Himalayan Journals Part 22

I antic.i.p.ated some novelty from a visit to a Durbar (court) so distant from European influence as that of the Rajah of Jeelpigoree.

All Eastern courts, subject to the Company, are, however, now shorn of much of their glory; and the condition of the upper cla.s.ses is greatly changed. Under the Mogul rule, the country was farmed out to Zemindars, some of whom a.s.sumed the t.i.tle of Rajah: they collected the revenue for the Sovereign, retaining by law ten per cent. on all that was realized: there was no intermediate cla.s.s, the peasant paying directly to the Zemindar, and he into the royal treasury.

Latterly the Zemindars have become farmers under the Company's rule; and in the adjudication of their claims, Lord Cornwallis (then Governor-General) made great sacrifices in their favour, levying only a small tribute in proportion to their often great revenues, in the hope that they would be induced to devote their energies, and some of their means, to the improvement of the condition of the peasantry.

This expectation was not realized: the younger Zemindars especially, subject to no restraint (except from aggressions on their neighbours), fell into slothful habits, and the collecting of the revenue became a trading speculation, entrusted to "middle men."

The Zemindar selects a number, who again are at liberty to collect through the medium of several sub-renting cla.s.ses. Hence the peasant suffers, and except a generally futile appeal to the Rajah, he has no redress. The law secures him tenure as long as he can pay his rent, and to do this he has recourse to the usurer; borrowing in spring (at 50, and oftener 100 per cent.) the seed, plough, and bullocks: he reaps in autumn, and what is then not required for his own use, is sold to pay off part of his original debt, the rest standing over till the next season; and thus it continues to acc.u.mulate, till, overwhelmed with difficulties, he is ejected, or flees to a neighbouring district. The Zemindar enjoys the same right of tenure as the peasant: the amount of impost laid on his property was fixed for perpetuity; whatever his revenue be, he must pay so much to the Company, or he forfeits his estates, and they are put up for auction.

One evening we visited the young Rajah at his residence, which has rather a good appearance at a distance, its white walls gleaming through a dark tope of mango, betel, and cocoa-nut. A short rude avenue leads to the entrance gate, under the trees of which a large bazaar was being held; stocked with cloths, simple utensils, ornaments, sweetmeats, five species of fish from the Teesta, and the betel-nut.

We entered through a guard-house, where were some of the Rajah's Sepoys in the European costume, and a few of the Company's troops, lent to the Rajah as a security against some of the turbulent pretenders to his t.i.tle. Within was a large court-yard, flanked by a range of buildings, some of good stone-work, some of wattle, in all stages of disrepair. A great crowd of people occupied one end of the court, and at the other we were received by the Dewan, and seated on chairs under a canopy supported by slender silvered columns.

Some slovenly Natch-girls were dancing before us, kicking up clouds of dust, and singing or rather bawling through their noses, the usual indelicate hymns in honour of the Hooli festival; there were also fiddlers, cutting uncouth capers in rhythm with the dancers.

Anything more deplorable than the music, dancing, and accompaniments, cannot well be imagined; yet the people seemed vastly pleased, and extolled the performers.

The arrival of the Rajah and his brothers was announced by a crash of tom-toms and trumpets, while over their heads were carried great gilt canopies. With them came a troop of relations, of all ages; and amongst them a poor little black girl, dressed in honour of us in an old-fashioned English chintz frock and muslin cap, in which she cut the drollest figure imaginable; she was carried about for our admiration, like a huge Dutch doll, crying l.u.s.tily all the time.

The festivities of the evening commenced by handing round trays full of pith-b.a.l.l.s, the size of a nutmeg, filled with a mixture of flour, sand, and red lac-powder; with these each pelted his neighbour, the thin covering bursting as it struck any object, and powdering it copiously with red dust. A more childish and disagreeable sport cannot well be conceived; and when the b.a.l.l.s were expended, the dust itself was resorted to, not only fresh, but that which had already been used was gathered up, with whatever dirt it might have become mixed. One rude fellow, with his hand full, sought to entrap his victims into talking, when he would stuff the nasty mixture into their mouths.

