Himalayan Journals Part 4

Both the climate and natural history of this flat on which Sulkun stands, are similar to those of the banks of the Soane; the crops are wretched. At this season the dryness of the atmosphere is excessive: our nails cracked, and skins peeled, whilst all articles of wood, tortoisesh.e.l.l, etc., broke on the slightest blow. The air, too, was always highly electrical, and the dew-point was frequently 40 degrees below the temperature of the air.

The natives are far from honest: they robbed one of the tents placed between two others, wherein a light was burning. One gentleman in it was awake, and on turning saw five men at his bedside, who escaped with a bag of booty, in the shape of clothes, and a tempting strong bra.s.s-bound box, containing private letters. The clothes they dropped outside, but the box of letters was carried off. There were about a hundred people asleep outside the tents, between whose many fires the rogues must have pa.s.sed, eluding also the guard, who were, or ought to have been, awake.

CHAPTER III.

Ek-powa Ghat--Sandstones--Shahgunj--Table-land, elevation, etc.

--Gum-arabic--Mango--Fair--Aquatic plants--Rujubbund-- Storm--False sunset and sunrise--Bind hills--Mirzapore-- Manufactures, imports, etc.--Climate of--Thuggee--Chunar-- Benares--Mosque--Observatory--Sar-nath--Ghazeepore-- Rose-gardens--Manufactory of Attar--Lord Cornwallis' tomb-- Ganges, scenery and natural history of--Pelicans--Vegetation-- Insects--Dinapore--Patna--Opium G.o.downs and manufacture-- Mudar, white and purple--Monghyr islets--Hot Springs of Setakoond --Alluvium of Ganges--Rocks of Sultun-gunj--Bhaugulpore-- Temples of Mt. Manden--Coles and native tribes--Bhaugulpore rangers--Horticultural gardens.

On the 3rd of March I bade farewell to Mr. Williams and his kind party, and rode over a plain to the village of Markunda, at the foot of the Ghat. There the country becomes very rocky and wooded, and a stream is crossed, which runs over a flat bed of limestone, cracked into the appearance of a tesselated pavement. For many miles there is no pa.s.s over the Kymore range, except this, significantly called "Ek-powa-Ghat" (one-foot Ghat). It is evidently a _fault,_ or shifting of the rocks, producing so broken a cliff as to admit of a path winding over the shattered crags. On either side, the precipices are extremely steep, of horizontally stratified rocks, continued in an unbroken line, and the views across the plain and Soane valley, over which the sun was now setting, were superb. At the summit we entered on a dead flat plain or table-land, with no hills, except along the brim of the broad valley we had left, where are some curious broad pyramids, formed of slabs of sandstone arranged in steps. By dark we reached the village of Roump (alt. 1090 feet), beyond the top of the pa.s.s.

On the next day I proceeded on a small, fast, and wofully high-trotting elephant, to Shahgunj, where I enjoyed Mr. Felle's hospitality for a few days. The country here, though elevated, is, from the nature of the soil and formation, much more fertile than what I had left. Water is abundant, both in tanks and wells, and rice-fields, broad and productive, cover the ground; while groves of tamarinds and mangos, now loaded with blossoms, occur at every village.

It is very singular that the elevation of this table-land (1100 feet at Shahgunj) should coincide with that of the granite range of Upper Bengal, where crossed by the grand trunk road, though they have no feature but the presence of alluvium in common. Scarce a hillock varies the surface here, and the agricultural produce of the two is widely different. Here the flat ledges of sandstone retain the moisture, and give rise to none of those impetuous torrents which sweep it off the inclined beds of gneiss, or splintered quartz.

Nor is there here any of the effloresced salts so forbidding to vegetation where they occur. Wherever the alluvium is deep on these hills, neither _Catechu, Olibanum, Butea, Terminalia, Diospyros,_ dwarf-palm, or any of those plants are to be met with, which abound wherever the rock is superficial, and irrespectively of its mineral characters.

