponies and galloped to the village. They found it in the hands of about sixty Bhuttias, armed with dahs, who were plundering right and left. The planters sprang from their saddles and opened fire on them. The raiders, aghast at this unpleasant interruption to their profitable undertaking, strove to show a bold front. But the pitiless bullets and still more the calm courage of the two white men daunted them; and they fled into the friendly shelter of the forest. That garden was never attacked again.

I was surprised to learn that on such occasions the planters had never sent information to the detachment at Buxa. But they told me that, as they never saw anything of the troops there, they almost forgot their existence. They added that the raiders came and went with such rapidity that it was hopeless for infantry to try to catch them. I determined to alter this state of affairs. So, shortly after our arrival, I took almost all my men out on a ten days' march, lightly equipped, through the jungle district to show that we were not tied to the fort and that we could mobilise and move swiftly if needed. I also devised a scheme by which, on the first intimation of a raid reaching me, mobile parties of my detachment would dash off at once over the hills to secure all the passes near and cut off the retreat of the invaders, while other parties, descending into the forest, would shepherd them into their hands.

CHAPTER IV

A DURBAR IN BUXA

Notice of the Political Officer's approaching visit—A Durbar—The Bhutan Agent and the interpreter—Arrival of the Deb Zimpun—An official call—Exchange of presents—Bhutanese fruit—A return call—Native liquor—A welcome gift—The Bhutanese musicians—Entertaining the Envoy—A thirsty Lama—A rifle match—An awkward official request—My refusal—The Deb Zimpun removes to Chunabatti—Arrival of the treasure—The Political Officer comes—His retinue—The Durbar—The Guard of Honour—The visitors—The Envoy comes in state—Bhutanese courtesies—The spectators—The payment of the subsidy—Lunch in Mess—Entertaining a difficult guest—The official dinner—An archery match—Sikh quoits—Field firing—Bhutanese impressed—Blackmail—British subjects captured—Their release—Tashi's case—Justice in Bhutan—Tyranny of officials—Tashi refuses to quit Buxa—The next payment of the subsidy—The treaty—Misguided humanitarians.

Soon after our arrival in Buxa I received a letter from the Political Officer in Sikkim, Tibet, and Bhutan informing me that he proposed to visit our little Station and hold a Durbar there in order to pay over to a representative of the Bhutanese Government the annual subsidy of fifty thousand rupees. He requested me to furnish a Guard of Honour of a hundred men for the ceremony. The news that Buxa was to rise to the dignity of a Durbar of its own and be honoured with the presence of the Envoy of a friendly State was positively exciting. True, neither the Durbar nor the Envoy were very important; still, with them, we felt that we were about to make history. The officer who has charge of our political relations with these three countries resides at Gantok, the capital of Sikkim, and, until recently, administered the affairs of that State. Of late years the Maharajah has been admitted to a share of the Government.

In Chunabatti lived two natives of Darjeeling, British subjects, who were paid a salary by our Government to help in transacting diplomatic affairs with Bhutan. They were officially styled the Bhutan Agent and the Bhutanese interpreter. Their knowledge of English, acquired in a school of Darjeeling, was not extensive; and their acquaintance with Hindustani was on a par. They were men of a Tibetan type, dressed like our Bhuttias, except that they wore a headgear like a football cap and also gaily striped, undoubted football stockings.

Shortly after the receipt of the Political Officer's letter, one of these men, the Agent, came to my bungalow one afternoon and informed me that the Bhutan Government's representative had arrived in Buxa and was lodged in the Circuit House. The Agent wished to know when I intended paying an official call on this personage. I had sufficient acquaintance with the ways of Orientals to be aware that this was an impertinence, for it was the place of the Envoy to make his visit first to the officer commanding the Station; but, like the Chinese, who have a childish desire to assert their own importance on every occasion, he was endeavouring to steal a march on me. So I assumed a haughty demeanour and informed the Agent that I would be prepared to receive the Envoy at my house in two hours' time, as he must first call on me. The Agent at once agreed that this was the proper course, as, indeed he had known all the time.

I sent an order to the fort for a native officer and twenty men to parade in full dress at my bungalow in a couple of hours, and then prepared to hold my first official reception. Punctually to the time named a ragged procession of sixty bareheaded, barelegged Bhuttias, armed with swords and every second man of them disfigured by an enormous goitre, descended the road from the Circuit House. From my doorstep I watched them coming down the hill. They escorted a stout cheery old gentleman in dirty white kimono and cap and long Chinese boots. He was accompanied by the Agent and the interpreter and followed by two coolies carrying baskets of oranges. This was the Bhutan Envoy, the Deb Zimpun, a member of the Supreme Council of Punakha and Cup Bearer to the Deb Raja, when there is one. The Guard of Honour presented arms as I advanced to meet and shake hands with him. I addressed him in Hindustani; but the old gentleman grinned feebly and looked round for the interpreter. The latter explained that the Deb Zimpun spoke only his own language; but that he would interpret my greeting. I then formally welcomed the Envoy to India, and invited him to inspect the Guard of Honour, such being the procedure with distinguished visitors. He was quite pleased at this and passed down the ranks, looking closely at the men's rifles and accoutrements. He noticed that two or three of the sepoys, who had been called from the rifle-range and had dressed hurriedly, wore their pouches in the wrong place and pointed it out to me. When he had minutely inspected the Guard I led the way into my bungalow and begged him to be seated. He took off his cap politely, and, sitting down, produced a metal box from the breast of his robe, took betel-nut out of it and began to chew it. An attendant holding a spittoon immediately took up his position beside him. The Agent and interpreter stood behind us and translated our remarks to each other. The remainder of the motley crew remained in the garden or crowded into the veranda, scuffling and shoving each other aside in their attempts to get near the open door and look in at us.

"FROM MY DOORSTEP I WATCHED THEM COMING DOWN THE HILL."

THE DEB ZIMPUN'S PRISONERS.

At first the conversation, consisting of the usual formal compliments full of hyperbole, did not flourish; and the Deb Zimpun's eyes roamed round the apartment as he gazed with interest at my trophies of sport, pictures, photographs, and curios. When the interpreter had finished explaining some extravagant phrase, the Envoy asked eagerly if I had a gramaphone. He was visibly disappointed when I replied in the negative, and said that he had seen one on a previous visit to India and was much interested in it. To console him I took out my cigar-case and offered him a cheroot, which he accepted and smoked with evident pleasure. I asked him if he would like a drink; and the interpreter replied that the Deb Zimpun begged for two whiskies-and-sodas. I wondered if he wanted to consume both at once or thought that my hospitality stopped at one. But when the drinks were brought by my servant, I found that they were wanted by the interpreter himself and his friend the Agent, as the Envoy did not like whisky. I am sure that the old gentleman never asked for them at all; so it was a piece of distinct impertinence on the part of the interpreter, who was only an understrapper. I was struck all the time by the contrast between his casual manner to me, an officer of his own Government, and his servile deference to the Deb Zimpun who treated him as an individual altogether beneath his notice.

When the conversation again languished I produced some luridly coloured Japanese prints of the capture of Pekin by the Allied Troops, which I had bought in Tokio after the Boxer War. I thought that they might serve as a useful lesson of the weakness of the Chinese, who endeavour to intrigue against us in Bhutan. These gaudy pictures delighted the Deb Zimpun. He asked to have all the details explained to him and seemed so interested that I made a present of the prints to him to start a Fine Art Gallery with in Punakha when he returned to the capital. This gift quite won his heart. He called into the room the coolies carrying baskets of oranges and brown paper bags of walnuts and presented them to me. The fruit, which was grown in Bhutan, was excellent; and only in Malta have I tasted better oranges. This terminated the visit; the Envoy rose, accepted another cigar, shook hands, and took his departure.

