Life in an Indian Outpost Part 1

Life in an Indian Outpost.

by Gordon Ca.s.serly.

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 gla.s.s 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 pa.s.ses 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 a.s.sam.

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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sage 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 pa.s.sed 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 G.o.ds 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 b.u.t.tresses 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 b.u.t.terflies 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 th.o.r.n.y bushes, plantain trees with their broad leaves and hanging bunches of bananas, the straight slender stems of sago palms with trailing cl.u.s.ters 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 pa.s.sed 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 a.s.sociation.

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 cla.s.s, 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.s through the Himalayas into the fertile plains of Eastern Bengal, a pa.s.s 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 pa.s.sed 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 Pa.s.s."

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 cl.u.s.ters 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 s.p.a.ce 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.