The gum-arabic _Acacia_ is abundant here, though not seen below, and very rare to the eastward of this meridian, for I saw but little of it in Behar. It is a plant partial to a dry climate, and rather prefers a good soil. In its distribution it in some degree follows the range of the camel, which is its constant companion over thousands of leagues. In the valley of the Ganges I was told that neither the animal nor plant flourish east of the Soane, where I experienced a marked change in the humidity of the atmosphere on my pa.s.sage down the Ganges. It was a circ.u.mstance I was interested in, having first met with the camel at Teneriffe and the Cape Verd Islands, the westernmost limit of its distribution; imported thither, however, as it now is into Australia, where, though there is no _Acacia Arabica,_ four hundred other species of the genus are known.

The mango, which is certainly _the_ fruit of India, (as the pine-apple is of the Eastern Islands, and the orange of the West,) was now blossoming, and a superb sight. The young leaves are purplish-green, and form a curious contrast to the deep lurid hue of the older foliage; especially when the tree is (which often occurs) dimidiate, one half the green, and the other the red shades of colours; when in full blossom, all forms a ma.s.s of yellow, diffusing a fragrance rather too strong and peculiar to be pleasant.

We pa.s.sed a village where a large fair was being held, and singularly familiar its arrangements were to my early a.s.sociations. The women and children are the prime customers; for the latter whirl-you-go-rounds, toys, and sweetmeats were destined; to tempt the former, little booths of gay ornaments, patches for the forehead, ear-rings of quaint shapes, bugles and beads. Here as at home, I remarked that the vendors of these superfluities occupy the approaches to this Vanity-Fair. As, throughout the East, the trades are congregated into particular quarters of the cities, so here the itinerants grouped themselves into little bazaars for each cla.s.s of commodity. Whilst I was engaged in purchasing a few articles of native workmanship, my elephant made an attack on a sweetmeat stall, demolishing a magnificent erection of barley-sugar, before his proceedings could be put a stop to.

Mr. Felle's bungalow (whose garden smiled with roses in this wilderness) was surrounded by a moat (fed by a spring), which was full of aquatic plants, _Nymphaea, Damasonium, Villarsia cristata, Aponogeton,_ three species of _Potamogeton,_ two of _Naias, Chara_ and _Zannich.e.l.lia_ (the two latter indifferently, and often together, used in the refinement of sugar). In a large tank hard by, wholly fed by rain water, I observed only the _Villarsia Indica,_ no _Aponogeton, Nymphaea,_ or _Dammonium,_ nor did these occur in any of the other tanks I examined, which were otherwise well peopled with plants. This may not be owing to the quality of the water so much as to its varying quant.i.ty in the tank.

All around here, as at Roump, is a dead flat, except towards the crest of the ghats which overhang the valley of the Soane, and there the sandstone rock rises by steps into low hills. During a ride to a natural tank amongst these rocky elevations, I pa.s.sed from the alluvium to the sandstone, and at once met with all the prevailing plants of the granite, gneiss, limestone and hornstone rocks previously examined, and which I have enumerated too often to require recapitulation; a convincing proof that the mechanical properties and not the chemical const.i.tution of the rocks regulate the distribution of these plants.

Rujubbund (the pleasant spot), is a small tarn, or more properly the expanded bed of a stream, art having aided nature in its formation: it is edged by rocks and cliffs fringed with the usual trees of the neighbourhood; it is a wild and pretty spot, not unlike some birch-bordered pool in the mountains of Wales or Scotland, sequestered and picturesque. It was dark before I got back, with heavy clouds and vivid lightning approaching from the south-west.

The day had been very hot (3 p.m., 90 degrees), and the evening the same; but the barometer did not foretell the coming tempest, which broke with fury at 7 p.m., blowing open the doors, and accompanied with vivid lightning and heavy thunder, close by and all round, though no rain fell.

In the clear dry mornings of these regions, a curious optical phenomena may be observed, of a _sunrise_ in the _west,_ and _sunset_ in the _east._ In either case, bright and well-defined beams rise to the zenith, often crossing to the opposite horizon. It is a beautiful feature in the firmament, and equally visible whether the horizon be cloudy or clear, the white beams being projected indifferently against a dark vapour or the blue serene. The zodiacal light shines from an hour or two after sunset till midnight, with singular brightness, almost equalling the milky way.

