Himalayan Journals Part 3

This and Beejaghur, higher up the Soane, were amongst the most recently reduced forts, and this was further the last of those wrested from Baber in 1542. Some of the rooms are still habitable, but the greater part are ruinous, and covered with climbers, both of wild flowers and of the naturalised garden plants of the adjoining shrubbery; the _Arbor-tristis,_ with _Hibiscus, Abutilon,_ etc., and above all, the little yellow-flowered _Linaria ramosissima,_ crawling over every ruined wall, as we see the walls of our old English castles clothed with its congener _L. Cymbalaria._

In the old dark stables I observed the soil to be covered with a copious evanescent efflorescence of nitrate of lime, like soap-suds scattered about.

I made Rotas Palace 1490 feet above the sea, so that this table-land is here only fifty feet higher than that I had crossed on the grand trunk road, before descending at the Dunwah pa.s.s. Its mean temperature is of course considerably (4 degrees) below that of the valley, but though so cool, agues prevail after the rains.

The extremes of temperature are less marked than in the valley, which becomes excessively heated, and where hot winds sometimes last for a week, blowing in furious gusts.

The climate of the whole neighbourhood has of late changed materially; and the fall of rain has much diminished, consequent on felling the forests; even within six years the hail-storms have been far less frequent and violent. The air on the hills is highly electrical, owing, no doubt, to the dryness of the atmosphere, and to this the frequent recurrence of hail-storms may be due.

The zoology of these regions is tolerably copious, but little is known of the natural history of a great part of the plateau; a native tribe, p.r.o.ne to human sacrifices, is talked of. Tigers are common, and bears are numerous; they have, besides, the leopard, panther, viverine cat, and civet; and of the dog tribe the pariah, jackal, fox, and wild dog, called Koa. Deer are very numerous, of six or seven kinds. A small alligator inhabits the hill streams, said to be a very different animal from either of the Soane species.

During our descent we examined several instances of ripple-mark (fossil waves' footsteps) in the sandstone; they resembled the fluting of the _Sigillaria_ stems, in the coal-measures, and occurring as they did here, in sandstone, a little above great beds of limestone, had been taken for such, and as indications of coal.

On the following day we visited Rajghat, a steep ghat or pa.s.s leading up the cliff to Rotas Palace, a little higher up the river. We took the elephants to the mouth of the glen, where we dismounted, and whence we followed a stream abounding in small fish and aquatic insects (_Dytisci_ and _Gyrini_), through a close jungle, to the foot of the cliffs, where there are indications of coal.

The woods were full of monkeys, and amongst other plants I observed _Murraya exotica,_ but it was scarce. Though the jungle was so dense, the woods were very dry, containing no Palm, _Adroideae,_ Peppers, _Orchideae_ or Ferns. Here, at the foot of the red cliffs, which towered imposingly above, as seen through the tree tops, are several small seams of coaly matter in the sandstone, with abundance of pyrites, sulphur, and copious efflorescences of salts of iron; but no coal. The springs from the cliffs above are charged with lime, of which enormous tuff beds are deposited on the sandstone, full of impressions of the leaves and stems of the surrounding trees, which, however, I found it very difficult to recognize, and could not help contrasting this circ.u.mstance with the fact that geologists, unskilled in botany, see no difficulty in referring equally imperfect remains of extinct vegetables to existing genera. In some parts of their course the streams take up quant.i.ties of the efflorescence, which they scatter over the sandstones in a singular manner.

At Akbarpore I had sunk two thermometers, one 4 feet 6 inches, the other 5 feet 6 inches; both invariably indicated 76 degrees, the air varying from 56 degrees to 79.5 degrees. Dew had formed every night since leaving Dunwah, the gra.s.s being here cooled 12 degrees below the air.

On the 19th of February we marched up the Soane to Tura, pa.s.sing some low hills of limestone, between the cliffs of the Kymore and the river. On the shaded riverbanks grew abundance of English genera-- _Cynoglossum, Veronica, Potentilla, Ranunculus sceleratus, Rumex,_ several herbaceous _Compositae_ and _l.a.b.i.atae_; _Tamarix_ formed a small bush in rocky hillocks in the bed of the river, and in pools were several aquatic plants, _Zannich.e.l.lia, Chara,_ a pretty little _Vallisneria,_ and _Potamogeton._ The Brahminee goose was common here, and we usually saw in the morning immense flocks of wild geese overhead, migrating northward.

