Books: Himalayan Journals (Complete)

J >> J. D. Hooker >> Himalayan Journals (Complete)

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 | 41 | 42 | 43 | 44 | 45 | 46 | 47 | 48 | 49 | 50 | 51 | 52 | 53 | 54 | 55 | 56 | 57 | 58 | 59 | 60 | 61 | 62 | 63 | 64 | 65 | 66 | 67 | 68 | 69 | 70 | 71

At this season the mornings are very hazy, with the thermometer at
sunrise 60 degrees; one laid on grass during the night falling 7
degrees below that temperature: dew forms, but never copiously: by
10 a.m. the temperature has risen to 75 degrees, and the faint
easterly morning breezes die away; the haze thickens, and covers the
sky with a white veil, the thermometer rising to 82 degrees at noon,
and the west wind succeeding in parching tornados and furious gusts,
increasing with the temperature, which attains its maximum in the
afternoon, and falling again with its decline at sunset. The evenings
are calm; but the earth is so heated, that the thermometer stands at
10 p.m. at 66 degrees, and the minimum at night is not below 55
degrees: great drought accompanies the heat at this season, but not
to such a degree as in North-west India, or other parts of this
meridian further removed from the hills. In the month of March, and
during the prevalence of west winds, the mean temperature was 79
degrees, and the dew-point 22 degrees lower, indicating great
drought. The temperature at Calcutta was 7 degrees warmer, and the
atmosphere very much damper.

On the second day we arrived at Jeelpigoree, a large straggling
village near the banks of the Teesta, a good way south of the forest:
here we were detained for several days, waiting for elephants with
which to proceed northwards. The natives are Cooches, a Mogul
(Mongolian) race, who inhabit the open country of this district,
replacing the Mechis of the Terai forest. They are a fine athletic
people, not very dark, and formed the once-powerful house of Cooch
Behar. Latterly the upper classes have adopted the religion of the
Brahmins, and have had caste conferred upon them; while the lower
orders have turned Mahomedans: these, chiefly agriculturists, are a
timid, oppressed class, who everywhere fled before us, and were with
difficulty prevailed upon even to direct us along our road. A rude
police is established by the British Government all over the country,
and to it the traveller applies for guides and assistance; but the
Conches were so shy and difficult to deal with, that we were
generally left to our own resources.

Grass is the prevailing feature of the country, as there are few
shrubs, and still fewer trees. Goats and the common Indian cow are
plentiful; but it is not swampy enough for the buffalo; and sheep are
scarce, on account of the heat of the climate. This uniformity of
feature over so immense an area is, however, due to the agency of
man, and is of recent introduction; as all concur in affirming, that
within the last hundred years the face of the country was covered
with the same long jungle-grasses which abound in the Terai forest;
and the troops cantoned at Titalya (a central position in these
plains) from 1816 to 1828, confirm this statement as far as their
immediate neighbourhood is concerned.

These gigantic _Gramineae_ seem to be destroyed by fire with
remarkable facility at one season of the year; and it is well that
this is the case; for, whether as a retainer of miasma, a shelter for
wild beasts, both carnivorous and herbivorous, alike dangerous to
man, or from their liability to ignite, and spread destruction far
and wide, the grass-jungles are most serious obstacles to
civilization. Next to the rapidity with which it can be cleared, the
adaptation of a great part of the soil to irrigation during the
rains, has greatly aided the bringing of it under cultivation.

By far the greater proportion of this universal short turf grass is
formed of _Andropogon acicularis, Cynodon Dactylon,_* [Called "Dhob."
This is the best pasture grass in the plains of India, and the only
one to be found over many thousands of square miles.] and in sandy
places, _Imperata cylindrica_; where the soil is wetter, _Ameletia
Indica_ is abundant, giving a heather-like colour to the turf, with
its pale purple flowers: wherever there is standing water, its
surface is reddened by the _Azolla,_ and _Salvinia_ is also common.