_March_ 7.-Left Shahgunj for Mirzapore, following the road to Goorawal, over a dead alluvial flat without a feature to remark.

Turning north from that village, the country undulates, exposing the rocky nucleus, and presenting the usual concomitant vegetation.

Occasionally park-like views occurred, which, where diversified by the rocky valleys, resemble much the n.o.ble scenery of the Forest of Dean on the borders of Wales; the _Mahowa_ especially representing the oak, with its spreading and often gnarled branches.

Many of the exposed slabs of sandstone are beautifully waved on the surface with the _ripple-mark_ impression.

Amowee, where I arrived at 9 p.m., is on an open gra.s.sy flat, about fifteen miles from the Ganges, which is seen from the neighbourhood, flowing among trees, with the white houses, domes, and temples of Mirzapore scattered around, and high above which the dust-clouds were coursing along the horizon.

Mr. Money, the magistrate of Mirzapore, kindly sent a mounted messenger to meet me here, who had vast trouble in getting bearers for my palkee. In it I proceeded the next day to Mirzapore, descending a steep ghat of the Bind hills by an excellent road, to the level plains of the Ganges. Unlike the Dunwah pa.s.s, this is wholly barren. At the foot the sun was intensely hot, the roads alternately rocky and dusty, the villages thronged with a widely different looking race from those of the hills, and the whole air of the outskirts, on a sultry afternoon, far from agreeable.

Mirzapore is a straggling town, said to contain 100,000 inhabitants.

It flanks the river, and is built on an undulating alluvial bank, full of kunker, elevated 360 feet above the sea, and from 50 to 80 above the present level of the river. The vicinity of the Ganges and its green bank, and the numbers of fine trees around, render it a pleasing, though not a fine town. It presents the usual Asiatic contrast of squalor and gaudiness; consisting of large squares and broad streets, interspersed with acres of low huts and groves of trees. It is celebrated for its manufactory of carpets, which are admirable in appearance, and, save in durability, equal to the English. Indigo seed from Bundelkund is also a most extensive article of commerce, the best coming from the Doab. For cotton, lac, sugar, and saltpetre, it is one of the greatest marts in India. The articles of native manufacture are bra.s.s washing and cooking utensils, and stone deities worked out of the sandstone.

There is little native vegetation, the country being covered with cultivation and extensive groves of mango, and occasionally of guava.

English vegetables are abundant and excellent, and the strawberries, which ripen in March, rival the European fruit in size, but hardly in flavour.

During the few days spent at Mirzapore with my kind friend, Mr. C.

Hamilton, I was surprised to find the temperature of the day cooler by nearly 4 degrees than that of the hills above, or of the upper part of the Soane valley; while on the other hand the nights were decidedly warmer. The dewpoint again was even lower in proportion, (7.5 degrees) and the climate consequently drier. The atmosphere was extremely dry and electrical, the hair constantly crackling when combed. Further west, where the climate becomes still drier, the electricity of the air is even greater. Mr. Griffith mentions in his journal that in filling barometer tubes in Affghanistan, he constantly experienced a shock.

Here I had the pleasure of meeting Lieutenant Ward, one of the suppressors of Thuggee (_Thuggee,_ in Hindostan, signifies a deceiver; fraud, not open force, being employed). This gentleman kindly showed me the approvers or king's evidence of his establishment, belonging to those three cla.s.ses of human scourges, the Thug, Dakoit, and Poisoner. Of these the first was the Thug, a mild-looking man, who had been born and bred to the profession: he had committed many murders, saw no harm in them, and felt neither shame nor remorse. His organs of observation and destructiveness were large, and the cerebellum small. He explained to me how the gang waylay the unwary traveller, enter into conversation with him, and have him suddenly seized, when the superior throws his own linen girdle round the victim's neck and strangles him, pressing the knuckles against the spine. Taking off his own, he pa.s.sed it round my arm, and showed me the turn as coolly as a sailor once taught me the _hangman's knot._ The Thug is of any caste, and from any part of India. The profession have particular stations, which they generally select for murder, throwing the body of their victim into a well.