Here I tried again the effect of solar and nocturnal radiation on the sand, at different depths, not being able to do so on the alluvium.

Noon: Temperature of air 87 degrees Surface 110 degrees 1 inch 102 degrees 2 inches 93.5 degrees 4 inches 84 degrees 8 inches 77 degrees (sand wet) 16 inches 76 degrees (sand wet) Daylight of following morning: Surface 52 degrees 1 inch 55 degrees 2 inches 58 degrees 4 inches 67 degrees 8 inches 73 degrees (sand wet) 16 inches 74 degrees (sand wet)

From Tura our little army again crossed the Soane, the scarped cliffs of the Kymore approaching close to the river on the west side.

The bed is very sandy, and about one mile and a half across.

The elephants were employed again, as at Baroon, to push the cart: one of them had a b.u.mp in consequence, as large as a child's head, just above the trunk, and bleeding much; but the brave beast disregarded this, when the word of command was given by his driver.

The stream was very narrow, but deep and rapid, obstructed with beds of coa.r.s.e agate, jasper, cornelian and chalcedony pebbles. A clumsy boat took us across to the village of Soanepore, a wretched collection of hovels. The crops were thin and poor, and I saw no palms or good trees. Squirrels however abounded, and were busy laying up their stores; descending from the trees they scoured across a road to a field of tares, mounted the hedge, took an observation, foraged and returned up the tree with their booty, quickly descended, and repeated the operation of reconnoitering and plundering.

The bed of the river is here considerably above that at Dearee, where the mean of the observations with those of Baroon, made it about 300 feet. The mean of those taken here and on the opposite side, at Tura, gives about 400 feet, indicating a fall of 100 feet in only 40 miles.

Near this the sandy banks of the Soane were full of martins' nests, each one containing a pair of eggs. The deserted ones were literally crammed full of long-legged spiders (_Opilio_), which could be raked out with a stick, when they came pouring down the cliff like corn from a sack; the quant.i.ties are quite inconceivable. I did not observe the martin feed on them.

The entomology here resembled that of Europe, more than I had expected in a tropical country, where predaceous beetles, at least _Carabideae_ and _Staphylinideae,_ are generally considered rare. The latter tribes swarmed under the clods, of many species but all small, and so singularly active that I could not give the time to collect many. In the banks again, the round egg-like earthy chrysalis of the _Sphynx Atropos_ (?) and the many-celled nidus of the leaf-cutter bee, were very common.

A large columnar _Euphorbia_ (_E. ligulata_) is common all along the Soane, and I observed it to be used everywhere for fencing. I had not remarked the _E. neriifolia_; and the _E. tereticaulis_ had been very rarely seen since leaving Calcutta. The _Cactus_ is nowhere found; it is abundant in many parts of Bengal, but certainly not indigenous.

Ill.u.s.tration--CROSSING THE SOANE, WITH THE KYMORE HILLS IN THE DISTANCE.

From this place onwards up the Soane, there was no road of any kind, and we were compelled to be our own road engineers. The sameness of the vegetation and lateness of the season made me regret this the less, for I was disappointed in my antic.i.p.ations of finding luxuriance and novelty in these wilds. Before us the valley narrowed considerably, the forest became denser, the country on the south side was broken with rounded hills, and on the north the n.o.ble cliffs of the Kymore dipped down to the river. The villages were smaller, more scattered and poverty-stricken, with the Mahowa and Mango as the usual trees; the banyan, peepul, and tamarind being rare. The native, are of an aboriginal jungle race; and are tall, athletic, erect, much less indolent and more spirited than the listless natives of the plains.

_February_ 21.--Started at daylight: but so slow and difficult was our progress through fields and woods, and across deep gorges from the hills, that we only advanced five miles in the day; the elephant's head too was aching too badly to let him push, and the cattle would not proceed when the draught was not equal. What was worse, it was impossible to get them to pull together up the inclined planes we cut, except by placing a man at the head of each of the six, eight, or ten in a team, and simultaneously s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g round their tails; when one tortured animal sometimes capsizes the vehicle.

The small carts got on better, though it was most nervous to see them rushing down the steeps, especially those with our fragile instruments, etc.

Kosdera, where we halted, is a pretty place, elevated 440 feet, with a broad stream front the hills flowing past it. These hills are of limestone, and rounded, resting upon others of hornstone and jasper.