At the end attar of roses was brought, into which little pieces of cotton, fixed on slips of bamboo, were dipped, and given to each person. The heat, dust, stench of the unwashed mult.i.tude, noise, and increasing familiarity of the lower orders, warned us to retire, and we effected our retreat with precipitancy.

The Rajah and his brother were very fine boys, lively, frank, unaffected, and well disposed: they have evidently a good guide in the old Dewan; but it is melancholy to think how surely, should they grow up in possession of their present rank, they will lapse into slothful habits, and take their place amongst the imbeciles who now represent the once powerful Rajahs of Bengal.

We rode back to our tents by a bright moonlight, very dusty and tired, and heartily glad to breathe the cool fresh air, after the stifling ordeal we had undergone.

On the following evening the elephants were again in waiting to conduct us to the Rajah. He and his relations were a.s.sembled outside the gates, mounted upon elephants, amid a vast concourse of people.

The children and Dewan were seated in a sort of cradle; the rest were some in howdahs, and some astride on elephants' backs, six or eight together. All the idols were paraded before them, and powdered with red dust; the people howling, shouting, and sometimes quarrelling.

Our elephants took their places amongst those of the Rajah; and when the mob had sufficiently pelted one another with b.a.l.l.s and dirty red powder, a torchlight procession was formed, the idols leading the way, to a very large tank, bounded by a high rampart, within which was a broad esplanade round the water.

The effect of the whole was very striking, the glittering cars and barbaric gaud of the idols showing best by torchlight; while the white robes and turbans of the undulating sea of people, and the great black elephants picking their way with matchless care and consideration, contrasted strongly with the quiet moonbeams sleeping on the still broad waters of the tank.

Thence the procession moved to a field, where the idols were placed on the ground, and all dismounted: the Dewan then took the children by the hand, and each worshipped his tutelary deity in a short prayer dictated by the attendant Brahmin, and threw a handful of red dust in its face. After another ordeal of powder, singing, dancing, and suffocation, our share in the Hooli ended; and having been promised elephants for the following morning, we bade a cordial farewell to our engaging little hosts and their staid old governor.

On the 10th of March we were awakened at an early hour by a heavy thunder-storm from the south-west. The sunrise was very fine, through an arch 10 degrees high of bright blue sky, above which the whole firmament was mottled with cirrus. It continued cloudy, with light winds, throughout the day, but clear on the horizon. From this tinge such storms became frequent, ushering in the equinox; and the less hazy sky and rising hygrometer predicted an accession of moisture in the atmosphere.

We left for Rangamally, a village eight miles distant in a northerly direction, our course lying along the west bank of the Teesta.

The river is here navigated by canoes, thirty to forty feet long, some being rudely cut out of a solid log of Sal, while others are built, the planks, of which there are but few, being sewed together, or clamped with iron, and the seams caulked with the fibres of the root of Dhak (_Butea frondosa_), and afterwards smeared with the gluten of _Diospyros embryopteris._ The bed of the river is here threequarters of a mile across, of which the stream does not occupy one-third; its banks are sand-cliffs, fourteen feet in height. A few small fish and water-snakes swarm in the pools.

The whole country improved in fertility as we advanced towards the mountains: the gra.s.s became greener, and more trees, shrubs, herbs, and birds appeared. In front, the dark boundary-line of the Sal forest loomed on the horizon, and to the east rose the low hills of Bhotan, both backed by the outer ranges of the Himalaya.

Flocks of cranes were abundant over-head, flying in wedges, or breaking up into "open order," preparing for their migration northwards, which takes place in April, their return occurring in October; a small quail was also common on the ground. Tamarisk ("Jhow") grew in the sandy bed of the river; its flexible young branches are used in various parts of India for wattling and basket-making.