Next day Creagh and I dressed ourselves in full uniform and, accompanied by an escort of sepoys, proceeded up the hill to the Circuit House to return the visit. We were met on the veranda by the Deb Zimpun and, chairs being placed for us, we three sat down. The interpreter was again present, being temporarily attached to the Envoy's suite. I learned that the Deb Zimpun was allowed by our Government the sum of two thousand rupees (about £133) for his expenses while he remained in India. He must have saved most of this money; for I found that he lived chiefly on the contributions, voluntary or otherwise, of the Bhuttias residing in our territory.

A servitor came forward and filled two glasses with Bhutanese liquor from a bamboo bottle. They were offered us; and my subaltern and I made a heroic attempt to drink the nauseous-looking stuff. But the smell was enough. The taste! A mixture of castor and codliver oil, senna and asafœtida would have been nectar compared with it. We begged to be excused, on the plea that we had been teetotallers all our lives. I then ordered my present to be brought forward. It was a haunch of a sambhur which I had shot two days before. The gift was a great success. The Deb Zimpun's eyes glistened and he showed his teeth, stained red with betel-nut chewing, in a gracious smile. His unkempt followers crowded around us, looked hungrily at the meat, and seemed to calculate whether there was enough to go round. The Maharajah of Bhutan, as a good Buddhist, had recently decreed that for two years no animals were to be slaughtered for food in his country. So this venison was a luxury to them all. Before the excellent impression of our gift could die Creagh and I rose to take our leave and departed hurriedly.

But we were not to escape so easily. Hardly had we reached the Mess on our return when we were informed that the Deb Zimpun had, as a special mark of favour, sent his two best musicians to play for us. So we came out on the veranda and found two swarthy ruffians squatting in the garden, holding silver-banded pipes like flageolets. We seated ourselves and the performance began. I have patiently endured Chinese, Japanese, and Indian music, have even listened unmoved to the strains of a German band in London; but the ear-piercing, soul-harrowing noises that these two ruffians produced were too much for me. We wondered, if these were the Envoy's best musicians, what his worst could be like. I hurriedly presented each of them with a rupee and sent them away, more than compensated by the money for their abrupt dismissal.

On the following day we invited the Deb Zimpun to lunch with us in the Mess and instructed our Gurkha cook to do his best, which was not much. We found that our guest, having visited India before and having accompanied the Tongsa Penlop to Calcutta, was quite expert in the use of a knife and fork, and enjoyed European fare. He was very temperate and refused to touch liquor. But he was not imitated in this by his suite. After lunch he told us that his lama, who was sitting with the rest of his followers in the Mess garden, was anxious to taste whisky, of which he had heard. We invited the priest in and poured him out a stiff five-finger peg of neat Scotch whisky. The holy man smelled it, raised the glass to his lips, and elevated it until not a drop was left. He could not apparently make up his mind as to whether he liked the liquor or not. So we offered him another glass. He accepted it and disposed of it as promptly. We looked at him in astonishment; but it had no effect on him. I told the interpreter to ask him what he thought of whisky.

"I don't like it much; it is too sweet," replied the lama.

We officers glanced at each other; and the same idea occurred to us all. It happened that some time before we had got a small cask of beer from Calcutta, which, owing to the journey or the heat, had gone very sour and tasted abominably. A large glass of this delectable beverage was offered to the holy man. As he drained it a beatific smile spread over his saintly but exceedingly dirty face and he put down the empty glass with a sigh.

"Ah! that is good. That is very good," he said to the interpreter. "I would like more."

So he was given another large tumblerful. Then, absolutely unaffected by his potations, he left the Mess reluctantly. After this experience we kept this beer, while it lasted, for Bhuttia visitors, and found it a popular brand.

After lunch I brought the Deb Zimpun down to shoot on the rifle-range, as he had expressed a wish to that effect through the interpreter. He seemed to understand the mechanism of the Lee-Enfield and made some fair shooting at a moving target at two hundred yards. When my score proved better than his he said laughingly that the rifle was not the weapon with which he was best acquainted, but that he would challenge me one day to a match with bows and arrows. By this time the old man and I had become quite friendly, and we had all taken a liking to him. He had invited me to pay a visit to Bhutan and promised to obtain the permission of the Maharajah for me to enter the country.

Consequently I was not pleased when next day I received a letter from the civil authorities of the district informing me that the Deb Zimpun was occupying the Circuit House without permission, and requesting me to remove him and his retinue to Chunabatti. The Political Officer had asked that he might be allowed to reside in it; but, as on a previous occasion he and his followers had done so and left it in an absolutely uninhabitable state, this permission was now refused. The letter stated that it had cost two hundred rupees to clean the house and make it fit for European occupation again. I thought that this was but a small sum, after all, compared with the two thousand the Government were already expending on him. And to turn the Envoy of a friendly State out of the house he was occupying in all good faith seemed an insulting course. If he refused to vacate it peaceably, I presume I was expected to use force, which would probably result in bloodshed. As to the issue there could be no doubt, as the swords and bows of his followers would be poor things to oppose to our rifles. But it seemed to me that this would be giving rather too warm a reception to an official visitor and guest of the Government of India. So I refused to comply with the wishes of the civil authorities, much to the relief of the Political Officer when he arrived and was informed of the matter. He told me that had I acted otherwise it would have given dire offence in Bhutan just at a time when our Government were particularly anxious to be on good terms with the Bhutanese. I only understood what he meant when, more than a year afterwards, I heard of the signing of the treaty with the Maharajah, which placed the foreign affairs of the country under our control.

But, unfortunately, the Agent had received the same instructions as I; and, to avoid trouble, he induced the Deb Zimpun to go to Chunabatti and reside in his home. The Envoy was very displeased at having to leave the Circuit House. I offered to place the empty bungalow, known as the Married Officers' Quarters, at his disposal; but the old gentleman, though very grateful and thanking me warmly, declined, as he did not want to make another move.

The day after our luncheon-party to the Deb Zimpun a detachment of native police came from Alipur Duar escorting a train of coolies carrying wooden boxes which contained the fifty thousand rupees of the subsidy. These were handed over to me; and I placed them in our guard-room under a special sentry. Lastly the Political Officer, Mr Bell, arrived by train from Darjeeling, which is three days' ride from Gantok. He was accompanied by a portly Sikkimese head clerk in wadded Chinese silk coat and gown, another clerk and a couple of pig-tailed Sikkimese soldiers in striped petticoats and straw hats like inverted flower-pots ornamented with a long peacock feather.

On the day after his arrival the Durbar was held. On the parade ground a few of our tents were pitched to form an open-air reception hall. A Guard of Honour of two native officers and a hundred sepoys in their full-dress uniform of red tunics, blue trousers and white spats, was drawn up near it; and the boxes of treasure were brought down and deposited on the ground beside the tents. The only outside visitors were the nearest civil official, the Subdivisional Officer of Alipur Duar, and his wife and children; the three British officers and the native officers not required with the Guard joined them in the tents. Mr Bell, wearing his political uniform, descended on to the parade ground from my bungalow and was received with a salute by the Guard of Honour. Then to the beating of tom-toms and the wild strains of barbaric music a double file of Bhuttias advanced across the parade ground escorting the Envoy, who was riding a mule. We hardly recognised our old friend. He was magnificently garbed for the occasion in a very voluminous robe of red silk embroidered with Chinese symbols in gold, and wore a gold-edged cap in shape something like a papal tiara. At the tail of the procession came a number of coolies carrying baskets of oranges and packages wrapped up in paper.

