Himalayan Journals, vol 1 by J. D. Hooker (best thriller books to read txt) 📕

Of the leaves the curious rude leaf-bellows are made, with which the natives of these hills smelt iron. Scorpions appeared very common here, of a small kind, 1.5 inch long; several were captured, and one of our party was stung on the finger; the smart was burning for an hour or two, and then ceased.

At Kota we were nearly opposite the cliffs at Beejaghur, where coal is reported to exist; and here we again crossed the Soane, and for the last time. The ford is three miles up the river, and we marched to it through deep sand. The bed of the river is here 500 feet above the sea, and about threequarters of a mile broad, the rapid stream being 50 or 60 yards wide, and breast deep. The sand is firm and siliceous, with no mica; nodules of coal are said to be washed down thus far from the coal-beds of Burdee, a good deal higher up, but we saw none.

The cliffs come close to the river on the opposite side, their bases clothed with woods which teemed with birds. The soil is richer, and individual trees, especially of Bombax, Terminalia and Mahowa,

very fine; one tree of the Hardwickia, about 120 feet high, was as handsome a monarch of the forest as I ever saw, and it is not often that one sees trees in the tropics, which for a combination of beauty in outline, harmony of colour, and arrangement of branches and foliage, would form so striking an addition to an English park.

There is a large break in the Kymore hills here, beyond the village of Kunch, through which our route lay to Beejaghur, and the Ganges at Mirzapore; the cliff’s leaving the river and trending to the north in a continuous escarpment flanked with low ranges of rounded hills, and terminating in an abrupt spur (Mungeesa Peak) whose summit was covered with a ragged forest. At Kunch we saw four alligators sleeping in the river, looking at a distance like logs of wood, all of the short-nosed or mugger kind, dreaded by man and beast; I saw none of the sharp-shouted (or garial), so common on the Ganges, where their long bills, with a garniture of teeth and prominent eyes peeping out of the water, remind one of geological lectures and visions of Ichthyosauri. Tortoises were frequent in the river, basking on the rocks, and popping into the water when approached.

On the 1st of March we left the Soane, and struck inland over a rough hilly country, covered with forest, fully 1000 feet below the top of the Kymore table-land, which here recedes from the river and surrounds an undulating plain, some ten miles either way, facing the south. The roads, or rather pathways, were very bad, and quite impassable for the carts without much engineering, cutting through forest, smoothing down the banks of the watercourses to be crossed, and clearing away the rocks as we best might. We traversed the empty bed of a mountain torrent, with perpendicular banks of alluvium 30

feet high, and thence plunged into a dense forest. Our course was directed towards Mungeesa Peak, the remarkable projecting spur, between which and a conical hill the path led. Whether on the elephants or on foot, the thorny jujubes, Acacias, etc. were most troublesome, and all our previous scratchings were nothing to this. Peacocks and jungle-fowl were very frequent, the squabbling of the former and the hooting of the monkeys constantly grating on the ear. There were innumerable pigeons and a few Floricans (a kind of bustard—considered the best eating game—bird in India). From the defile we emerged on an open flat, halting at Sulkun, a scattered village (alt. 684 feet), peopled by a bold-looking race (Coles)* [The Coles, like the Danghas of the Rajmahal and Behar hills, and the natives of the mountains of the peninsula, form one of the aboriginal tribes of British India, and are widely different people from either the Hindoos or Mussulmen.] who habitually carry the spear and shield.

We had here the pleasure of meeting Mr. Felle, an English gentleman employed in the Revenue department; this being one of the roads along which the natives transport their salt, sugar, etc., from one province to another.

In the afternoon, I examined the conical hill, which, like that near Rotas, is of stratified beds of limestone, capped with sandstone.

A stream runs round its base, cutting through the alluvium to the subjacent rock, which is exposed, and contains flattened spheres of limestone. These spheres are from the size of a fist to a child’s head, or even much larger; they are excessively hard, and neither laminated nor formed of concentric layers. At the top of the hill the sandstone cap was perpendicular on all sides, and its dry top covered with small trees, especially of Cochlospermum. A few larger trees of Fici clung to the edge of the rocks, and by forcing their roots into the interstices detached enormous masses, affording good dens for bears and other wild animals. From the top, the view of rock, river, forest, and plain, was very fine, the eye ranging over a broad flat, girt by precipitous hills;—West, the Kymore or Vindhya range rose again in rugged elevations; South, flowed the Soane, backed by ranges of wooded hills, smoking like volcanos with the fires of the natives;—below, lay the bed of the stream we had left at the foot of the hills, cutting its way through the alluvium, and following a deep gorge to the Soane, which was there hidden by the rugged heights we had crossed, on which the greater part of our camp might be seen still straggling onwards;—east, and close above us, the bold spur of Mungeesa shot up, terminating a continuous stretch of red precipices, clothed with forest along their bases, and over their horizontal tops.

