Part 11 (1/2)

It was hard to realize that there were such creatures in such a lovely spot. ”Do you really mean to say,” I asked, ”that there are tigers here in this valley?” ”Yes,” he answered, ”within five miles of where you are sitting now.” He had seen one himself, and showed us the very spot that morning as we rode out to the hills, when he pointed to a ravine by the roadside, and said: ”As I was riding along this road one day with a lady, a magnificent Bengal tiger came up out of that ravine, a few rods in front of us, and walked slowly across the road.

He turned to look at us, and we were greatly relieved when, after taking a cool survey, he moved off into the jungle.”

But leopards are still more common and familiar. They have been in this very dooryard, and on this veranda. One summer evening two years ago, said Miss P., I was sitting on the gravelled walk to enjoy the cool air, when an enormous creature brushed past but a step in front between us and the house. At first we thought in the gloaming it might be a dog of very unusual size, but as it glided past, and came into the light of some cottages beyond, we perceived that it was a very different beast. At another time a leopard crossed the veranda at night, and brushed over the face of a native woman sleeping with her child in her arms. It was well the beast was not hungry, or he would have s.n.a.t.c.hed the child, as they often do when playing in front of native houses, and carried it off into the jungle.

But we will rest to-night in sweet security in this missionary home, without fear of wild beasts or thunder storms. The clouds broke away at sunset, leaving a rich ”after-glow” upon the mountains. It was the clear s.h.i.+ning after the rain. Just then I heard the voices of the native children in the chapel, singing their hymns, and with these sweet suggestions of home and heaven, ”I will lay me down in peace and sleep, for thou Lord only makest me dwell in safety.”

We had had a glimpse of the Himalayas, but the glimpse only made us eager to get the full ”beatific vision”; so, after resting a day, we determined to try again, going up in the afternoon, and spending the night, so as to have a double chance of seeing the snows--both at sunset and at sunrise. This time we had also the company of Mr.

Woodside, beside whom I rode on horseback; while Mr. Herron gave his escort to C----, who was ”promoted” from a _dandi_ to a _jahnpan_, which differs from the former only in that it is more s.p.a.cious, and is carried by four bearers instead of two. Thus mounted she was borne aloft on men's shoulders. She said the motion was not unpleasant, except that the men had a habit, when they came to some dangerous point, turning a rock, or on the edge of a precipice, of changing bearers, or swinging round the bamboo pole from one shoulder to another, which made her a little giddy, as she was tossed about at such a height, from which she could look down a gorge hundreds of feet deep. However, she takes all dangers very lightly, and was enraptured with the wildness and strangeness of the scene--to find herself, an American girl, thus being transported over the mountains of Asia.

So we took up our line of march for the hills, and soon found our pulses beating faster. Why is it that we feel such exhilaration in climbing mountains? Is it something in the air, that quickens the blood, and reacts upon the brain? Or is it the sensation of rising into a higher atmosphere, of ”going up into heaven?” So it seemed that afternoon, as we ”left the earth” behind us, and went up steadily into the clouds.

I found that the Himalayas grew upon acquaintance. They looked more grand the second time than the first. The landscape was changed by the westering sun, which cast new lights and shadows across the valley, and into the wooded bosom of the hills. To these natural beauties my companion added the charm of historical a.s.sociations. Few places in India have more interest to the scholar. The Sewalic range was almost the cradle of the Brahminical religion. Sewalic, or Sivalic, as it might be written, means literally the hills of s.h.i.+va, or the hills of the G.o.ds, where their wors.h.i.+ppers built their shrines and wors.h.i.+pped long before Christ was born in Bethlehem. The same ridge is a mine to the naturalist. It is full of fossils, the bones of animals that belonged to some earlier geological epoch. The valley has had a part in the recent history of India. Here the Goorkas--one of the hill tribes, which stood out longest against the English--fought their last battle. It was on yonder wooded height which juts out like a promontory into the plain, where the ruin of an old fort marks the destruction of their power. Today the Goorkas, like the Punjaubees, are among the most loyal defenders of English rule.

At present the attraction of this valley for ”old Indians” is not so much in its historical or scientific a.s.sociations, as the field which it gives to the hunter. This belt of country, running about a hundred miles along the foot of the Himalayas, is composed of forest and jungle, and is a favorite habitat of wild beasts--tigers and leopards and wild elephants. It was in this belt, called the Terai, though further to the East, in Nepaul, that the Prince of Wales a few weeks later made his great tiger-hunting expedition. He might perhaps have found as good sport in the valley right under our eyes. ”Do you see that strip of woods yonder?” said Mr. Woodside, pointing to one four or five miles distant. ”That is full of wild elephants.” An Indian Rajah came here a year or two since for a grand hunt, and in two days captured twenty-four. This is done by the help of tame elephants who are trained for the purpose. A large tract of forest is enclosed, and then by beating the woods, the herd is driven towards a corner, and when once penned, the tame elephants go in among them, and by tender caressing engage their attention, till the coolies slip under the huge beasts and tie their feet with ropes to the trees. This done, they can be left till subdued by hunger, when they are easily tamed for the service of man.