In front of the tents the Envoy dismounted. The Political Officer came forward to shake hands with him; and the Deb Zimpun threw a white silk scarf around his neck. This scarf is called the Khatag and is the invariable Tibetan and Bhutanese accompaniment of a reception. It is also sent with important official letters. Bell now presented each of us formally to the Envoy, who shook hands solemnly and hung us with scarves. The scene in its picturesque setting of mountains and jungle was a striking one. The Political Officer in his trim uniform and the British officers in their scarlet tunics were outshone by the gaudier garbs of the Asiatics. The Deb Zimpun's flowing red robe, the head clerk in his flowered black silk Chinese garb, the Sikkimese soldiers in their bright garments and the Bhutanese in their kimonos, made a blaze of varied hues. Along one side of the ground was the scarlet and blue line of the Guard of Honour, the yellow and gold puggris or turbans of the native officers and the gold-threaded cummerbunds, or waist-sashes, of the sepoys shining in the brilliant sun. Above the Guard the slope and wall of the fort were crowded with the other men of the detachment in white undress, mingled with native followers in brighter colours. Down the other side of the parade ground was a long line of Bhuttia men, women, and children.

THE DURBAR IN BUXA.

When we were seated the Deb Zimpun produced a document accrediting him as the duly appointed envoy and representative of the Bhutan Government to receive the subsidy. This having been perused by the Political Officer and his head clerk and the official seals inspected, the boxes of money were formally handed over. The usual procedure was to have one of them opened and the contents counted, but on this occasion the Deb Zimpun accepted them as correct and ordered his escort to take charge of them. They were hoisted on the backs of porters who took them off to Chunabatti. Then coolies came forward with the Envoy's basket of oranges and the packages, which we found to contain cheap native blankets worth a couple of shillings each. Oranges and blankets were given to each of us. But as the Government of India has made a strict rule that no civil or military officer in its service is to accept a present from natives, the blankets were taken charge of by Bell's clerks to be sold afterwards and the proceeds credited to Government. We were allowed to keep the oranges. This proceeding terminated the Durbar.

As the officers of the detachment had invited the visitors to lunch, we now adjourned to the Mess. Although our guests consisted only of the Envoy, Bell, the Subdivisional Officer, Mr Ainslie, and his wife and two children, our resources were sorely strained to provide enough furniture for them. The doctor had to sit on a box. The head clerk acted as interpreter and stood behind the Political Officer's chair. A special shooting-party having descended to the jungle the previous day to replenish the larder, the menu was almost luxurious.

After luncheon the Ainslies departed to Santrabari, where they were encamped, having declined our hospitality in Buxa. As Bell was desirous of entertaining the Deb Zimpun himself, he had arranged a dinner to him and us in the forest officer's empty bungalow that evening. So it devolved on me to keep our old gentleman amused until dinner-time, while the Political Officer wrote his despatches. I took our guest down to the rifle-range and kept him busy there till sunset. Then we had to go to my house, where I tried to entertain him by showing him old copies of English illustrated journals. But these require a deal of explanation to the untutored Oriental, who cannot understand the portraits of the favourites of the stage in the scanty costumes in which they are frequently photographed. And I was distinctly embarrassed by some of the Deb Zimpun's questions.

At dinner-time Bell preceded us from my bungalow, where he was staying, and was ready to receive us on the veranda of the forest officer's house when, escorted by servants carrying lanterns, we toiled up the steep path to it. Dinner was laid in the long, draughty centre room in the rambling wooden edifice; and as the night was cold the apartment was warmed by an iron stove. The furniture was scantier and worse than in the Mess. When we sat down to table the Deb Zimpun's rickety chair collapsed under his weight and sent him sprawling on the floor. It was an undignified opening to our official banquet. The old man presented a ludicrous spectacle as he lay entangled in his red silk robe with the gold-trimmed papal cap tilted over his eye; but we rushed to help him up and controlled our countenances until we found him laughing heartily at his own mishap. Then one glance at our host's horrified expression set us off. A fresh chair was with difficulty procured and we sat down again.

After dinner we gathered round the stove in informal fashion and smoked, the Deb Zimpun helping himself steadily to my cigars. With the aid of the head clerk, who was present to interpret, the conversation grew almost animated. Our old gentleman expressed himself deeply gratified by the kindness he had received from the officers of the detachment, particularly the offer of a military bungalow, and said that if he returned to Buxa the following year he hoped to find us all there again. Me he personally regarded as a brother. We drank his health, a compliment he quite understood, and with difficulty refrained from singing "For He's a Jolly Good Fellow." When he departed we escorted him as far as the Mess and bade him a vociferous "Good night," to the amazement of the squad of ragged swordsmen and lantern-bearers who were accompanying him back to Chunabatti.

Next day Bell left us to return to Sikkim; and we expected the Deb Zimpun would also take his departure for Bhutan with the subsidy. But day after day passed without any sign of his going, and we began to wonder at his remaining after the purpose of his visit was completed. I invited him to lunch with me again. One afternoon he appeared at the head of his wild gathering, all of them carrying bows. He had come to challenge me to an archery contest. We set up targets on the range at a distance of two hundred yards. He defeated me easily, and chaffed me gaily over his victory. To retrieve my honour I sent to the fort for some Sikh throwing quoits, formerly used as weapons in war. They are of thin steel with edges ground sharp, and when thrown by an expert will skim through the air for nearly two hundred yards and would almost cut clean through a man if they struck him fair. They ricochet off the ground for a good distance after the first graze. We set up plantain tree stems as targets, for the soft wood does not injure the edge. I showed the Envoy how to hold and throw the weapon; but his first shot went very wide indeed and nearly ended the mortal career of one of his swordsmen. However, he improved with a little practice, and insisted that all his followers should try the sport.

A day or two after this my detachment did its annual field firing. This is a most practical form of musketry, consisting of an attack on a position with ball cartridge, the enemy being represented by small targets, the size of a man's head, nearly hidden behind entrenchments or suddenly appearing from holes dug in the ground. I invited the Envoy and his suite to witness it. The Deb Zimpun was deeply interested. He followed us everywhere as we scrambled up and down steep hills firing on the small marks dotted about between the trees, in the jungle and at the bottom of precipices. The attack was arranged to finish up on the parade ground where we could make use of the running and vanishing targets in the rifle butts. The Bhuttias were immensely delighted with the crouching figures of men drawn swiftly across the range and saluted with bursts of rapid fire from the sepoys' rifles. But they broke into an excited roar when our men fixed bayonets and charged the position with loud cheers; and I looked back to find the Bhuttias following us at a run, waving their swords and yelling wildly. When I went round to inspect the targets and count the hits, the Deb Zimpun and his followers accompanied me and were much impressed by the accuracy of the shooting. They talked eagerly, pointed out the bullet-holes to each other, and shook their heads solemnly over them. The interpreter told me that they were saying that they would be sorry to face our soldiers in battle after seeing the range, accuracy, and rapidity of fire of our rifles. The Deb Zimpun returned with me to my bungalow and enjoyed a meal of tea, cake, and chocolate creams as heartily as a schoolboy. On departing he shook my hand and bade the interpreter express the interest with which he had watched the field firing.

But alas for the inconstancy of human friendships! Our pleasant intercourse was destined to an abrupt termination. The very next day I was informed that the genial old gentleman had been levying blackmail on Bhuttias residing in our territory and had seized and imprisoned in the house in which he resided a man, three women, and three children, intending to carry them off to Bhutan. The unexpected appearance of a score of my men with rifles and fixed bayonets changed the programme; and the prisoners were removed to our fort until Government should decide their fate. As we marched them through Chunabatti the villagers flocked round us and called down blessings on our heads for saving their friends. One old lady, the wife of the male prisoner, fell on the ground before Smith, who had accompanied me, embraced his legs and kissed his feet, much to our medical officer's embarrassment.

Much correspondence and a Government inquiry resulted in the freedom of the wretched captives. But before their release the Envoy, in response to impatient letters from the Maharajah who was none too well pleased with the delay in his return with the subsidy, marched off over the hills to Bhutan without a farewell to us.