Following up the stream I came to some rapids, where the stream is crossed by large beds of hornstone and porphyry rocks, excessively hard, and pitched up at right angles, or with a bold dip to the north. The number of strata was very great, and only a few inches or even lines thick: they presented all varieties of jasper, hornstone, and quartz of numerous colours, with occasional seams of porphyry or breccia. The racks were elegantly fringed with a fern I had not hitherto seen, _Polypodium proliferum,_ which is the only species the Soane valley presents at this season.

Returning over the hills, I found _Hardwickia binata,_ a most elegant leguminous tree, tall, erect, with an elongated coma, and the branches pendulous. These trees grew in a shallow bed of alluvium, enclosing abundance of agate pebbles and kunker, the former derived from the quartzy strata above noticed.

On the 23rd and 24th we continued to follow up the Soane, first to Panchadurma (alt. 490 feet), and thence to Pepura (alt. 587 feet), the country becoming densely wooded, very wild, and picturesque, the woods being full of monkeys, parrots, peac.o.c.ks, hornbills, and wild animals. _Strychnos potatorum,_ whose berries are used to purify water, forms a dense foliaged tree, 30 to 60 feet high, some individuals pale yellow, others deep green, both in apparent health.

_Feronia Elephantum_ and _Aegle marmelos_* [The Bhel fruit, lately introduced into English medical practice, as an astringent of great effect, in cases of diarrhoea and dysentery.] were very abundant, with _Sterculia,_ and the dwarf date-palm.

One of my carts was here hopelessly broken down; advancing on the spokes instead of the tire of the wheels. By the banks of a deep gully here the rocks are well exposed: they consist of soft clay shales resting on the limestone, which is nearly horizontal; and this again, unconformably on the quartz and hornstone rocks, which are confused, and tilted up at all angles.

A spur of the Kymore, like that of Rotas, here projects to the bed of the river, and was blazing at night with the beacon-like fires of the natives, lighted to scare the tigers and bears from the spots where they cut wood and bamboo; they afforded a splendid spectacle, the flames in some places leaping zig-zag from hill to hill in front of us, and looking as if a gigantic letter W were written in fire.

The night was bright and clear, with much lightning, the latter attracted to the spur, and darting down as it were to mingle its fire with that of the forest; so many flashes appeared to strike on the flames, that it is probable the heated air in their neighbourhood attracted them. We were awakened between 3 and 4 a.m., by a violent dust-storm, which threatened to carry away the tents. Our position at the mouth of the gulley formed by the opposite hills, no doubt accounted for it. The gusts were so furious that it was impossible to observe the barometer, which I returned to its case on ascertaining that any indications of a rise or fall in the column must have been quite trifling. The night had been oppressively hot, with many insects flying about; amongst which I noticed earwigs, a genus erroneously supposed rarely to take to the wing in Britain.

At 8.30 a.m. it suddenly fell calm, and we proceeded to Chanchee (alt. 500 feet), the native carts breaking down in their pa.s.sage over the projecting beds of flinty rocks, or as they burned down the inclined planes we cut through the precipitous clay banks of the streams. Near Chanchee we pa.s.sed an alligator, just killed by two men, a foul beast, about nine feet long, of the mugger kind.

More absorbing than its natural history was the circ.u.mstance of its having swallowed a child, that was playing in the water as its mother was washing her utensils in the river. The brute was hardly dead, much distended by the prey, and the mother was standing beside it.

A very touching group was this: the parent with her hands clasped in agony, unable to withdraw her eyes from the cursed reptile, which still clung to life with that tenacity for which its tribe are so conspicuous; beside these the two athletes leaned on the b.l.o.o.d.y bamboo staffs, with which they had all but despatched the animal.

This poor woman earned a scanty maintenance by making catechu: inhabiting a little cottage, and having no property but two cattle to bring wood from the hills, and a very few household chattels; and how few of these they only know who have seen the meagre furniture of Danga hovels. Her husband cut the trees in the forest and dragged them to the hut, but at this time he was sick, and her only boy, her future stay, it was, whom the beast had devoured.

This province is famous for the quant.i.ty of catechu its dry forests yield. The plant (_Acacia_) is a little th.o.r.n.y tree, erect, and bearing a rounded head of well remembered p.r.i.c.kly branches. Its wood is yellow, with a dark brick-red heart, most profitable in January and useless in June (for yielding the extract).

