Twelve Years Of A Soldier's Life In India Part 14

We shall have another frontier war in the cold weather evidently, and I fancy a more prolonged and complete affair than the last. The cause of the only loss sustained in the last scrimmage was the panic of the Sepoys. They are as children in the hands of these Affghans and hill tribes. Our new Punjaub levies fought "like bricks," but the Hindostanee is not a hardy enough animal, physically or morally, to contend with the st.u.r.dier races west of the Sutlej, or the active and fighting "Pathans." The very _name_ sticks in John Sepoy's throat. I must try and see the next contest, but I do not quite see my way to it at present.

_To his Sister._

CAMP, NEAR LADaKH, _August 4th, 1850_.

Who would have thought of my writing to you from Thibet. I am sitting in a little tent about eight feet long, which just takes a narrow cot, a table, and chair of camp dimensions, and my _sac-de-nuit_, gun, &c., and a tin box containing books, papers, and the materials for this present epistle. Under the same tree (a veritable chestnut) is Sir Henry Lawrence's tent, a ditto of mine, in which he is comfortably sleeping, as I ought to be; outside are my pets,--that is, a string of mules who accompany me in all my travels, and have also in the mountains the honor of carrying me as well as my baggage. The kitchen is under a neighboring tree; and round a fire are squatting our gallant guards, a party of Maharaja Gholab Singh's household brigade. Some of his people accompany us, and what with followers, a Moonshee or two for business, and their followers, I dare say we are a party of two or three hundred souls, of all colors and creeds,--Christians, Mussulmans, Hindoos, Buddhists, Sikhs, and varieties of each. The creeds of the party are as varied as their colors; and that's saying a good deal, when you contrast my white face and yellow hair with Sir Henry's nut-brown, the pale white parchmenty-color of the Kashmeree, the honest brunette tinge of the tall Sikh, the clear olive-brown of the Rajpoot, down through all shades of dinginess to the deep black of the low-caste Hindoo. I am one of the whitest men in India, I fancy, as, instead of burning in the sun, I get blanched like endive or celery. How you would stare at my long beard, moustache, and whiskers. However, to return from such personalities to facts. The Indus is brawling along five hundred feet below us, as if in a hurry to get "out of that;" and above, one's neck aches with trying to see to the top of the vast craggy mountains which confine the stream in its rocky channel. So wild, so heaven-forsaken a scene I never beheld; living nature there is none. In a week's journey, I have seen three marmots, two wag-tails, and three jackdaws; and we have averaged twenty miles a day.

We met a lady the other day, in the most romantic way possible, in the midst of the very wildest of glens, and almost as wild weather. She is a young and very pretty creature, gifted with the most indomitable energy and endurance (except as regards her husband, whom she _can't_ endure, and therefore travels alone). But conceive, that for the last three months she has been making her way on pony-back across a country which few _men_ would like to traverse, over the most formidable pa.s.ses, the deepest and rapidest rivers, and wildest deserts in Asia. For twenty days she was in the extreme wilds of Thibet, without ever seeing a human habitation; making such long day's journeys as often to be without food or bedding, traversing pa.s.ses from sixteen to eighteen thousand feet above the sea, where you can hardly breathe without pain; enduring pain, sickness, and every other mortal ill, yet persevering still!

Poor creature, she is dying, I fear. It is evident that she is in a deep consumption, created by a terrible fall she had down a precipice, at the commencement of her journey. Well, one day we met her between this place and Cashmere. She was sixteen or twenty miles from her tents, and the rain and darkness were coming on apace; the thermometer down below fifty degrees. So we persuaded her to stop at our encampment. I gave her my tent and cot, acted lady's maid, supplied her with warm stockings and shoes, water, towels, brushes, &c., and made her comfortable, and then we sat down to dinner; and a pleasanter evening I never spent. She was as gay as a lark, and poured out stores of information and anecdotes, and recounted her adventures in the "spiritedest"

manner. After an early breakfast the next morning, I put her on her pony, and she went on her way, and we saw her no more. I hope she will live to reach the end of her journey, and not die in some wild mountain-side unattended and alone.