The case of the man who had been seized is a typical example of the justice meted out in uncivilised countries. He was named Tashi and had been born in Buxa before its capture by the British in 1864 and its subsequent incorporation in our territory. After the war his family retired across the newly made boundary. His father possessed land in a village close to the frontier, which was in the jurisdiction of a certain jongpen. He acquired more several miles away in a district governed by another jongpen. On his death he left everything to Tashi, who continued to reside in the first village. The second official objected to this and eventually confiscated the land in his district and applied it to his own use. When Tashi threatened to appeal to the Supreme Council at Punakha he sent a party of his retainers to slay him as the easiest method of avoiding litigation. When the other jongpen remonstrated against this invasion of his district and proceeded to repel it by force, his brother official pointed out to him that he could not do better than follow the good example set him and seize Tashi's remaining property. The advice seemed good; and the first jongpen determined to kill Tashi himself. He sent several soldiers to put him to death; but as they learned on arrival that the unfortunate owner of this Bhutanese Naboth's vineyard had several stalwart sons and possessed a gun, the gallant warriors contented themselves with establishing a cordon round the village and sending for reinforcements. The luckless Tashi realised that discretion was the better part of valour. He bribed some of the soldiers to let him pass through the cordon at night and with his family and five cows, all that he could save from the wreck, he escaped into British territory. But the two Ahabs were not satisfied. It was always believed that Tashi had managed to take some hoarded wealth with him, although he lived in a poor way and worked hard for his living in India. And this belief accounted for his capture on this occasion. On previous visits of the Envoy he and his family had taken the precaution to leave Chunabatti before his arrival.

After his release Tashi resolutely refused to quit Buxa.

"The Commanding Sahib is my father and my mother," he declared. "He has saved my worthless life," for he had been informed that he would be put to death as soon as he was out of British territory; "and I will not leave his shadow, in which I and my family will dwell the rest of our lives." However, he thought that this might not prove sufficient shelter from the weather; so he built a bamboo house in the cantonment limits and announced that he felt safe at last under our protection. Like all Asiatics he considered that my interference on his behalf had constituted a claim on me. However, as he was a useful man, I found employment for him and allowed him to continue to reside in Buxa.

In the following year the Political Officer, accompanied by Captain Kennedy, I.M.S., passed through Buxa on their way to Bhutan, where the subsidy, now doubled, was paid in Punakha, the capital, and the treaty by which the country was placed under British protection signed by the Maharajah. So the Deb Zimpun and I never met again.

There is a certain type of individuals with malformed minds who moan over the subjugation of the countries of barbarous nations by civilised Powers. Do they honestly believe that the cause of humanity is better served by allowing the noble savage to plunder and slay the weak at his own sweet will rather than by subjecting him to the domination of Europeans, be they French, Germans, Russians, Italians or British, who guarantee freedom of life and property in the lands under their rule? Liberty, with these barbarous races, means the liberty of the strong to oppress the weak. Here, in the borderland of Bhutan to-day, the peasant can till the soil, the trader enjoy his hard-earned wealth, where, before the pax Britannica settled on it, rapine, blood, and lust went unchecked, where no man's life nor woman's honour was safe from the fierce raiders of the hills. We hold the gates of India. Inside them all is peace. Beyond them, oppression, injustice, murder!

CHAPTER V

IN THE JUNGLE

An Indian jungle—The trees—Creepers—Orchids—The undergrowth—On an elephant in the jungle—Forcing a passage—Wild bees—Red ants—A lost river—A sambhur hind—Spiders—Jungle fowl—A stag—Hallal—Wounded beasts—A halt—Skinning the stag—Ticks—Butcher apprentices—Natural rope—Water in the air—Pani bel—Trail of wild elephants—Their habits—An impudent monkey—An adventure with a rogue elephant—Fire lines—Wild dogs—A giant squirrel—The barking deer—A good bag—Spotted deer—Protective colouring—Dangerous beasts—Natives' dread of bears—A bison calf—The fascination of the forest—The generous jungle—Wild vegetables—Natural products—A home in the trees—Forest Lodge the First—Destroyed by a wild elephant—Its successor—A luncheon-party in the air—The salt lick—Discovery of a coal mine—A monkey's parliament—The jungle by night.

From the dense tangled undergrowth the great trees lift their bare stems, each striving to push its leafy crown through the thick canopy of foliage and get its share of the sun. The huge trunks are devoid of branches for many feet above the ground; but around them twist giant creepers which strangle them in close embrace and sink their coils deep into the bark. Here and there a tree, killed by the cruel pressure, stands withered and lifeless but still held up by the murderous parasite. From bole to bole these creepers, thick as a ship's hawser, swing in festoons, coiling and writhing around each other in tangled confusion. Tree-trunk and bough are matted with the glossy green leaves and trails of mauve and white blossoms of innumerable orchids. The trees are not the slender palms that fill the pictures of tropical jungles by untravelled artists, but the giants of the forest—huge sal and teak trees and straight-stemmed simal with its buttressed trunk star-shaped in section with its curious projecting flanges.

Through the leafy canopy high overhead the sunlight can scarcely filter, and fills the forest with a pleasant green gloom. The undergrowth is dense and rank—tangled and thorny bushes, high grass, shrubs covered with great bell-shaped white flowers—so thick that a man on foot must hack his way through it. But here and there are open glades where the ground is covered with tall bracken. Near the hills and in the damper jungle to the south the bamboo grows extensively. Beside the river-beds are patches of elephant grass, eight to ten feet high, with feathered plumes six feet higher still. This is so strong and dense as to be almost impenetrable to men, but everywhere through it wild elephants have made paths. Wherever the big trees have been felled and the sun can reach the ground the vegetation grows more luxuriantly. And, in the southern belt of the forest, where the water from the hills rises to the surface again, the jungle is wilder and more tropical. Here are huge tree-ferns, the under sides of the fronds studded with long and sharp thorns. Cane brakes, through which none but the heaviest and strongest animals can make their way, abound.

Through the tangled confusion of undergrowth and twisted creepers my elephant forces a passage with swaying stride, as a steamer ploughs her way through a heavy sea and shoulders the waves aside. I am sitting on Khartoum's pad near the mahout perched astride her neck, guiding her by the pressure of his feet behind her huge flapping ears. A network of leafy branches of low trees bound together by lianas bars her progress. At a word she lifts her trunk and tears it down, while the mahout hacks at bough and creeper with his kukri or heavy, curved knife. As she moves on she plucks a small branch and strikes her sides and stomach with it to drive off the flies which are annoying her. For thick as her skin is, yet the insects which prey on her can pierce it and drive her frantic. And once, feeling a sudden pain in my instep, I looked at my foot and discovered an elephant fly biting through a lace hole in my boot. Khartoum, having driven off the pests temporarily, lifts the branch to her mouth and chews it, wood and all. Bechan, her mahout, espies a small creeper which is highly esteemed by the natives as a febrifuge and is considered a good tonic for elephants. So he directs her attention to it. Out shoots the snake-like trunk and tears it from the tree around which it is growing; and, crunching it with enjoyment, she strides on through the undergrowth. Suddenly Bechan, in evident alarm, kicks her violently behind the left ear and beats her thick skull with the heavy iron goad he carries, the ankus, a short crook with a sharp spike at the end. Khartoum stops short, then moves off to the right. Thinking that he has seen some dangerous wild animal I whisper in Hindustani, "What is it, Bechan?" "Bees," he says shortly and points apparently to a lump of mud hanging from a low branch right in our former path. Then I understand that he would be far less alarmed at the sight of a tiger. For a swarm of wild bees is regarded with terrified respect in India. The lump of mud is a nest; and, had we continued on our original course and brushed against it, we would have been promptly attacked by a cloud of these irritable little insects whose stings have killed many a man. So we prudently give the nest a wide berth. The wild beasts of the forest are not its only dangers. As again Khartoum tears her way through some low-hanging branches, I feel a sudden sting and burning pain in the back of my bare neck. I put my hand to the spot and my fingers close on a big red ant which, knocked from a bough, has fallen on me and is avenging its being disturbed by burying its venomous little fangs in my flesh. Though I crush it, the pain of its bite lingers for hours. Sometimes one dislodges a number of these insects when forcing a passage through dense jungle; and they at once attack the man or animal they alight on. So it is necessary to keep a sharp look-out for them as well as for bees. Nor are these the only perils that lurk in the trees. Though in the jungle serpents do not hang by their tails from every branch, as we read in the books of wonderful adventures that delighted our boyhood, still there is supposed to be one poisonous snake in the Terai which lies along the branches, and if dislodged strikes the disturber with deadly fang. I fortunately never saw one; though in another place I have shot a viper in a tree.