In the evening we walked to the skirts of the Sal forest. The great trunks of the trees were often scored by tigers' claws, this animal indulging in the cat-like propensity of rising and stretching itself against such objects. Two species of _Dillenia_ were common in the forest, with long gra.s.s, _Symplocos, Emblica,_ and _Ca.s.sia Fistula,_ now covered with long pods. Several parasitical air-plants grew on the dry trees, as _Oberonia, Vanda,_ and _Aerides._

At Rangamally, the height of the sandy banks of the Teesta varies from fifteen to twenty feet. The bed is a mile across, and all sand;*

[Now covered with _Anthistiria_ gra.s.s, fifteen feet high, a little _Sissoo,_ and _Bombax._] the current much divided, and opaque green, from the glacial origin of most of its head-streams. The west bank was covered with a small Sal forest, mixed with _Acacia Catechu,_ and brushwood, growing in a poor vegetable loam, over very dry sand.

The opposite (or Bhotan) bank is much lower, and always flooded during the rains, which is not the case on the western side, where the water rises to ten feet below the top of the bank, or from seven to ten feet above its height in the dry season, and it then fills its whole bed. This information we had from a police Jemadar, who has resided many years on this unhealthy spot, and annually suffers from fever. The Sal forest has been encroached upon from the south, for many miles, within the memory of man, by clearing in patches, and by indiscriminate felling.

About ten miles north of Rangamally, we came to an extensive flat, occupying a recess in the high west bank, the site of the old capital (Bai-kant-pore) of the Jeelpigoree Rajah. Hemmed in as it is on three sides by a dense forest, and on all by many miles of malarious Terai, it appears sufficiently secure from ordinary enemies, during a great part of the year. The soil is sandy, overlying gravel, and covered with a thick stratum of fine mud or silt, which is only deposited on these low flats; on it grew many naturalized plants, as hemp, tobacco, jack, mango, plantain, and orange.

About eight miles on, we left the river-bed, and struck westerly through a dense forest, to a swampy clearance occupied by the village of Rummai, which appeared thoroughly malarious; and we pitched the tent on a narrow, low ridge, above the level of the plain.

It was now cool and pleasant, partly due, no doubt, to a difference in the vegetation, and the proximity of swamp and forest, and partly also to a change in the weather, which was cloudy and threatening; much rain, too, had fallen here on the preceding day.

Brahmins and priests of all kinds are few in this miserable country: near the villages, and under the large trees, are, every here and there, a few immature thatched cottages, four to six feet high, in which the tutelary deities of the place are kept; they are idols of the very rudest description, of Vishnu as an ascetic (Bai-kant Nath), a wooden doll, gilt and painted, standing, with the hands raised as if in exhortation, and one leg crossed over the other. Again, Kartik, the G.o.d of war, is represented sitting astride on a peac.o.c.k, with the right hand elevated and holding a small flat cup.

Some fine muscular Cooches were here brought for Mr. Hodgson's examination, but we found them unable or unwilling to converse, in the Cooch tongue, which appears to be fast giving place to Bengalee.

We walked to a stream, which flows at the base of the retiring sand-cliffs, and nourishes a dense and richly-varied jungle, producing many plants, as beautiful _Acanthaceae,_ Indian horse-chesnut, loaded with white racemes of flowers, gay _Convolvuli,_ laurels, terrestrial and parasitic _Orchideae, Dillenia,_ casting its enormous flowers as big as two fists, pepper, figs, and, in strange a.s.sociation with these, a hawthorn, and the yellow-flowered Indian strawberry, which ascends 7,500 feet on the mountains, and _Hodgsonia,_ a new _Cucurbitaceous_ genus, clinging in profusion to the trees, and also found 5000 feet high on the mountains.

In the evening we rode into the forest (which was dry and very unproductive), and thence along the river-banks, through _Acacia Catechu,_ belted by _Sissoo,_ which often fringes the stream, always occupying the lowest flats. The foliage at this season is brilliantly green; and as the evening advanced, a yellow convolvulus burst into flower like magic, adorning the bushes over which it climbed.

It rained on the following morning; after which we left for the exit of the Teesta, proceeding northwards, sometimes through a dense forest of Sal timber, sometimes dipping into marshy depressions, or riding through gra.s.sy savannahs, breast-high. The coolness of the atmosphere was delicious, and the beauty of the jungle seemed to increase the further we penetrated these primaeval forests.