At Jeelpigoree we were waited upon by the Dewan, who governs the
district for the Rajah, a boy about ten years old, whose estates are
locked up during the trial of an interminable suit for the
succession, that has been instituted against him by a natural son of
the late Rajah: we found the Dewan to be a man of intelligence, who
promised us elephants as soon as the great Hooli festival, now
commenced, should be over.

The large village, at the time of our visit, was gay with holiday
dresses. It is surrounded by trees, chiefly of banyan, jack, mango,
peepul, and tamarind: interminable rice-fields extend on all sides,
and except bananas, slender betel-nut palms, and sometimes pawn, or
betel-pepper, there is little other extensive cultivation.
The rose-apple, orange, and pine-apple are rare, as are cocoa-nuts:
there are few date or fan-palms, and only occasionally poor crops of
castor-oil and sugar-cane. In the gardens I noticed jasmine,
_Justicia Adhatoda, Hibiscus,_ and others of the very commonest
Indian ornamental plants; while for food were cultivated
_Chenopodium,_ yams, sweet potatos, and more rarely peas, beans, and
gourds. Bamboos were planted round the little properties and smaller
clusters of houses, in oblong squares, the ridge on which the plants
grew being usually bounded by a shallow ditch. The species selected
was not the most graceful of its family; the stems, or culms, being
densely crowded, erect, as thick at the base as the arm, copiously
branching, and very feathery throughout their whole length of
sixty feet.

A gay-flowered _Osbeckia_ was common along the roadsides, and, with
a _Clerodendron,_* [_Clerodendron_ leaves, bruised, are used to kill
vermin, fly-blows, etc., in cattle; and the twigs form toothpicks.
The flowers are presented to Mahadeo, as a god of peace; milk, honey,
flowers, fruit, amrit (ambrosia), etc., being offered to the pacific
gods, as Vishnu, Krishna, etc.; while Mudar (_Asclepias_), Bhang
(_Cannabis sativa_), _Datura,_ flesh, blood, and spirituous liquors,
are offered to Siva, Doorga, Kali, and other demoniacal deities.]
whose strong, sweet odour was borne far through the air, formed a low
undershrub beneath every tree, generally intermixed with three ferns
(a _Polypodium, Pteris,_ and _Goniopteris_).

The cottages are remarkable, and have a very neat appearance,
presenting nothing but a low white-washed platform of clay, and an
enormous high, narrow, black, neatly thatched roof, so arched along
the ridge, that its eaves nearly touch the ground at each gable; and
looking at a distance like a gigantic round-backed elephant.
The walls are of neatly-platted bamboo: each window (of which there
are two) is crossed by slips of bamboo, and wants only glass to make
it look European; they have besides shutters of wattle, that open
upwards, projecting during the day like the port-hatches of a ship,
and let down at night. Within, the rooms are airy and clean: one end
contains the machans (bedsteads), the others some raised clay
benches, the fire, frequently an enormous Hookah, round wattled
stools, and various implements. The inhabitants appeared more than
ordinarily well-dressed; the men in loose flowing robes of fine
cotton or muslin, the women in the usual garb of a simple thick
cotton cloth, drawn tight immediately above the breast, and thence
falling perpendicularly to the knee; the colour of this is a bright
blue in stripes, bordered above and below with red.

I anticipated 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 classes is
greatly changed. Under the Mogul rule, the country was farmed out to
Zemindars, some of whom assumed the title of Rajah: they collected
the revenue for the Sovereign, retaining by law ten per cent. on all
that was realized: there was no intermediate class, 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 classes. 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 accumulate, 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 title. 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 lustily all the time.

The festivities of the evening commenced by handing round trays full
of pith-balls, 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 balls 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 multitude, 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 assembled 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 balls 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, througbout 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 grass 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 grass, _Symplocos, Emblica,_ and _Cassia 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_ grass, 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 god of war, is represented sitting astride on a peacock, 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 association 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 grassy 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 grasses, but no
bamboo. These long grasses 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 grass, 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 passage from its exit
to Rangamally, a distance of fifteen linear miles, and thirty miles
following the bends:--