We plod steadily on through the jungle. A gleam of daylight between the stems of the trees shows that we are approaching a nullah. Khartoum comes to a stop on the edge of the steep bank of a broad and empty river-bed. After the gloom of the forest the bright transition into the glaring sunlight is dazzling. To the right I can now see the mountains towering above us; and, two thousand feet up, on the dark face of the hills, the three Picquet Towers of Buxa shine out in the sun. At our feet on the white sand lie huge rounded rocks which have been rolled down from the mountains by the furious torrents of the last rainy season. The river-bed is dry now; but were we to follow it a few miles to the south, we would find at first an occasional pool and then further on the water appearing above the surface and flowing on in a gradually increasing stream. For these smaller rivers are lost underground in the boulder formation near the foot of the hills and rise again ten miles further south.

Our elephant slips and stumbles over the polished, rounded rocks until she reaches the opposite bank. Up it she climbs at so steep an angle that to avoid sliding off I have to lie at full length along the pad and hold on to the front edge of it until she regains level ground. We pass from the glare of the sunlight into the cool shade of the forest, and the trees close around us and shut off the mountains from our view. As we push our way through the undergrowth the mahout stops the elephant suddenly. "Sambhur!" he whispers. Following the direction of his outstretched arm my eyes see nothing at first but the tangled vegetation, the straight tree-trunks and the curving festoons of creepers. But gradually they rest on a warm patch of colour and I make out the form of a deer scarcely visible in the deep shadows. "Maddi" (a female) grunts Bechan disgustedly and urges on his elephant. For he knows the Sahibs', to him, ridiculous forest law, which ordains that females are not to be slain, although their flesh is more toothsome than that of a tough old stag.

It is a sambhur hind. Apparently aware of her immunity she stands watching us unconcernedly. Accustomed to the wild species, other animals allow tame elephants to approach close to them until they discover the presence of human beings on their backs. So this hind looks calmly at Khartoum. Her long ears twitch restlessly, but otherwise she is motionless; and I can admire her graceful form and the rich brown colour of her hide at my ease. But at last it dawns on her that there is something wrong about our elephant. She swings round and crashes off through the undergrowth and is lost to sight in a moment. And we resume our course.

Across our path from bush to bush great spiders have spun their webs; and Khartoum, pushing through them, has accumulated so many layers of them across her face as to blind her. So the mahout leans down and tears them off. These spiders are huge black insects measuring several inches from tip to tip; and their webs are stout and strong almost as linen.

Something scuttling over the fallen leaves in the undergrowth draws my attention and I raise my rifle, only to lower it when, with a frightened squawk, a jungle hen flutters up out of the bushes and flies away among the trees. These birds are the progenitors of our ordinary barnyard fowl, and so like them that once close to Santrabari, when out with a shot-gun, I let several hens pass me unscathed, under the impression that they were fowls belonging to our mahouts. And when in the heart of the forest I first heard the cocks crowing I thought that we were near a village. In Northern India these jungle cocks are beautifully plumaged with red, yellow, and dark green feathers and long tails. In Southern India they are speckled black and white with a little yellow. When in the forest villages the tame roosters crow, their challenge is taken up and repeated by the wild ones in the jungle around. And the natives often peg out a cock and surround him with snares to catch the wild birds which come to attack him.

But now Bechan suddenly stops Khartoum and whispers excitedly, "Sambhur nur!" "A stag." For a moment I can see nothing in the tangled bit of jungle he points to. Then suddenly the deepened blackness of a patch of shadow reveals itself as the dark hide of a sambhur stag. We have almost passed him. He is to my right rear; and I cannot swing round far enough to fire from the right shoulder. But I bring up the rifle rapidly to my left and press the trigger. As the recoil of the heavy .470 high-velocity weapon almost knocks me back flat on the pad I hear a crash in the brushwood. "Shabash! Luga! (Well done! Hit!") cries Bechan and slips from the neck of the elephant to the ground. Drawing his knife he dashes into the jungle. For, being a Mussulman, he is anxious to reach the stricken stag and hallal it; that is, let blood by cutting its throat while there is life in it. For the Mohammedan religion enjoins that an animal is only lawful food if the blood has run before its death. This is borrowed from the Mosaic Law and is really a hygienic precaution against long-dead carrion being eaten.

From the elephant's back I cannot see the quarry now, but I slip down to the ground and leave Khartoum standing stolidly, contentedly plucking and chewing leaves from the trees around. Following Bechan's track I find him holding the horn of a still feebly struggling sambhur and drawing his knife across its throat. The animal is a fine old stag about fourteen hands high. The bullet has broken its shoulder and pierced its heart. But such a wound does not necessarily imply instantaneous death. I have seen a tiger, shot through the heart, dash across a nullah and climb half-way up the steep bank until laid low by a second bullet. And sambhur and other deer stricken in the same manner will run a hundred yards before dropping. But this stag will never move again of its own volition. As the blood gushes from the gaping wound in the throat the limbs twitch violently and are still. Then Bechan raises its head for me to photograph. This done I look at my watch. It is almost noon and I have been on the elephant's back since six o'clock, so I am glad of a rest; and, sitting on the ground with my back against a tree, I pull out sandwiches and my water-bottle and have my lunch. But, having on a previous occasion been disturbed by a rogue wild elephant, I lay my loaded rifle beside me.

Bechan is busily employed. He cuts off the head, grallochs the stag and begins to flay it. After my lunch I get up to help him; for a sportsman in India soon learns to turn his hand to this gruesome task. It is a long job; and the sambhur is a heavy weight when we come to turn him over. The skin, particularly on the belly, is covered with ticks, some big, bloated and immovably fixed, others small and agile. We have to watch carefully lest any of them lodge on us, which they are apt to do; for, with its jaws once clenched in the skin, this insect can only be got rid of by cutting the body off and then pulling the head away, which generally takes a bit of one's skin with it. And the irritation of a bite lasts for months.

A SAMBHUR STAG AND MY ELEPHANT.

BRINGING HOME THE BAG.

At last the animal is completely flayed and the skin rolled up into a bundle; for it makes excellent leather, and is much used in India for soft shooting-boots and gaiters. Then Bechan displays his aptitude for the butcher's trade. With his heavy curved kukri he divides the carcass, hacking through the thick bones with powerful blows. Having cut it into portable pieces (for a whole sambhur weighs six or seven hundred pounds) he leaves me wondering as to where the rope to tie them up will come from. He looks around him and then goes to a straight-stemmed small tree with grey and black mottled bark. He cuts off a long flap of this bark, disclosing an inner skin. In this he makes incisions with his knife, pulls a long strip of it off and cuts it into narrower strips. He hands one of these to me and tells me to test its strength. Pull as I will I cannot break it. This is the udal tree which thus provides a natural cordage of wonderful strength. It is very common in the forest. Making a hole between the bones of a haunch Bechan passes a length of this fibre through and knots it. Then it takes all our combined strength to lift the haunch and bear it to where Khartoum is still patiently waiting. With difficulty we raise and fasten it to the ropes around the pad. And when at last we have secured all this meat, destined for hungry officers and sepoys in the fort and the mahouts and their families in Santrabari we look like butchers' apprentices. My khaki shooting-garments are stained, my hands are covered with blood and grime. I gaze around me hopelessly for water, though I know we are miles from a stream. But the resources of this wonderful jungle are not exhausted. Bechan points to one of the myriad lianas criss-crossing between the trees.

