It
Was Situated On A Rock, Several Hundred Feet Above The River Which
Separated Us From The Town; And, From
Our elevated position, we had
a fine view of the whole place, and got an insight into the manners
and
Customs of the inhabitants, without their being at all aware of
our proximity.
The women and children appeared to be dressed quite in the Tartar
style: the women with little red square-cornered fez caps, with a
long strip of cloth thrown gracefully over them, and either pyjamas
of blue stuff with a red stripe, or a long loose toga of greyish
cloth, reaching nearly to the feet. The little girls were quite of
the bullet-headed Tartar pattern, of Crimean recollection, but wore
rather less decoration. The Crimean young ladies generally had a three
cornered charm suspended round their necks, while the youthful fashion
of Rajaori, scorning all artificial adornment, selected nature only
as their mantua-maker, and wore their dresses strictly according to
her book of patterns. After enjoying a delightfully cool night in
our elevated bedroom, we started for "Thanna."
Our path led through a gradually ascending valley, cultivated, for
the rice crop, in terraces, and irrigated by a complicated net-work
of channels, cut off from the mountain streams, and branching off
in every direction to the different elevations. The ground was so
saturated in these terraces that ploughing was carried on by means of
a large scraper, like a fender, which was dragged along by bullocks,
the ploughman standing up in the machine as it floundered and wallowed
about, and guiding it through the sea of mud.
JUNE 18. - Reached Thanna at nine A.M. and came to a halt in a shady
spot outside the village. There was an old serai about half a mile
off, but it was full of merchants and their belongings, and savoured
so strongly of fleas and dirt, that we gave it up as impracticable.
This was the first instance of our finding no shelter; and, as ill
luck would have it, our tents took the opportunity of pitching
themselves on the road, a number of coolies broke down, and one
abandoned our property and took himself off altogether. Under these
interesting circumstances, we were obliged to spend the day completely
AL FRESCO, and to wait patiently for breakfast until the fashionable
hour of half-past two P.M. The inhabitants took our misfortunes very
philosophically, and stopped to stare at us to their heart's content
as they went by for water, wondering, no doubt, at that restless
nature of the crazy Englishman, which drives him out of his own
country for the sole purpose, apparently, of being uncomfortable in
other people's. Our position, although at the foot of the grander
range of mountains, we found very hot, and a good deal of ingenuity
was required in order to find continued shelter from the scorching
rays of the sun. The natives here, seemed to suffer to a great extent
from goitre, and one of our coolies in particular had three enormous
swellings on his neck, horrible to look at. During the night, Rajoo
came in with the missing baggage, except two khiltas, for which no
carriage could be procured, and which he was in consequence obliged
to abandon on the road until assistance could be sent to them.
JUNE 19. - Started at daybreak from our unsatisfactory quarters, and
enjoyed some of the finest scenery we had yet encountered. The road
ascended pretty sharply into what might be called the REAL mountains,
and finding our spirits rise with the ground, we abandoned our ponies
and resolved to perform the remainder of our wanderings on foot. As we
reached the summit of our first ascent, and our range of view enlarged,
mountain upon mountain rose before us, richly clothed with forest
trees; while, overtopping all, peeped up the glistening summits of
the snowy range, everything around seems cool and pleasant, in spite
of the hot sun's rays, which still poured down upon us. Our road from
this, descending, lay among the nooks and dells of the shady side of
the mountain; and the wild rose and the heliotrope perfumed the air
at every step as we walked along in full enjoyment of the morning
breeze. Our sepoy guide of to-day was not of the educated branch of
the army. He was the stupidest specimen of his race I had ever met;
and as his language was such a jargon as to be nearly unintelligible,
we failed signally in obtaining much information from him.
Among other questions, I made inquiries as to woodcock, the cover
being just suited to them, and after a great deal of difficulty
in explaining the bird to him, he declared that he knew the kind
of creature perfectly, and that there were plenty of them. By way
of convincing us, however, of his sporting knowledge, he added that
they were in the habit of living entirely on fruit; and he was sadly
put out when F. and I both burst into laughter at the idea of an old
woodcock with his bill stuck into a juicy pear, or perhaps enjoying a
pomegranate for breakfast. Shortly after, we came suddenly upon quite
a new feature in the scene - a strange innovation of liveliness in
the midst of solitude.
At a bend in the road, what should appear almost over our heads but
a troop of about a hundred monkeys, crashing through the firs and
chestnuts, and bounding in eager haste from tree to tree, in their
desire to escape from a party of natives coming from the opposite
direction. They were large brown monkeys, of the kind called lungoors,
standing, some of them, three feet high, and having tails considerably
longer than themselves. Their faces were jet black, fringed with
light grey whiskers, which gave them a most comical appearance.; and
as they jumped along from tree to tree, sometimes thirty and forty
feet, through the air, with their small families following as best
they could, they made the whole forest resound with the crashing of
the branches, and amused us not a little by their aerial line of march.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 11 of 81
Words from 10224 to 11256
of 82277