These creatures still have the range of the forests. In riding through the woods one may often hear the breaking of trees, as wild elephants crash through the dense thicket. I had supposed that all kinds of wild beasts were very much reduced in India under English rule. The hunters say they are so much so as to destroy the sport. But my companion thinks not, for two reasons: the government has made stringent laws against the destruction of forests; and since the mutiny the natives are not allowed to carry fire-arms.

We might have startled a leopard anywhere on the mountain side. A young Scotchman whom we met with his rifle on his shoulder, said he had shot two a fortnight ago, but that there was a very big one about, which he had seen several times, but could never get a shot at, but he hoped to bring him down before long.

With such chat as this we trotted up the mountain road, till we came to where it divides, where, leaving Mr. Herron and C---- to go on straight to Landour, we turned to the left to make a flying visit to the other hill station of Mussoorie. As we rode along, Mr. Woodside pointed out to me the spot where, a few weeks before, his horse had backed off a precipice, and been dashed to pieces. Fortunately he was not on his back (he had alighted to make a call), or the horse and his rider might have gone over together. As we wound up the road he recalled another incident, which occurred several years ago: ”I had been to attend an evening reception at the Young Ladies' school (which we had just left), and about eleven o'clock mounted to ride home. I had a white horse, and it was a bright moonlight night, and as I rode up the hill, just as I turned a corner in the road _there_ (pointing to the spot) I saw a huge leopard crouching in the att.i.tude of preparing to spring. I rose up in the saddle (my friend is a man of giant stature) and shouted at the top of my voice, and the beast, not knowing what strange monster he had encountered, leaped over the bank and disappeared.”

”The next day,” he added, ”I was telling the story to a gentleman, who replied, 'You were very fortunate to escape so,' and then related an incident of his own, in which a leopard sprang upon his horse, which the fright caused to give such a bound that the brute fell off, and the horse starting at full speed, they escaped. But he felt that the escape was so providential that he had thanks returned in the church the next Sabbath for his deliverance from a sudden death.”

Thus listening to my companion's adventures, we rode along the ridge of Mussoorie to its highest point, which commands a grand view of the Snowy Range. Here stands a convent, which educates hundreds of the daughters of Protestant Englishmen, as well as those of its own faith.

Thus the Catholic Church plants its outposts on the very crests of the mountains.

At Landour is another Catholic inst.i.tution (for boys) called St.

George's College, perhaps as a delicate flattery to Englishmen in taking the name of their guardian saint. It has a chime of bells, which at that height and that hour strikes the ear with singular and touching effect. It may well stir up our Protestant friends, both to admire and to imitate, as it furnishes a new proof of the omnipresence of Rome, when the traveller finds its convents, and hears the chime of its vesper bells, on the heights and amid the valleys of the Himalayas.

But the sun was sinking, and it was four miles from Mussoorie to Landour, where we were to make our second attempt to see the snows.

Turning our horses, we rode at full speed along the ridge of the mountain, and reached the top of Lal Tiba before sunset, but only to be again disappointed. Northward and eastward the clouds hung upon the great mountains. But if one part of the horizon was hidden, on the other we looked over the top of the Sewalic range, to where the red and fiery sun was sinking in a bank of cloud--not ”clouds full of rain,” but merely clouds of dust, rolling upward ”like the smoke of a furnace” from the hot plains of India. In the foreground was the soft, green valley of Dehra Doon, more beautiful from the contrast with the burning plains beyond. It was a peaceful landscape, as the shadows of evening were gathering over it. From this we turned to watch the light as it crept up the sides of the mountains. The panorama was constantly changing, and every instant took on some new feature of grandeur. As daylight faded, another light flashed out behind us, for the mountains were on fire. It is a custom of the people, who are herdsmen, to burn off the low brush (as the Indians burned over the prairies), that the gra.s.s may spring up fresh and green for their flocks and cattle; and it was a fearful spectacle, that of these great belts of fire running along the mountain side, and lighting up the black gorges below.

Giving our horses to the guides to be led down the declivity, we walked down a narrow path in the rocks that led to Woodstock, a female seminary, built on a kind of terrace half a mile below--a most picturesque spot (none the less romantic because a tiger had once carried off a man from the foot of the ravine a few rods below the house), and there, around a cheerful table, and before a roaring fire, forgot the fatigues of the day, and hoped for suns.h.i.+ne on the morrow.