"Pani bel. The water creeper," he says. I have heard of this extraordinary plant and look carefully at it. It is about two inches in diameter, four-sided rather than round, with rough, corrugated, withered bark, in appearance similar to the corkwood bark used for rustic summer-houses in England. Bechan walks to a hanging festoon of it and cuts it through with a blow of his kukri. Nothing happens. I am disappointed; for I had expected to find it tubular and see a stream of water gush out. But the interior is of a white pulpy and moist material. Then Bechan strikes another blow and holds up a length of the creeper cut off. Suddenly from one end of this water begins to trickle and soon flows freely. I wash my hands, using clay as soap. Bechan then tells me to taste the water. Holding the cut creeper above my head I let the water drain into my mouth and find it cold and delicious as spring water. This useful pani bel, like the udal, is found everywhere in these forests; and, as I am anxious to learn all I can of jungle lore to instruct my sepoys, I carefully note the appearance of both.

We have consumed two hours in the task of flaying and cutting up the sambhur. We sit down to rest and smoke before moving on again. I light a cigarette and Bechan pulls out the clay head of a hookah and fills it with coarse native tobacco.

Then at length, with Khartoum hung round with meat and looking like a perambulating butcher's shop, we move on again. After we had been going for ten minutes we come to a spot where a number of trees, some nearly two feet in diameter, have been uprooted, and their upper branches stripped off. This is the work of wild elephants, which push down the trees with their heads to reach the leaves in the tops. We find their trail in the long grass and bushes—not wide, for elephants move in single file, so that it is difficult to tell whether one or twenty have passed. However here and there tracks diverge from the main trail and rejoin it further on, showing where one of the animals has wandered off to one side in search of some succulent morsel; and in the sandy bed of a dry stream we find their footprints, huge, almost circular impression in the dust. Each elephant seems to step exactly in the marks of the leader. Even tame ones advancing over open country will walk in single file if left to themselves. We reach a spot where the herd had evidently passed the night. All around the grass is pressed down and shows where the huge beasts lay down to sleep. Wild elephants usually halt from about 10 p.m. to 4 a.m., then move and feed until 10 or 11 a.m., when they stop and shelter from the heat of the day in thick jungle. About three or four o'clock in the afternoon they get on the move again; and if they come upon water then they bathe. They travel about twenty or thirty miles in the day, though if alarmed will keep on for double that distance.

While we are following this trail a loud crash ahead of us awakens the silent forest. I think at once that it is caused by the herd in whose tracks we are. But Bechan, who is a man of few words, mutters "bunder". And I look up and see a troop of monkeys leaping through the upper branches and hurling themselves in alarm at the sight of us from tree to tree. But their insatiable curiosity brings them back to peep at us. Once this curiosity in one developed into impertinence; and the impudent little beast deliberately pelted me. It happened that day that when on foot I had been attacked by a rogue elephant which I had only brought down with a bullet in the head fifteen paces from me. Ruffled by the encounter I was going back to camp, seated on Khartoum's back. Passing under a big tree a jungle fruit fell on me. Then, raising my head, I saw a monkey in the tree grimacing and grinning derisively at me. Coming after the elephant's attack his insolence seemed to add insult to injury, and I felt tempted to reward it with a bullet. But it would have been unnecessary cruelty; and I passed on leaving him still mowing and making faces at me.

We leave the elephants' trail and emerge on a "fire line"; for in these Government forests parallel belts, about twenty yards broad, are cleared annually in an attempt to confine the ravages of the jungle fires in the hot weather. They run east and west and are a mile apart, so that they serve not only as roads, but also as guides to one's whereabouts in the forest. As we come suddenly out on the fire line we see two or three fox-like animals playing in it. They are the dreaded wild dogs which do infinite damage to game. Even the tiger regards them with dislike and fear; for, small as they are, they will worry him in a pack, chasing him night and day and giving him no rest. They keep him always on the move, remaining out of his reach until he is exhausted from fatigue and want of sleep. They are pretty little animals, generally reddish, with sharp ears and bushy tails. As soon as these stray dogs in the fire line see us they bolt off into the jungle before I can get a shot at them; for on account of the harm they do to the game every sportsman tries to kill them. I once came upon a sambhur and her fawn being attacked by a number of these jungle pests. The hind was circling round, trying to keep between her offspring and the enemy, and striking at the assailants with her sharp hoof. Whilst some of the dogs engaged her in front others tried to dash in at the fawn, retreating at once when the angry mother swung round at them. They had already hamstrung the poor little beast and torn out one of its eyes; so, when they fled as soon as they caught sight of my elephant and the hind ran off, I put the wretched fawn out of its misery with a merciful shot.

Across the fire line we entered the jungle again. Along a branch over our heads a small animal runs swiftly and leaps into a neighbouring tree. It is a giant squirrel, a pretty animal with long and bushy tail and thick black fur, except on the breast, where it is white. It peeps at us from behind the tree-trunk and then is lost to sight in the foliage.

Khartoum pursues her leisurely way through the forest; for, in thick jungle where we must swerve aside to avoid trees and hack a path through creepers and undergrowth, we hardly go a mile an hour. But on a road I have timed her to walk at the rate of four miles an hour. Suddenly my eye is caught by a flash of bright colour; and I see a khakur buck and doe bounding through the trees ahead. Laying my hand on Bechan's shoulder I make him stop the elephant. Then as the graceful little deer cross our front in an open glade I fire and drop the male in its tracks. The doe bounds off in affright. As the mahout picks up the pretty animal, too dead for him to hallal it, binds its legs together and hands it up to me to fasten on the pad, only the thought of its succulent flesh reconciles me to the slaying of it. The khakur, or barking deer, as it is called from its cry, which is similar to a dog's bark, is of a bright chestnut colour and has a curious marking on the face like a pair of very black eyebrows raised in surprise and continued down the nose. The male has peculiar little horns with skin-covered pedicles about three inches long, from which project the brow antlers and the upper tines, which curve inward towards each other. These horns are small, six inches being considered a very good length. The buck has, in addition, a pair of sharp, thin, curved tusks in the upper jaw, which it uses as weapons of offence. Satisfied with our bag we turn Khartoum's head towards home, and reach Santrabari before dusk.

Such is a typical day in the jungle. Sometimes, though rarely, I was unsuccessful in procuring something for the pot. But on one day I shot three sambhur and a khakur. My Rajput sepoys would not eat the flesh of the former; for, like most Hindus, they imagined that its cloven hoof made it kin to the sacred cow. But the Mussulmans of the detachment, and the mahouts and their families, and our coolies were grateful for the meat.

Tough as a sambhur's flesh is, we officers were glad of it ourselves when nothing better offered. But our Hindus rejoiced exceedingly whenever one of us brought home a wild boar; and the Mohammedans were correspondingly disgusted, as pork is anathema to them. The slaying of a boar with a gun in open country where pigsticking is possible is as great a crime in India as shooting a fox in a hunting county in England; but in the forest it is permissible. There were a few cheetul or spotted deer very like the English fallow deer in our jungles; but I only saw one herd and secured one stag all the time I was at Buxa. They usually frequent more open forests; and the spots on their hide assimilating to the dappled light and shade of the sun through the leaves is a good example of Nature's protective colouring. Thus the black hide of the sambhur stag blends easily with the dark shadows of the denser forest and makes them very hard to see.