The Dakoit (_dakhee,_ a robber) belongs to a cla.s.s who rob in gangs, but never commit murder--arson and housebreaking also forming part of their profession. These are all high-cla.s.s Rajpoots, originally from Guzerat; who, on being conquered, vowed vengeance on mankind. They speak both Hindostanee and the otherwise extinct Guzerat language; this is guttural in the extreme, and very singular in sound. They are a very remarkable people, found throughout India, and called by various names; their women dress peculiarly, and are utterly devoid of modesty. The man I examined was a short, square, but far from powerful Nepalese, with high arched eyebrows, and no organs of observation. These people are great cowards.

The Poisoners all belong to one caste, of Pasie, or dealers in toddy: they go singly or in gangs, haunting the travellers' resting-places, where they drop half a rupee weight of pounded or whole _Datura_ seeds into his food, producing a twenty-hours' intoxication, during which he is robbed, and left to recover or sink under the stupifying effects of the narcotic. He told me that the _Datura_ seed is gathered without ceremony, and at any time, place, or age of the plant. He was a dirty, ill-conditioned looking fellow, with no b.u.mps behind his ears, or prominence of eyebrow region, but a remarkable cerebellum.

Though now all but extinct (except in Cuttack), through ten or fifteen years of unceasing vigilance on the part of Government, and incredible activity and acuteness in the officers employed, the Thugs were formerly a wonderfully numerous body, who abstained from their vocation solely in the immediate neighbourhood of their own villages; which, however, were not exempt from the visits of other Thugs; so that, as Major Sleeman says,--"The annually returning tide of murder swept unsparingly over the whole face of India, from the Sutlej to the sea-coast, and from the Himalaya to Cape Comorin. One narrow district alone was free, the Concan, beyond the ghats, whither they never penetrated." In Bengal, river Thugs replace the travelling pract.i.tioner. Candeish and Rohilkund alone harboured no Thugs as residents, but they were nevertheless haunted by the gangs.

Their origin is uncertain, but supposed to be very ancient, soon after the Mahommedan conquest. They now claim a divine original, and are supposed to have supernatural powers, and to be the emissaries of the divinity, like the wolf, the tiger, and the bear. It is only lately that they have swarmed so prodigiously,--seven original gangs having migrated from Delhi to the Gangetic provinces about 200 years ago, and from these all the rest have sprung. Many belong to the most amiable, intelligent, and respectable cla.s.ses of the lower and even middle ranks: they love their profession, regard murder as sport, and are never haunted with dreams, or troubled with pangs of conscience during hours of solitude, or in the last moments of life. The victim is an acceptable sacrifice to the G.o.ddess Davee, who by some cla.s.ses is supposed to eat the lifeless body, and thus save her votaries the necessity of concealing it.

They are extremely superst.i.tious, always consulting omens, such as the direction in which a hare or jackall crosses the road; and even far more trivial circ.u.mstances will determine the fate of a dozen of people, and perhaps of an immense treasure. All worship the pickaxe, which is symbolical of their profession, and an oath sworn on it binds closer than on the Koran. The consecration of this weapon is a most elaborate ceremony, and takes place only under certain trees.

They rise through various grades: the lowest are scouts; the second, s.e.xtons; the third are holders of the victims' hands; the highest, stranglers.

Though all agree in never practising cruelty, or robbing previous to murder, never allowing any but infants to escape (and these are trained to Thuggee),--and never leaving a trace of such goods as may be identified,--there are several variations in their mode of conducting operations; some tribes spare certain castes, others none: murder of woman is against all rules; but the practice crept into certain gangs, and this it is which led to their discountenance by the G.o.ddess Davee, and the consequent downfall of the system.