Another letter of same date:--

CAMP, KULSEE IN LADaKH, _August 4th, 1850_.

... Until you cross the mountain chain which separates Cashmere from Tibet (or Thibet), all is green and beautiful.

It is impossible to imagine a finer combination of vast peaks and ma.s.ses of mountain, with green sloping lawns, luxuriant foliage, and fine cl.u.s.tering woods, than is displayed on the sides of the great chain which we usually call the Himalaya, but which is better described as the ridge which separates the waters of the Jhelum, Chenab, Ravee, and Beas from those of the Indus. When once, however, you have crossed this vast barrier, the scene changes as if by magic, and you have nothing but huge convulsive-looking ma.s.ses of rock, tremendous mountains, glaciers, snow, and valleys which are more vast watercourses than anything else.

On the more open and less elevated spots along these various feeders of the Indus, one comes to little patches of cultivation, rising from the banks of the rivers in tiers of carefully prepared terraces, and irrigated by channels carried along the sides of the hill from a point higher up the stream. Here, in scattered villages ten and twenty miles apart, live the ugliest race on earth, I should imagine, whom we call Thibetians, but who style themselves "Bhots" or "Bhods," and unite the characteristic features, or rather want of them, of both Goorkhas and Chinese. I went yesterday to see a monastery of their Llamas, the most curious sight, as well as _site_, I ever beheld. Perched on the summit of a ma.s.s of sandstone-grit, conglomerate pudding-stone, worn by the melting snows (for there is no rain in Tibet) into miraculous cones, steeples, and pinnacles rising abruptly from the valley to the height of 600 feet, are a collection of queer little huts, connected together by bridges, pa.s.sages, and staircases. In these dwell the worthies who have betaken themselves to the life of religious mendicants and priests. They seem to correspond exactly with the travelling friars of olden times. Half stay at home to perform chants and services in their convent chapel, and half go a-begging about the country. They are not a distinct race like the Brahmins of India, but each Bhot peasant devotes one of two or three sons to the church, and he is thenceforward devoted to a life of celibacy, of shaven crown, of crimson apparel, of mendicancy, of idleness, and of comfort. They all acknowledge spiritual allegiance to the great Llama at Lla.s.sa (some two months' journey from Ladakh), by whom the abbot of each convent is appointed on a vacancy occurring, and to whom all their proceedings are reported. Nunneries also exist on precisely the same footing. I saw a few of the nuns, and their hideous appearance fully justified their adoption of celibacy and seclusion. From their connection with almost every family, as I have said, they are universally looked up to and supported as a cla.s.s by the people. Even Hindoos reverence them; and their power is not only feared, but I fancy tolerably freely exercised. Their chapel (a flat-roofed square building supported on pillars) is furnished with parallel rows of low benches to receive the squatting fathers. Their services consist of chants and recitative, accompanied by the _dis_cord of musical(?) instruments and drums, while perpetual lamps burn on the altars before their idols, and a sickly perfume fills the air. Round the room are rude shelves containing numberless volumes of religious books; not bound, but in separate leaves secured between two painted boards. I will try and send you one, if I can corrupt the mind of some worthy Llama with profane silver.