It was not yet daylight when we awoke. The stars were s.h.i.+ning when we came out on the terrace, and the waning moon still hung its crescent overhead. A faint light began to glimmer in the east. We were quickly m.u.f.fled up (for it was cold) and climbing up the steep path to Lal Tiba, hoping yet trembling. I was soon out of breath, and had more than once to sit down on the rocks to recover myself. But in a moment I would rise and rush on again, so eager was I with hope, and yet so fearful of disappointment. One more pull and we were on the top, and behold the glory of G.o.d spread abroad upon the mountains! Our perseverance was rewarded at last. There were the Himalayas--the great mountains of India, of Asia, of the globe. The snowy range was in full view for more than a hundred miles. The sun had not yet risen, but his golden limb now touched the east, and as the great round orb rose above the horizon, it seemed as if G.o.d himself were coming to illumine the universe which he had created. One after another the distant peaks caught the light upon their fields of snow, and sent it back as if they were the s.h.i.+ning gates of the heavenly city. One could almost look up to them as Divine intelligences, and address them in the lines of the old hymn:

These glorious _minds_, how bright they s.h.i.+ne, Whence all their white array?

How came they to the happy seats Of everlasting day?

But restraining our enthusiasm for the moment, let us look at the configuration of this Snowy Range, simply as a study in geography. We are in presence of the highest mountains on the globe. We are on the border of that table-land of Asia (”High Asia”) which the Arabs in their poetical language call ”The Roof of the World.” Yonder pa.s.s leads over into Thibet. The trend of the mountains is from southeast to northwest, almost belting the continent. Indeed, physical geographers trace it much farther, following it down on one hand through the Malayan Peninsula and on the other running it through the Hindoo Koosh (or Caucasus) northwest to Mt. Ararat in Armenia; and across into Europe, through Turkey and Greece, to the Alps and the Pyrenees, forming what the Arabs call ”The Stony Girdle of the Earth.”

But the centre of that girdle, the clasp of that mighty zone, is here.

It is difficult to form an idea of the alt.i.tude of mountains, when we have no basis of comparison in those which are familiar. But nature here is on another scale than we have seen it before. In Europe Mont Blanc is ”the monarch of mountains,” but yonder peak, Nunda Davee, which shows above the horizon at the distance of a hundred and ten miles, is 25,600 feet high--that is, nearly two miles higher than Mont Blanc! There are others still higher--Kinchinganga and Dwalaghiri--but they are not in sight, as they are farther east in Nepaul. But from Darjeeling, a hill station much frequented in the summer months by residents of Calcutta, one may get an un.o.bstructed view of Mount Everest, 29,000 feet high, the loftiest summit on the globe. And here before us are a number of peaks, twenty-two, twenty-three, and twenty-four thousand feet high--higher than Chimborazo, or any peak of the Andes.

Perhaps the Himalayas are less impressive than the Alps _in proportion_, because the snow line is so much higher. In Switzerland we reach the line of perpetual snow at 8,900 feet, so that the Jungfrau, which is less than 14,000 feet, has a full mile of snow covering her virgin breast. But here the traveller must ascend 18,000 feet, nearly two miles higher, before he comes to the line of perpetual snow. It is considered a great achievement of the most daring Alpine climbers to reach the top of the Jungfrau or the Matterhorn, but here many of the _pa.s.ses_ are higher than the summit of either. Dr. Bellew, who accompanied the expedition of Sir Douglas Forsyth three years since to Yarkund and Kashgar, told me they crossed pa.s.ses 19,000 feet high, nearly 4,000 feet higher than Mont Blanc. He said they did not need a guide, for that the path was marked by bones of men and beasts that had perished by the way; the bodies lying where they fell, for no beast or bird lives at that far height, neither vulture nor jackal, while the intense cold preserved the bodies from decay.

But the Himalayas are not all heights, but heights and depths. The mountains are divided by valleys. From where we stand the eye sweeps over the tops of nine or ten separate ranges, with valleys between, in which are scattered hundreds of villages. The enterprising traveller may descend into these deep places of the earth, and make his toilsome way over one range after another, till he reaches the snows. But he will find it a _fourteen days' march_. My companion had once spent six weeks in a missionary tour among these villages.

Wilson, the author of ”The Abode of Snow,”[5] who spent months in travelling through the Inner Himalayas, from Thibet to Cashmere, makes a comparison of these mountains with the Alps. There are some advantages to be claimed for the latter. Not only are they more accessible, but combine in a smaller s.p.a.ce more variety. Their sides are more generally clothed with forests, which are mirrored in those beautiful sheets of water that give such a charm both to Swiss and Scottish scenery. But in the Himalayas there is hardly a lake to be seen until one enters the Vale of Cashmere. Then the Alps have more of the human element, in the picturesque Swiss villages. The traveller looks down from snow-covered mountains into valleys with meadows and houses and the spires of churches. But in the Himalayas there is not a sign of civilization, and hardly of habitation. Occasionally a village or a Buddhist monastery may stand out picturesquely on the top of a hill, but generally the mountains are given up to utter desolation.