Davee, they say, allowed the British to punish them, because a certain gang had murdered the mothers to obtain their daughters to be sold to prost.i.tution.

Major Sleeman has constructed a map demonstrating the number of "Bails," or regular stations for committing murder, in the kingdom of Oude alone, which is 170 miles long by 100 broad, and in which are 274, which are regarded by the Thug with as much satisfaction and interest as a game preserve is in England: nor are these "bails" less numerous in other parts of India. Of twenty a.s.sa.s.sins who were examined, one frankly confessed to having been engaged in 931 murders, and the least guilty of the number to 24. Sometimes 150 persons collected into one gang, and their profits have often been immense, the murder of six persons on one occasion yielding 82,000 rupees; upwards of 8000 pounds.

Of the various facilities for keeping up the system, the most prominent are, the practice amongst the natives of travelling before dawn, of travellers mixing freely together, and taking their meals by the way-side instead of in villages; in the very Bails, in fact, to which they are inveigled by the Thug in the shape of a fellow-traveller; money remittances are also usually made by disguised travellers, whose treasure is exposed at the custom-houses, and, worst of all, the bankers will never own to the losses they sustain, which, as a visitation of G.o.d, would, if avenged, lead, they think, to future, and perhaps heavier punishment. Had the Thugs destroyed Englishmen, they would quickly have been put down; but the system being invariably practised on a cla.s.s of people acknowledging the finger of the Deity in its execution, its glaring enormities were long in rousing the attention of the Indian Government.

A few examples of the activity exercised by the suppressors may be interesting. They act wholly through the information given by approvers, who are simply king's evidences. Of 600 Thugs engaged in the murder of 64 people, and the plunder of nearly 20,000 pounds, all except seventy were captured in ten years, though separated into six gangs, and their operations continued from 1826 to 1830: the last party was taken in 1836. And again, between the years 1826 and 1835, 1562 Thugs were seized, of whom 382 were hanged, and 909 transported; so that now it is but seldom these wretches are ever heard of.

To show the extent of their operations I shall quote an anecdote from Sleeman's Reports (to which I am indebted for most of the above information). He states that he was for three years in charge of a district on the Nerbudda, and considered himself acquainted with every circ.u.mstance that occurred in the neighbourhood; yet, during that time, 100 people were murdered and buried within less than a quarter of a mile of his own residence!

Two hundred and fifty boats full of river Thugs, in crews of fifteen, infested the Ganges between Benares and Calcutta, during five months of every year, under pretence of conveying pilgrims. Travellers along the banks were tracked, and offered a pa.s.sage, which if refused in the first boat was probably accepted in some other. At a given signal the crews rushed in, doubled up the decoyed victim, broke his back, and threw him into the river, where floating corpses are too numerous to elicit even an exclamation.

At Mirzapore I engaged a boat to carry me down the river to Bhagulpore, whence I was to proceed to the Sikkim-Himalaya.

The vessel, which, though slow and very shabby, had the advantage of being cooler and more commodious than the handsomer craft.

Its appearance was not unlike that of a floating haystack, or thatched cottage: its length was forty feet, and breadth fifteen, and it drew a foot and a half of water: the deck, on which a kind of house, neatly framed of matting, was erected, was but a little above the water's edge. My portion of this floating residence was lined with a kind of reed-work formed of long culms of _Saccharum._ The crew and captain consisted of six naked Hindoos, one of whom steered by the huge rudder, sitting on a bamboo-stage astern; the others pulled four oars in the very bows opposite my door, or tracked the boat along the riverbank.

In my room (for cabin I cannot call it) stood my palkee, fitted as a bed, with mosquito curtains; a chair and table. On one side were placed all my papers and plants, under arrangement to go home; on the other, my provisions, rice, sugar, curry-powder, a preserved ham, and cheese, etc. Around hung telescope, botanical box, dark lantern, barometer, and thermometer, etc., etc. Our position was often _ash.o.r.e,_ and, Hindoo-like, on the lee-sh.o.r.e, going b.u.mp, b.u.mp, b.u.mp, so that I could hardly write. I considered myself fortunate in having to take this slow conveyance down, it enabling me to write and arrange all day long.