Eight miles from Rummai we came on a small river from the mountains, with a Cooch village close by, inhabited during the dry season by timber-cutters from Jeelpigoree it is situated upon a very rich black soil, covered with _Saccharum_ and various gigantic gra.s.ses, but no bamboo. These long gra.s.ses replace the Sal, of which we did not see one good tree.

We here mounted the elephants, and proceeded several miles through the prairie, till we again struck upon the high Sal forest-bank, continuous with that of Rummai and Rangamally, but much loftier: it formed one of many terraces which stretch along the foot of the hills, from Punkabaree to the Teesta, but of which none are said to occur for eight miles eastwards along the Bhotan Dooars: if true, this is probably due in part to the alteration of the course of the Teesta, which is gradually working to the westward, and cutting away these lofty banks.

The elephant-drivers appeared to have taken us by mistake to the exit of the Chawa, a small stream which joins the Teesta further to the eastward. The descent to the bed of this rivulet, round the first spur of rock we met with, was fully eighty feet, through a very irregular depression, probably the old bed of the stream; it runs southwards from the hills, and was covered from top to bottom with slate-pebbles. We followed the river to its junction with the Teesta, along a flat, broad gulley, bounded by densely-wooded, steep banks of clay slate on the north, and the lofty bank on the south: between these the bed was strewed with great boulders of gneiss and other rocks, luxuriantly clothed with long gra.s.s, and trees of wild plantain, _Erythrina_ and _Bauhinia,_ the latter gorgeously in flower.

The Sal bank formed a very fine object: it was quite perpendicular, and beautifully stratified with various coloured sands and gravel: it tailed off abruptly at the junction of the rivers, and then trended away south-west, forming the west bank of the Teesta. The latter river is at its outlet a broad and rapid, but hardly impetuous stream, now fifty yards across, gushing from between two low, forest-clad spurs: it appeared about five feet deep, and was beautifully fringed on both sides with green _Sissoo._

Some canoes were here waiting for us, formed of hollowed trunks of trees, thirty feet long: two were lashed together with bamboos, and the boatmen sat one at the head and one at the stern of each: we lay along the bottom of the vessels, and in a second we were darting down the river, at the rate of at least ten or fifteen miles an hour, the bright waters leaping up on all sides, and bounding in _jets-d'eau_ between prows and sterns of the coupled vessels.

Sometimes we glided along without perceptible motion, and at others jolted down bubbling rapids, the steersmen straining every nerve to keep their bark's head to the current, as she impatiently swerved from side to side in the eddies. To our jaded and parched frames, after the hot forenoon's ride on the elephants, the effect was delicious: the fresh breeze blew on our heated foreheads and down our open throats and chests; we dipped our hands into the clear, cool stream, and there was "music in the waters" to our ears.

Fresh verdure on the banks, clear pebbles, soft sand, long English river-reaches, forest glades, and deep jungles, followed in rapid succession; and as often as we rounded a bend or shot a rapid, the scene changed from bright to brighter still; so continuing until dusk, when we were slowly paddling along the then torpid current opposite Rangamally.* [The following temperatures of the waters of the Teesta were taken at intervals during our pa.s.sage from its exit to Rangamally, a distance of fifteen linear miles, and thirty miles following the bends:--

Water. Air.

Exit 2h. 30m. p.m. 62 degrees 3 62.2 degrees 74 degrees 3.30 63.2 degrees 4 64 degrees 4.30 65 degrees 5 65.4 degrees 72.5 degrees opposite Rummai 5.30 66 degrees 6 66 degrees 71.7 degrees opposite Baikant]

The absence of large stones or boulders of rock in the bed of the Teesta is very remarkable, considering the great volume and rapidity of the current, and that it shoots directly from the rocky hills to the gravelly plains. At the _embouchure_ there are boulders as big as the head, and in the stream, four miles below the exit, the boatmen pointed out a stone as large as the body as quite a marvel.