From Sulkun the view of the famed fort and palace of Beejaghur is very singular, planted on the summit of an isolated hill of sandstone, about ten miles off. A large tree by the palace marks its site; for, at this distance, the buildings are themselves undistinguishable.

There are many tigers on these hills; and as one was close by, and had killed several cattle, Mr. Felle kindly offered us a chance of slaying him. Bullocks are tethered out, over-night, in the places likely to be visited by the brute; he kills one of them, and is from the spot tracked to his haunt by natives, who visit the stations early in the morning, and report the whereabouts of his lair.

The sportsman then goes to the attack mounted on an elephant, or having a roost fixed in a tree, on the trail of the tiger, and he employs some hundred natives to drive the animal past the lurking-place.

On the present occasion, the locale of the tiger was doubtful; but it was thought that by beating over several miles of country he (or at any rate, some other game) might be driven past a certain spot.

Thither, accordingly, the natives were sent, who built machans (stages) in the trees, high out of danger’s reach; Mr. Theobald and myself occupied one of these perches in a Hardwickia tree, and Mr. Felle another, close by, both on the slope of a steep hill, surrounded by jungly valleys. We were also well thatched in with leafy boughs, to prevent the wary beast from espying the ambush, and had a whole stand of shall arms ready for his reception.

When roosted aloft, and duly charged to keep profound silence (which I obeyed to the letter, by falling sound asleep), the word was passed to the beaters, who surrounded our post on the plain-side, extending some miles in line, and full two or three distant from us.

They entered the jungle, beating tom-toms, singing and shouting as they advanced, and converging towards our position. In the noonday solitude of these vast forests, our situation was romantic enough: there was not a breath of wind, an insect or bird stirring; and the wild cries of the men, and the hollow sound of the drums broke upon the ear from a great distance, gradually swelling and falling, as the natives ascended the heights or crossed the valleys. After about an hour and a half, the beaters emerged from the jungle under our retreat; one by one, two by two, but preceded by no single living thing, either mouse, bird, deer, or bear, and much less tiger.

The beaters received about a penny a-piece for the day’s work; a rich guerdon for these poor wretches, whom necessity sometimes drives to feed on rats and offal.

We were detained three days at Sulkun, from inability to get on with the carts; and as the pass over the Kymore to the north (on the way to Mirzapore) was to be still worse, I took advantage of Mr. Felle’s kind offer of camels and elephants to make the best of my way forward, accompanying that gentleman, en route, to his residence at Shahgunj, on the table-land.

Both the climate and natural history of this flat on which Sulkun stands, are similar to those of the banks of the Soane; the crops are wretched. At this season the dryness of the atmosphere is excessive: our nails cracked, and skins peeled, whilst all articles of wood, tortoiseshell, etc., broke on the slightest blow. The air, too, was always highly electrical, and the dewpoint was frequently 40 degrees below the temperature of the air.

The natives are far from honest: they robbed one of the tents placed between two others, wherein a light was burning. One gentleman in it was awake, and on turning saw five men at his bedside, who escaped with a bag of booty, in the shape of clothes, and a tempting strong brass-bound box, containing private letters. The clothes they dropped outside, but the box of letters was carried off. There were about a hundred people asleep outside the tents, between whose many fires the rogues must have passed, eluding also the guard, who were, or ought to have been, awake.

CHAPTER III.

Ek-powa Ghat — Sandstones — Shahgunj — Table-land, elevation, etc.

— Gum-arabic — Mango — Fair — Aquatic plants — Rujubbund —

Storm — False sunset and sunrise — Bind hills — Mirzapore —

Manufactures, imports, etc. — Climate of — Thuggee — Chunar —

Benares — Mosque — Observatory — Sar-nath — Ghazeepore —

Rose-gardens — Manufactory of Attar — Lord Cornwallis’ tomb —

Ganges, scenery and natural history of — Pelicans — Vegetation —

Insects — Dinapore — Patna — Opium godowns and manufacture —

Mudar, white and purple — Monghyr islets — Hot Springs of Setakoond — Alluvium of Ganges — Rocks of Sultun-gunj — Bhaugulpore —

Temples of Mt. Manden — Coles and native tribes — Bhaugulpore rangers — Horticultural gardens.

On the 3rd of March I bade farewell to Mr. Williams and his kind party, and rode over a plain to the village of Markunda, at the foot of the Ghat. There the country becomes very rocky and wooded, and a stream is crossed, which runs over a flat bed of limestone, cracked into the appearance of a tesselated pavement. For many miles there is no pass over the Kymore range, except this, significantly called “Ek-powa-Ghat” (one-foot Ghat). It is evidently a fault, or shifting of the rocks, producing so broken a