They are genuine _block books_, strange to say, apparently carved on wood, and then stamped on a Chinese paper. The figures of their images, and their costume and head-dress (_i. e._, of the images), are Chinese entirely, not at all resembling the Bhot dress, or scarcely so, and though fas.h.i.+oned by Thibetian hands, you might fancy yourself gazing on the figures in the Chinese Exhibition at Hyde-Park Corner. Their language is a sealed book to me, of course, and though they all read and write well, yet they were unable to explain the meaning of the words they were repeating. The exterior appearance and sites of their conventual buildings reminded me very strongly of the drawings I saw in a copy of Curzon's "Monasteries of the Levant," which fell in my way for five minutes one day. I need hardly say that, in a country composed of mountains ranging from 14,000 feet upwards, the scenery is magnificent in the extreme, though very barren and savage. Apricots and wheat are ripening in the valley whence I now write (on the right bank of the Indus, some fifty miles below the town of Ladakh), and snow is glistening on the summits above me; the roads have been very easy indeed, and enabled us to make long day's marches, from sixteen to twenty-five miles. This is more than you could do in two days in the ranges south of the Himalaya, with due regard for your own bones, and the cattle or porters which carry your traps and tents. I am very seedy, and twenty miles is more than I can ride with comfort (that I should live to say it). I have not as yet derived much, if any, benefit from change of climate.

From Ladakh we go to Iskardo, some twelve marches lower down the Indus, where it has been joined by the water of Yarkund; and thence to Gilghit, a valley running up from that of the Indus, still lower down, and bordering on Budakhstan. We (Sir Henry Lawrence and I) then return to Cashmere; I expect it will be two more months' journey. We have already been out a fortnight, and it is very fatiguing. I am not sure that I was wise in undertaking it, but he (Lawrence) is a greater invalid than I am, and two or three men fought shy of the task of accompanying him.

CAMP, ISKARDO (IN LITTLE THIBET,) _August, 25th, 1850_.

Only think of my sitting down peaceably to write to you from this outside world. Had I lived a hundred years ago, I should have been deemed a great traveller, and considered to have explored unknown countries, and unknown they are, only the princ.i.p.al danger of visiting them is past, seeing that they have been subdued by a power (Gholab Singh) with whom we have "relations." Yet if I were to cross the mountains which stare me in the face a few miles off, I should be carried off and sold for a slave. It were vain to try to compress the scenes of a two months' journey into a sheet of note-paper. We have travelled very rapidly. Few men go the pace Sir Henry Lawrence does. So we have covered a great extent of country in the past month; and seeing that the valleys are the only inhabited parts of the country, the rest being huge ma.s.ses of mountains, one really sees in these rapid flights all that is to be seen of the abodes of man. We have collected a good deal of information too, which, if I had time to arrange it, might be of value. We were eleven long days' journey from Cashmere to Ladakh, besides halts on the way at Ladakh itself, or, as the people call it, Leh. We remained a week, and saw all the "foreigners" who came there to sell furs and silk. It is called the "Great Emporium" of trade between Yarkund and Kashgar and Lla.s.sa, and Hindostan. Fine words look well on paper, but to my unsophisticated mind the "leading merchants" seemed _peddlers_, and the "Emporium" to be a brace of hucksters' shops. However, 'tis curious, that's a fact, to see (and talk to) a set of men who have got their goods from the yellow-haired Russians at the Nishni-Novogorod fair, and brought them across Asia to sell at Ladakh. It is forty days' journey, of almost a continuous desert, for these caravans from Yarkund to Leh; and there is no small danger to life and limb by the way. The current coin is lumps of Chinese sycee silver of two pounds' weight each. I bought a Persian horse for the journey, and paid for it in solid silver four pounds weight: 166 rupees, or about 16_l._ I shall sell it for double the money when the journey is over. Leh is a small town, of not more than 400 houses, on a projecting promontory of rock stretching out into the valley formed by one of the small feeders of the Indus. For the people, they are Bodhs, and wear tails, and have flat features like the Chinese, and black garments. The women, unlike other Asiatics whom I have seen, go about the streets openly, as in civilized countries; but they are an ugly race, and withal dirty to an absolutely unparalleled extent.

They wear no head-dress, but plait their ma.s.ses of black hair into sundry tails half way down their backs. Covering the division of the hair from the forehead back and down the shoulders, is a narrow leathern strap, universally adorned with rough turquoises and bits of gold or silver. The old Ranee whom we called upon had on this strap (in her case a broader one, about three fingers wide) 156 large turquoises, worth some hundreds of pounds. Over their ears they wear flaps of fur which project forward with precisely the effect of blinkers on a horse.