Ill.u.s.tration--SOANE VALLEY AND KYMORE HILLS COCHLOSPERMUM GOSSYPIUM AND BUTEA FRONDOSA IN FLOWER.

The _Butea frondosa_ was abundantly in flower here, and a gorgeous sight. In ma.s.s the inflorescence resembles sheets of flame, and individually the flowers are eminently beautiful, the bright orange-red petals contrasting brilliantly against the jet-black velvety calyx. The nest of the _Megachile_ (leaf-cutter bee) was in thousands in the cliffs, with Mayflies, Caddis-worms, spiders, and many predaceous beetles. Lamellicorn beetles were very rare, even _Aphodius,_ and of _Cetoniae_ I did not see one.

We marched on the 28th to Kota, at the junction of the river of that name with the Soane, over hills of flinty rock, which projected everywhere, to the utter ruin of the elephants' feet, and then over undulating hills of limestone; on the latter I found trees of _Cochlospermum,_ whose curious thick branches spread out somewhat awkwardly, each tipped with a cl.u.s.ter of golden yellow flowers, as large as the palm of the hand, and very beautiful: it is a tropical Gum-Cistus in the appearance and texture of the petals, and their frail nature. The bark abounds in a transparent gum, of which the white ants seem fond, for they had killed many trees.

Of the leaves the curious rude leaf-bellows are made, with which the natives of these hills smelt iron. Scorpions appeared very common here, of a small kind, 1.5 inch long; several were captured, and one of our party was stung on the finger; the smart was burning for an hour or two, and then ceased.

At Kota we were nearly opposite the cliffs at Beejaghur, where coal is reported to exist; and here we again crossed the Soane, and for the last time. The ford is three miles up the river, and we marched to it through deep sand. The bed of the river is here 500 feet above the sea, and about three-quarters of a mile broad, the rapid stream being 50 or 60 yards wide, and breast deep. The sand is firm and siliceous, with no mica; nodules of coal are said to be washed down thus far from the coal-beds of Burdee, a good deal higher up, but we saw none.

The cliffs come close to the river on the opposite side, their bases clothed with woods which teemed with birds. The soil is richer, and individual trees, especially of _Bombax, Terminalia_ and _Mahowa,_ very fine; one tree of the _Hardwickia,_ about 120 feet high, was as handsome a monarch of the forest as I ever saw, and it is not often that one sees trees in the tropics, which for a combination of beauty in outline, harmony of colour, and arrangement of branches and foliage, would form so striking an addition to an English park.

There is a large break in the Kymore hills here, beyond the village of Kunch, through which our route lay to Beejaghur, and the Ganges at Mirzapore; the cliff's leaving the river and trending to the north in a continuous escarpment flanked with low ranges of rounded hills, and terminating in an abrupt spur (Mungeesa Peak) whose summit was covered with a ragged forest. At Kunch we saw four alligators sleeping in the river, looking at a distance like logs of wood, all of the short-nosed or mugger kind, dreaded by man and beast; I saw none of the sharp-shouted (or garial), so common on the Ganges, where their long bills, with a garniture of teeth and prominent eyes peeping out of the water, remind one of geological lectures and visions of _Ichthyosauri._ Tortoises were frequent in the river, basking on the rocks, and popping into the water when approached.

On the 1st of March we left the Soane, and struck inland over a rough hilly country, covered with forest, fully 1000 feet below the top of the Kymore table-land, which here recedes from the river and surrounds an undulating plain, some ten miles either way, facing the south. The roads, or rather pathways, were very bad, and quite impa.s.sable for the carts without much engineering, cutting through forest, smoothing down the banks of the watercourses to be crossed, and clearing away the rocks as we best might. We traversed the empty bed of a mountain torrent, with perpendicular banks of alluvium 30 feet high, and thence plunged into a dense forest. Our course was directed towards Mungeesa Peak, the remarkable projecting spur, between which and a conical hill the path led. Whether on the elephants or on foot, the th.o.r.n.y jujubes, _Acacias,_ etc. were most troublesome, and all our previous scratchings were nothing to this. Peac.o.c.ks and jungle-fowl were very frequent, the squabbling of the former and the hooting of the monkeys constantly grating on the ear. There were innumerable pigeons and a few Floricans (a kind of bustard--considered the best eating game--bird in India). From the defile we emerged on an open flat, halting at Sulkun, a scattered village (alt. 684 feet), peopled by a bold-looking race (Coles)* [The Coles, like the Danghas of the Rajmahal and Behar hills, and the natives of the mountains of the peninsula, form one of the aboriginal tribes of British India, and are widely different people from either the Hindoos or Mussulmen.] who habitually carry the spear and shield.