I left on the 15th of March, and in the afternoon of the same day pa.s.sed Chunar.* [The first station at which Henry Martyn laboured in India.] This is a tabular ma.s.s of sandstone, projecting into the river, and the eastern termination of the Kymore range. There is not a rock between this and the Himalaya, and barely a stone all the way down the Ganges, till the granite and gneiss rocks of the Behar range are again met with. The current of the Ganges is here very strong, and its breadth much lessened: the river runs between high banks of alluvium, containing much kunker. At Benares it expands into a broad stream, with a current which during the rains is said to flow eight miles an hour, when the waters rise 43 feet. The fall hence is 300 feet to its junction with the Hooghly, viz., one foot to every mile.

My observations made that from Mirzapore to Benares considerably greater.

Benares is the Athens of India. The variety of buildings along the bank is incredible. There are temples of every shape in all stages of completion and dilapidation, and at all angles of inclination; for the banks give way so much that many of these edifices are fearfully out of the perpendicular.

The famed mosque, built by Aurungzebe on the site of a Hindoo temple, is remarkable for its two octagonal minarets, 232 feet above the Ganges. The view from it over the town, especially of the European Resident's quarter, is fine; but the building itself is deficient in beauty or ornament: it commands the muddy river with its thousands of boats, its waters peopled with swimmers and bathers, who spring in from the many temples, water-terraces, and ghats on the city side: opposite is a great sandy plain. The town below looks a ma.s.s of poor, square, flat-roofed houses, of which 12,000 are brick, and 16,000 mud and thatch, through the crowd of which, and of small temples, the eye wanders in vain for some attractive feature or evidence of the wealth, the devotion, the science, or the grandeur of a city celebrated throughout the East for all these attributes. Green parrots and pigeons people the air.

The general appearance of an oriental town is always more or less ruinous; and here the eye is fatigued with bricks and crumbling edifices, and the ear with prayer-bells. The bright meadows and green trees which adorn the European Resident's dwelling, some four miles back from the river, alone relieve the monotony of the scene.

The streets are so narrow that it is difficult to ride a horse through them; and the houses are often six stories high, with galleries crossing above from house to house. These tall, gaunt edifices sometimes give place to clumps of cottages, and a ma.s.s of dusty ruins, the unsavoury retreats of vermin and filth, where the _Calotropis arborea_ generally spreads its white branches and glaucous leaves--a dusty plant. Here, too, enormous spiders' webs hang from the crumbling walls, choked also with dust, and resembling curtains of coa.r.s.e muslin, being often some yards across, and not arranged in radii and arcs, but spun like weaver's woofs.

Paintings, remarkable only for their hideous proportions and want of perspective, are daubed in vermilion, ochre, and indigo.

The elephant, camel, and porpoise of the Ganges, dog, shepherd, peac.o.c.k, and horse, are especially frequent, and so is a running pattern of a hand spread open, with a blood-red spot on the palm.

A still less elegant but frequent object is the fuel, which is composed of the manure collected on the roads of the city, moulded into flat cakes, and stuck by the women on the walls to dry, retaining the sign-manual of the artist in the impressed form of her outspread hand. The cognizance of the Rajah, two fish chained together, appears over the gates of public buildings.

The hundreds of temples and shrines throughout the city are its most remarkable feature: sacred bulls, and lingams of all sizes, strewed with flowers and grains of rice meet the eye at every turn; and the city's boast is the possession of one million idols, which, of one kind and another, I can well believe. The great Hindoo festival of the _Holi_ was now celebrating, and the city more than ordinarily crowded; throwing red powder (lac and flour), with rose-water, is the great diversion at a festival more childish by far than a carnival.

Through the kindness of Mr. Reade (the Commissioner), I obtained admission to the Bishishar-k.u.mardil, the "holiest of holies." It was a small, low, stone building, daubed with red inside, and swarming with stone images of Brahminee bulls, and various disgusting emblems.