The climate is delightful; it never rains; the sky is blue to a fault, and snow only falls sparingly in winter, though the climate is cold, being 10,000 feet (they say) above the sea. In boiling water the thermometer was only 188. I never felt a more exhilarating air. That one week quite set me up, and I have been better ever since. The Llamas or monks, with their red cardinal's hats and crimson robes, look very imposing and monastic, quite a travesty of the regular clergy, and they blow just such trumpets as Fame does on monuments in country churches. Jolly friars they are, and fat to a man. From Leh we crossed the mountain ridge which separates the two streams of the Indus, and descended the northern (or right) stream to this place, the capital of Bultistan or Little Thibet. It is a genuine humbug. In the middle of a fine valley, some 6,000 feet above the sea, surrounded by sudden rising perpendicular mountains 6,000 feet higher, stands an isolated rock washed by the Indus, some two miles by three quarters: a little Gibraltar. The valley may be ten miles by three, partially cultivated, and inhabited by some 200 scattered houses. There's Iskardo.

There _was_ a fort on the rock, but that is gone, and all, as usual in the East, bespeaks havoc; only nature is grand here. The people are Mussulmans, and not Bodhs, and are more human-looking, but not so well clad. It is warmer by far, much more so than it ought to be. The thermometer was at 92 in our tents to-day, a thing for which I cannot possibly account, since there is snow now on all sides of us. We go hence across the Steppe of Deo Sole towards Cashmere for four days' journey, and then strike westward to cross the Indus into Gilghit, whence we return to Cashmere by the end of September. We have been making very fast marches, varying from sixteen to thirty-two miles a day,--hard work in a country with such roads, and where you must take things with you. I enjoy it very much, however, and after a year's sickness, the feeling of returning health is refres.h.i.+ng. I shall return to work again by the 1st of December; but I propose paying a flying visit to Mr. Thomason in October, if possible; but the distances are so vast, and the means of locomotion so absent, that these things are difficult to achieve. I suppose I have seen more of the hill country now than ninety-nine men out of a hundred in India. Indeed, not above four Europeans have been here before. But travelling suits my restless spirit. Sir Henry and I get on famously together.

On October 7th, 1850, he writes from Simla to his father:--

I have had a long and fatiguing march from Cashmere across the mountains and the valleys of the "five rivers," nearly four hundred miles, which I accomplished in fifteen days. I left Sir Henry Lawrence in Cashmere. I have since heard from him, urging me to use all the influence I can muster up here to procure a brevet majority in _posse_ (_i. e._ on attaining my regimental captaincy), and a _local_ majority in _esse_ for "my services in the late war;" and adding, that if I did not find civil employment to suit me, he would, when I had given it a fair trial, try and get me the command of one of the regiments in the Punjaub. I am going to consult Mr. Thomason on the subject, and will let you know the result. I hate the least suspicion of toadyism, and dislike asking favors, or I should have been better off ere now; but on Sir Henry Lawrence's suggestion, I will certainly use any opportunity which may offer. I thought, however, you would be gratified with the opinion which must have dictated so perfectly spontaneous an offer. I confess that I very much prefer the military line myself, although I like civil work much, and it is the road to competence.

Nevertheless, military rank and distinctions have more charm for me than rupees; and I would rather _cut_ my way to a name and poverty with the sword, than _write_ it to wealth with the pen.

There is something to me peculiarly interesting in the _forming_ and _training_ soldiers, and in acquiring that extraordinary influence over their minds, both by personal volition and the aid of discipline, which leads them on through danger, even to death, at your bidding. I felt the enthusiasm of this power successfully exerted with the Guides during the late war; and having felt it, am naturally inclined to take advantage of it on future occasions.

_To his Sister._

SIMLA, _Oct 21st, 1850_.