We had here the pleasure of meeting Mr. Felle, an English gentleman employed in the Revenue department; this being one of the roads along which the natives transport their salt, sugar, etc., from one province to another.

In the afternoon, I examined the conical hill, which, like that near Rotas, is of stratified beds of limestone, capped with sandstone.

A stream runs round its base, cutting through the alluvium to the subjacent rock, which is exposed, and contains flattened spheres of limestone. These spheres are from the size of a fist to a child's head, or even much larger; they are excessively hard, and neither laminated nor formed of concentric layers. At the top of the hill the sandstone cap was perpendicular on all sides, and its dry top covered with small trees, especially of _Cochlospermum._ A few larger trees of _Fici_ clung to the edge of the rocks, and by forcing their roots into the interstices detached enormous ma.s.ses, affording good dens for bears and other wild animals. From the top, the view of rock, river, forest, and plain, was very fine, the eye ranging over a broad flat, girt by precipitous hills;--West, the Kymore or Vindhya range rose again in rugged elevations; South, flowed the Soane, backed by ranges of wooded hills, smoking like volcanos with the fires of the natives;--below, lay the bed of the stream we had left at the foot of the hills, cutting its way through the alluvium, and following a deep gorge to the Soane, which was there hidden by the rugged heights we had crossed, on which the greater part of our camp might be seen still straggling onwards;--east, and close above us, the bold spur of Mungeesa shot up, terminating a continuous stretch of red precipices, clothed with forest along their bases, and over their horizontal tops.

From Sulkun the view of the famed fort and palace of Beejaghur is very singular, planted on the summit of an isolated hill of sandstone, about ten miles off. A large tree by the palace marks its site; for, at this distance, the buildings are themselves undistinguishable.

There are many tigers on these hills; and as one was close by, and had killed several cattle, Mr. Felle kindly offered us a chance of slaying him. Bullocks are tethered out, over-night, in the places likely to be visited by the brute; he kills one of them, and is from the spot tracked to his haunt by natives, who visit the stations early in the morning, and report the whereabouts of his lair.

The sportsman then goes to the attack mounted on an elephant, or having a _roost_ fixed in a tree, on the trail of the tiger, and he employs some hundred natives to drive the animal past the lurking-place.

On the present occasion, the locale of the tiger was doubtful; but it was thought that by beating over several miles of country he (or at any rate, some other game) might be driven past a certain spot.

Thither, accordingly, the natives were sent, who built machans (stages) in the trees, high out of danger's reach; Mr. Theobald and myself occupied one of these perches in a _Hardwickia_ tree, and Mr. Felle another, close by, both on the slope of a steep hill, surrounded by jungly valleys. We were also well thatched in with leafy boughs, to prevent the wary beast from espying the ambush, and had a whole stand of shall arms ready for his reception.

When roosted aloft, and duly charged to keep profound silence (which I obeyed to the letter, by falling sound asleep), the word was pa.s.sed to the beaters, who surrounded our post on the plain-side, extending some miles in line, and full two or three distant from us.

They entered the jungle, beating tom-toms, singing and shouting as they advanced, and converging towards our position. In the noonday solitude of these vast forests, our situation was romantic enough: there was not a breath of wind, an insect or bird stirring; and the wild cries of the men, and the hollow sound of the drums broke upon the ear from a great distance, gradually swelling and falling, as the natives ascended the heights or crossed the valleys. After about an hour and a half, the beaters emerged from the jungle under our retreat; one by one, two by two, but preceded by no single living thing, either mouse, bird, deer, or bear, and much less tiger.

The beaters received about a penny a-piece for the day's work; a rich guerdon for these poor wretches, whom necessity sometimes drives to feed on rats and offal.

We were detained three days at Sulkun, from inability to get on with the carts; and as the pa.s.s over the Kymore to the north (on the way to Mirzapore) was to be still worse, I took advantage of Mr. Felle's kind offer of camels and elephants to make the best of my way forward, accompanying that gentleman, _en route,_ to his residence at Shahgunj, on the table-land.