They a.s.sured us that the average rise at the mouth of the river, in the rains, was not more than five feet: the mean breadth of the stream is from seventy to ninety yards. From the point where it leaves the mountains, to its junction with the Megna, is at this season thirteen days' voyage, the return occupying from twenty to twenty-five days, with the boats unladen. The name "Teesta" signifies "quiet," this river being so in comparison with other Himalayan torrents further west, the Cosi, Konki, etc., which are devastators of all that bounds their course.

We pa.s.sed but two crossing-places: at one the river is divided by an island, covered with the rude chaits and flags of the Boodhists.

We also saw some Cooch fishermen, who throw the net much as we do: a fine "Mahaser" (a very large carp) was the best fish they had.

Of cultivation there was very little, and the only habitations were a few gra.s.s-huts of the boatmen or buffalo herdsmen, a rare Cooch village of Catechu and Sal cutters, or the shelter of timber-floaters, who seem to pa.s.s the night in nests of long dry gra.s.s.

Our servants not having returned with the elephants from Rummai, we spent the following day at Rangamally shooting and botanizing.

I collected about 100 species in a couple of hours, and observed perhaps twice that number: the more common I have repeatedly alluded to, and excepting some small terrestrial _Orchids,_ I added nothing of particular interest to my collection.* [The following is a list of the princ.i.p.al genera, most of which are English:--_Polygonum, Quercus, Sonchus, Gnaphalium, Cratagus, Lobelia, Lactuca, Hydrocotyle, Saponaria, Campanula, Bidens, Rubus, Oxalis, Artemisia, Fragaria, Clematis, Dioscorea, Potamogeton, Chara, Veronica, Viola, Smilax._]

On the 14th of March we proceeded west to Siligoree, along the skirts of the ragged Sal forest. Birds are certainly the most conspicuous branch of the natural history of this country, and we saw many species, interesting either from their habits, beauty, or extensive distribution. We noticed no less than sixteen kinds of swimming birds, several of which are migratory and English. The Shoveller, white-eyed and common wild ducks; Merganser, Brahminee, and Indian goose (_Anser Indica_); common and Gargany teal; two kinds of gull; one of Shearwater (_Rhynchops ablacus_); three of tern, and one of cormorant. Besides these there were three egrets, the large crane, stork, green heron, and the demoiselle; the English sand-martin, kingfisher, peregrine-falcon, sparrow-hawk, kestrel, and the European vulture: the wild peac.o.c.k, and jungle-fowl. There were at least 100 peculiarly Indian birds in addition, of which the more remarkable were several kinds of mina, of starling, vulture, kingfisher, magpie, quail, and lapwing.

The country gradually became quite beautiful, much undulated and diversified by bright green meadows, sloping lawns, and deeply wooded nullahs, which lead from the Sal forest and meander through this varied landscape. More beautiful sites for fine mansions could not well be, and it is difficult to suppose so lovely a country should be so malarious as it is before and after the rains, excessive heat probably diffusing widely the miasma from small stagnant surfaces.

We noticed a wild hog, absolutely the first wild beast of any size I sawon the plains, except the hispid hare (_Lepus hispidus_) and the barking deer (_Stylocerus ratna_). The hare we found to be the best game of this part of India, except the teal. The pheasants of Dorjiling are poor, the deer all but uneatable, and the florican, however dressed, I considered a far from excellent bird.

A good many plants grow along the streams, the sandy beds of which are everywhere covered with the marks of tigers' feet. The only safe way of botanizing is by pushing through the jungle on elephants; an uncomfortable method, from the quant.i.ty of ants and insects which drop from the foliage above, and from the risk of disturbing pendulous bees' and ants' nests.

A peculiar species of willow (_Salix tetrasperma_) is common here; which is a singular fact, as the genus is characteristic of cold and arctic lat.i.tudes; and no species is found below 5000 feet elevation on the Sikkim mountain, where it grows on the inner Himalaya only, some kinds ascending to 16,000 feet.

East of Siligoree the plains are unvaried by tree or shrub, and are barren wastes of short turf or sterile sand, with the dwarf-palm (_Phoenix acaulis_), a sure sign of a most hungry soil.