It is rather too late to tell you "all about Cashmere," as you desire; but I _can_ say that I saw some beauties this time who were really so to no common extent; and that I was much more pleased with the valley than on my first visit, which was a winter one. If you see what wonderfully out-of-the-way places we got into, I think you will marvel that I managed to write at all. We traversed upwards of fifteen hundred miles of wild mountainous countries, innocent of roads, and often, for days together, of inhabitants, and carrying our houses on our backs. The change to the utter comfort and civilization of this house was something "stunning;" and I have not yet become quite reconciled to dressing three times a day, black hat, and patent leather boots. I need hardly say, however, that I have very much enjoyed my visit and my "big talks" with Mr.

Thomason. He is very gray, and looks older than when I saw him in 1847, but otherwise he is just the same, working magnificently, and doing wonders for his province. Already the Northwest Provinces are a century in advance of the Bengal Proper ones. As a Governor he has not his equal; and in honesty, high-mindedness, and indefatigable devotion to the public good, he is _facile princeps_ of the whole Indian service. Nor is there a household in India to match his, indeed, it is about the only "big-wig" house to which people go with pleasure rather than as a duty. I saw Sir Charles Napier, too, and dined with him last week. He is very kind and pleasant, and I am very sorry on public grounds that he is going away.

KUSSOWLEE, _Nov. 4th, 1850_.

I had a most pleasant home-like visit to Mr. Thomason, and was most affectionately entertained. He will have told you of the power of civility I met with at Simla from the "big-wigs," and that even Lord Dalhousie waxed complimentary, and said that "Lumsden and Hodson were about the best men he had," (that I write it that shouldn't!) and that he promised to do his best to get me a brevet majority as soon as I became, in the course of time, a regimental captain. And Sir Charles Napier (the best abused man of his day) was anxious to get for me the Staff appointment of Brigade-Major to the Punjaub Irregular Force,--_i. e._, of the six newly raised cavalry and infantry regiments for frontier service. He did not succeed, for the berth had been previously filled up unknown to him; but he _tried to do_ so, and that's a compliment from such a man. I hope I need not say that this good deed of his was as spontaneous as a mushroom's birth.

_To his Father._

KUSSOWLEE, _Nov. 6th_.

I am to be here next year, I find, by tidings just received, which will be a splendid thing for my const.i.tution. My connection with Umritsur is dissolved by my having been appointed to act as personal a.s.sistant to the Commissioner of the Cis-Sutlej States, which is, I believe, a piece of promotion. The great advantages are, first, the capital opportunity it affords of experience in every kind of civil work, and of being under a very able man,--Mr. Edmonstone; and secondly, that the Commissioner's head-quarters are "peripatetic" in the cold weather, and in the hills during the remainder of the year. But I confess that I hanker after the "Guides" as much as ever, and would catch at a good opportunity of returning to them with honor. I fear I have been remiss in explanations on this subject. The matter lies in this wise,--I left the Corps and took to civil employment at the advice of Sir Henry Lawrence, Mr. Thomason, and others, though against my own feelings on the subject. The man or men who succeeded me are senior to me in army rank.

When one of them resigned six months ago, I was strongly disposed and urged to try and succeed to the vacancy. There was a hitch, however, from the cause I have mentioned, and Lumsden was anxious that his lieutenants should not be disgusted by supersession. I might have had the appointment, but withdrew to avoid annoying Lumsden. _Now_, both Sir Henry Lawrence and Mr. Thomason are very sorry that I ever left the Corps, and that they advised the step. Things have taken a different turn since then, and it is confessedly the best thing a young soldier can aspire to. I know that my present line is one which leads to more pecuniary advantages; but the other is the finer field, and is far more independent. I shall work away, however, cheerfully in the civil line until I see a good opening in the other; and _then_, I fear you will hardly persuade me that sitting at a desk with the thermometer at 98 is better than soldiering,--_i. e._, than _commanding_ soldiers made and taught by yourself! I will give you the earliest warning of the change.