One does not often meet the dangerous beasts of the jungle by day. Tigers and panthers, though frequent enough, generally move only by night. Yet I often saw on the tree-trunks long scratches where these animals had cleaned and sharpened their claws, just as the domestic cat does on the legs of chairs and tables. They keep out of the way of elephants; and so I sometimes must have passed some great feline, whose fresh tracks I had just observed, sheltering in the undergrowth and watching us as we went by. I have seen high up on the stems and branches other scratches which showed where a bear had climbed in search of fruit. These animals, the dreaded large Himalayan variety, usually dwell in the hills and descend into the forest by night, so that they are rarely met with by daylight. The natives regard them with terror; for, if stumbled upon accidentally by some woodcutter, they will probably attack him and smash his skull with a crushing blow of a paw. In our stretch of jungle I only came across one rhinoceros and a herd of six bison, which, being protected by the rules of the forest department, we could not shoot. Once my elephant put up a stray bison calf which looked at us with mild curiosity until my orderly climbed down and tried to catch it. It trotted off out of his reach and stopped to look back at him. We drove it for a mile before us, hoping to shepherd it into camp and capture it: but we lost it in thick jungle. Wild elephants I occasionally came across, and had a couple of unpleasant adventures with them.

The fascination of a day's sport in the heart of the great forest is beyond words. Even if nothing falls to one's rifle the pleasure of roaming through the woodland is intense. Of the world nothing seems to exist farther than the eye can see down the short vistas of soft green light between the giant trees. Lulled by the swaying motion of the elephant—not unpleasant when used to it—one's senses are nevertheless keenly on the alert; for every stride may disclose some strange denizen of the jungle either to be sought after or guarded against. And the beauty of it all. The fern-carpeted glades, the drooping trails of bright-coloured orchids, the tangled shadows of the dense undergrowth, the glimpses of never-ending woodland between the great boles. And always the hush, the intense silence of this enchanted forest.

The generous jungle provides everything that savage man needs. The profusely growing bamboo will make his house or bridge the streams for him. Its delicate young shoots can be eaten. Its bark gives excellent lashing. Slit longitudinally it will serve as an aqueduct and convey the water from the mountain torrents to his door. Cut into lengths it makes cups and bottles for him. Should he need a cooking-pot, a length of bamboo cut off below a knot can be filled with water and placed on the fire; and the water will be boiled and food cooked long before the green wood is much charred. For food the forest offers deer, pigs, and fowl. There are several varieties of edible tubers. The unopened flowers of the simal tree are eaten as vegetables; while its seed makes a good nourishing food for cattle, and the cotton of its burst-open pods is used for stuffing pillows. The pua, a shrub with hairy shoots and dark grey bark gives the fibre which can be woven into cloth or made into fishing-nets, twine and net-bags. There is a creeper, the bark of which, bruised and thrown into a stream, stupefies the fish and brings them floating to the surface, where they can be easily caught. The pani bel gives man water to drink. And, if he is ill, another creeper makes an excellent febrifuge, while the gum of the udal tree is used as a purgative, and fomentations of the leaves of a shrub called madar are excellent for sprains and bruises. Food, drink, clothing, houses, household utensils, medicine; what more does savage and simple man require?

The jungle was called upon to provide me with an abode; for camping in tents in the forest was a very unsafe proceeding, owing to the wild elephants which might rush over the tents at night or, from sheer curiosity, pull them down and stand on them to the detriment of the occupants. So I got Bhuttia coolies to build a bamboo hut for me up in the trees. Twenty-two feet from the ground they constructed a platform supported by the tree-trunks and branches; and on this they erected a cosy three-roomed dwelling with walls of split bamboo and roof thatched with grass. It was reached by ladders. Although it shook to the tread of anyone walking about in it, it was very strong. Split bamboo partitions divided it off into the three apartments, sitting, bed and bathroom. It was quite a romantic dwelling, such as a boy steeped in the lore of Robinson Crusoe or Jules Verne would have loved. I named it Forest Lodge and regarded it with pride. I thought it safe from the destructive tendencies of wild elephants; for it was supported entirely by the neighbouring trees, with the exception of one long bamboo pole helping to hold up the roof. But once when it was left empty some mischievous elephant discovered it. How it entered into his thick skull to do it I do not know; but he dragged on the bamboo pole until he brought the whole in ruins about his ears. However, I had it built up again, this time with an open lower story surrounded by a bamboo wall to be used as a dining-room. On its apparently frail flooring of split bamboo I once entertained eight planters who had ridden over to see Forest Lodge the Second and who, with my junior officer, myself, and three servants, made a total of thirteen persons standing on the floor at the same time. When shooting or when in camp in the forest with my detachment, for I often brought my sepoys down to teach them jungle lore and practise them in bush warfare, I always occupied it. It was never again dismantled by elephants; though a similar but smaller building close by, occupied by my servants, was several times destroyed by them.

FOREST LODGE THE FIRST.

FOREST LODGE THE SECOND.

The fact was that its position invited attack. It stood near a path, much frequented by elephants, leading to a salt lick in the hills a few hundred yards away. This was in a curious amphitheatre in the foothills where landslips had left exposed precipitous slopes of a curious white earth impregnated with some chemical salts, probably soda or natron, of which wild animals are extremely fond. Bison, elephants, and deer of all sorts used to come here at night to eat this earth; and tigers prowled around it in search of prey. Native shikarees (hunters) erected machâns or platforms over it to pot the deer at their ease. This amphitheatre was almost a complete circle, save for one narrow chasm which must have been cut by the force of water. It was a winding gully, in places scarcely broad enough to allow the passage of an elephant with a pad on its back. I wondered what happened when two tuskers met in the narrow path. Its perpendicular sides were formed of the same white clay; but at their bases were seams of coal, black and shining where freshly exposed. When I saw them I thought that I had made a valuable discovery of mineral wealth. But when I broke off lumps of the coal and placed them on my camp fire I found that they would not burn; and I learned that there is coal in these hills which is a thousand years too young and, so, valueless. Thus faded my dream of the boundless wealth the jungle was to give me.

Forest Lodge was a constant source of interest and wonderment to all the monkeys in the neighbourhood. They used to gather in the tree-tops around and hold conferences to discuss it. Perched on the branches mothers with small babies clinging to them, sedate old men and frivolous youngsters scratched themselves meditatively and chattered and argued as to what manner of strange ape I was who had thus invaded their realm. When restless young monkeys wearied of the endless discussion and started to frivol, the elder ones seemed to rebuke their levity, and when this failed to have the desired effect would spring with bared teeth on the irreverent youth to chastise them; and the meeting then broke up in disorder.

When my detachment was encamped around Forest Lodge the scene at night, as I looked down from my windows, was truly Rembrandtesque. Their fires glowed in the trees, lighting up the dark faces of the sepoys and revealing with weird effect the huge forms of our transport elephants restlessly swaying at their pickets, ears flapping and trunks swinging as the big beasts incessantly shifted their weight from foot to foot. Around the bivouac was built a zareba of cut thorny bushes; and the guards mounted with ball cartridge in their pouches, not merely because it is the custom of the Service, but to repel any prowling dangerous beasts that might be tempted to visit the camp by night; for within fifty yards of a sentry I had a shot at a bear; and a tiger killed a sambhur not a hundred yards from the zareba. And once I sat at the window of my tree-dwelling listening to a tiger prowling around for a long time, uttering short snorting roars but never approaching near enough to give me a shot at him.

The voices of the men in the camp sounded loud through the silent forest and must have astonished the wild animals making their way to the salt lick close by, for at night all the jungle is awake. The beasts of prey wander from sunset to sunrise in search of a meal; and the deer must be on the alert against them. Only in the hot hours of the day dare they repose in security and lie down to sleep in the shade of the undergrowth. Even then they start at every sound, and the snapping of a twig brings them to their feet; for to the harmless animals life in the jungle is one constant menace. The birds and the monkeys in the trees alone can devote the dark hours to slumber; there is no rest at night for anything that dwells on the ground.