UMRITSUR, _Nov. 24th, 1850_.

I returned here on the 16th, and have been up to the neck in work ever since, having the whole work, civil, criminal, police, &c. &c., on my shoulders, Saunders, the Deputy Commissioner, my superior, being engaged dancing attendance on the Governor-General, who is here on his annual tour of inspection; and Macleod, my co-a.s.sistant, dead. Directly the Governor-General has gone onwards I shall be relieved here, and join my new appointment with Mr. Edmonstone.

LAh.o.r.e, _Jan. 2d, 1851_.

I broke up from Umritsur early in December, and came into Lah.o.r.e to join my new chief. He did not arrive till the 18th, so I had a comparative holiday. I have got into harness, however, again now, and am up to the elbows in work and papers. The work is much more pleasant than that I had at Umritsur, and more free from mere routine.

LAh.o.r.e, _Feb. 21st_.

This is an interesting anniversary to many of us, and an overwhelming one to this country,--that of the day on which "the bright star of the Punjaub" set forever. It has been curiously marked by the announcement, that the net balance of receipts over expenditure for the past year, for the newly acquired provinces, has reached upwards of a million sterling. Lord Dalhousie's star is in the ascendant. His financial measures are apparently all good, when tried by the only standard admissible in the nineteenth century,--their success.

KUSSOWLEE, _March 22d, 1851_.

I broke down again most completely as soon as the hot weather began, but my flight to this beautiful climate has wonderfully refreshed me. Talk of Indian luxuries! There are but two, cold water and cool air! I get on very comfortably with my new "Chief." He is a first-rate man, and has a most uncommon appet.i.te for work, of which there is plenty for both of us. We cover a good stretch of country--comprising five British districts and nine sovereign states; and as the whole has been in grievous disorder for many years, and a peculiarly difficult population to deal with, you may imagine that the work is not slight. My princ.i.p.al duty is hearing appeals from orders and decisions by the district officers in these five districts. It is of course not "per se," but as the Commissioner's personal a.s.sistant, that I do this. I prepare a short abstract, with my opinion on each case, and he issues his orders accordingly. I was at work a whole day lately over one case, which, after all, involved only a claim to about a quarter of an acre of land! You will give me credit for ingenuity in discovering that the result of some half dozen quires of written evidence was to prove that _neither_ of the contending parties had any right at all! If that's not "justice to Ireland," I don't know what is! I have been staying with Captain Douglas, and I hope I shall see a great deal of him. There is not a better man or more genuine soldier going. This may appear faint praise, but rightly understood, and conscientiously and boldly worked out, I doubt whether any other profession calls forth the higher qualities of our nature more strongly than does that of a soldier in times of war and tumults. Certain it is that it requires the highest order of man to be a good general, and in the lower ranks, (in this country especially,) even with all the frightful drawbacks and evils, I doubt whether the Saxon race is ever so preeminent, or its good points so strongly developed, as in the "European" soldier serving in India, or on service anywhere.

KUSSOWLEE, _April 7th, 1851_.

I have the nicest house here on a level spot on the very summit of the mountain ridge, from which a most splendid view is obtainable for six months in the year. In the immediate foreground rises a round-backed ridge, on which stands the former work of my hands, the "Lawrence Asylum;"

while to the westward, and down, down far off in the interminable south, the wide glistening plains of the Punjaub, streaked with the faint ribbon-like lines of the Sutlej and its tributaries, and the wider sea-like expanse of Hindostan, stretch away in unbroken evenness beyond the limits of vision, and almost beyond those of faith and imagination. On the other side you look over a ma.s.s of mountains up to the topmost peaks of Himalaya. So narrow is the ridge, that it seems as though you could toss a pebble from one window into the Sutlej, and from the other into the valley below Simla. I like the place very much. I have seven or eight hours' work every day, and the rest is spent (as this one) in the society of the 60th Rifles, the very nicest and most gentlemanly regiment I ever met with.