Now gradually the sepoys' voices die away and the flickering fires burn low. The forest is hushed in silence, broken only by the eerie cry of the great owl or the distant crash of a tree knocked down by a wild elephant.

CHAPTER VI

ROGUES OF THE FOREST

The lord of the forest—Wild elephants in India—Kheddah operations in the Terai—How rogues are made—Rogues attack villages—Highway robbers—Assault on a railway station—A police convoy—A poacher's death—Chasing an officer—My first encounter with a rogue—Stopping a charge—Difficulty of killing an elephant—The law on rogue-shooting—A Government gazette—A tame elephant shot by the Maharajah of Cooch Behar—Executing an elephant—A chance shot—A planter's escape—Attack on a tame elephant—The mahout's peril—Jhansi's wounds—Changes among the officers in Buxa—A Gurkha's terrible death—The beginner's luck—Indian and Malayan sambhur—A shot out of season—A fruitless search—Jhansi's flight—A scout attacked by a bear—Advertising for a truant—The agony column—Runaway elephants—A fatal fraud—Jhansi's return.

What animal can dispute with the elephant the proud title of lord of the forest? All give way to him as he stalks unchallenged through the woodland. The vaunted tiger shrinks aside from his path; and only the harmless beasts regard him without dismay, for he is merciful as he is strong. And the shield of the British Government is raised to protect him from man; for the laws of its forest department ordain that he must not be slain.

The stretches of jungle along the foot of the Himalayas harbour herds of wild elephants, which, thus saved from the sportsman's rifle, increase and multiply. These useful and usually harmless animals are far from being exterminated in India. Free to wander unscathed in Government forests, their numbers are not diminishing. The continuity of the Terai saves them from capture; for the ordinary kheddah operations, which consist of hemming a herd into a certain patch of jungle and driving it into a stockade of stout timbers is useless in forests where the animals can wander on in shelter indefinitely. This method is costly; for it requires the services of a trained staff of hunters and large numbers of coolies, and may take months. It was once tried near Buxa and, after a great expenditure of money, labour and time, did not result in the capture of one elephant. So the Government has adopted here another system. It lets out the kheddah rights to certain rajahs and big Zemindars (landholders) who furnish parties of hunters and tame elephants to go into the jungle and pursue the herds. Once on the trail of one they follow it persistently and keep it constantly on the move. When a calf elephant becomes exhausted and falls behind the others, the men fire on the mother and drive her off or kill her, surround the youngster and secure it by slipping ropes on its legs. It is then fastened between tame elephants and led off, a prisoner.

This method is responsible for the existence of a number of dangerous "rogue" elephants in the jungles near Buxa; for the worried herds break up and some of the males take to a solitary life. And of all the perils of the forest the rogue is the worst. The tiger or the panther rarely attacks man; and when it does, it is only for food. The bear, when unmolested, is generally harmless. But the vicious rogue seems to kill for the mere lust of murder. Occasionally a tusker, not belonging to a harried herd, develops a liking to a lonely existence and strays away from the others of his kind. Probably because he is an old bachelor and deprived of the softening influence of the female sex, he becomes surly and dangerous. He may take to wandering into cultivation at night and feeding on the crops, as wild elephants often do. The villagers naturally object to this, light fires around their fields, and turn out with torches, horns and drums to scare the intruders off. The herds are generally easily stampeded; but sometimes the surly old tusker, enraged at having his meal of succulent grain disturbed, charges the peasants and perhaps kills one or two of them. This not only destroys in him the wild animal's natural dread of man, but seems to give him a taste for bloodshed quite at variance with the elephant's accustomed gentleness of disposition.

The tales told me when I first went to Buxa of the ferocity and lust of cruelty of rogues seemed incredible. I heard of them deliberately entering villages on tea gardens, breaking through the frail structures of bamboo and tearing down hut after hut until they reached the houses of the bunniahs, or tradesmen who dealt in grain and food-stuffs. Then they feasted royally on the contents of the shops. Roads cut through the forest lead from the railway line to the gardens or from village to village; and along these come trains of bullock carts loaded with grain. Wild elephants used to lie in wait in the jungle until these were passing, then charge out on them, kill the drivers and bullocks and loot the grain.

While I was at Buxa two cases occurred of such attacks on carts close to Rajabhatkawa Station. In one the drivers got away safely; but a woman with them tripped and fell to the ground. The elephant overtook her, deliberately put his foot on her head and crushed her to death. In the other case the natives all escaped; but the rogue killed several of the bullocks, broke up the carts and hurled one on to the rails, where it lay until removed by the railway company officials who actually prosecuted the owner for obstructing the line. The station at Rajabhatkawa was attacked on one occasion. A tusker elephant suddenly appeared on the metals. The staff rushed into the building and locked themselves in. An engine happened to be standing in the station and the driver blew the whistle loudly to scare the animal off. The sound only infuriated the elephant; but, probably not liking the appearance of the engine, he ignored it, attacked the platform and tried to root it up. In doing so he broke off one of his tusks and, screaming with pain, rushed off into the jungle. I think that this was a brute with which I had a fight afterwards.

The rogues did not always grasp the fact that every bullock cart passing through the forest was not necessarily loaded with grain. On one occasion a convoy of convicts loaded with iron fetters was being taken to Alipur Duar in carts, escorted by armed native police. Suddenly from the jungle through which they were passing rushed out a wild elephant which charged the procession furiously. Drivers, police, prisoners, leapt from the carts and fled in terror. The wretched convicts, hampered by their leg-irons, stumbled, tripped and fell frequently. But fortunately for them the rogue was too busily engaged in chasing the frightened bullocks, killing them and smashing up the carts in a fruitless search for grain, to pay any attention to the men; and they all escaped.

A vicious elephant's method of slaughtering its human prey is particularly horrible. Our nearest planter neighbour, Tyson of Hathipota, was a man who knew the Terai well, having lived in various parts of the Duars, and had had much experience in big-game shooting. He told me of a terrible case which he had seen when on a visit to a forest officer in the Western Duars jungles. Into his host's solitary bungalow one day rushed two terrified forest guards to tell him of an awful spectacle which they had just witnessed. They had been lying hidden watching a well-known native poacher fishing in a preserved river. He was on the opposite bank and the stream at that part was unfordable. While they were discussing a plan to capture him, they saw a wild elephant appear out of the jungle behind the poacher and stealthily approach him. To their horror the brute suddenly rushed on the unsuspecting man, knocked him down, trampled on him and then, placing one foot on his thighs, wound its trunk round his body, seized him in its mouth and literally tore him to pieces. The story seemed too horrible to be true; but the forest officer and Tyson visited the spot and found the corpse of the luckless poacher crushed and mutilated as the eyewitnesses to the tragedy had narrated. The elephant's footprints were clearly visible. I could hardly credit the story until a similar case came to my own notice.

Another instance of unprovoked attack was related to me by Captain Denham White, Indian Medical Service, who had formerly been doctor to the Buxa detachment. An elephant had been reported to be committing havoc in the forest in the vicinity; and the then commanding officer and Denham White endeavoured to find and shoot him. They searched the jungle for a week in vain. Then White vowed that the animal was a phantom elephant and refused to accompany the commandant on the eighth day of the hunt. Taking his orderly with him, he went fishing in a river which flowed through the forest. The water in it was low; and the greater part of the bed was dry and covered with loose, rounded boulders which had been swept down from the hills during the Rains. White was busily engaged with his rod and line when he heard the orderly shout. Turning, he saw to his horror a large tusker elephant descending the steep bank and coming straight towards them. It was the missing rogue. The two men ran for their lives. The elephant pursued them, but, slipping and stumbling over the loose boulders, was unable to move quickly. Denham White, and his orderly gained the opposite bank and reached a road along a fire line and got away. It was fortunate for them that they had a good start and were close to this road; for in the jungle they would inevitably have been overtaken and killed.