CHAPTER XXXI
Camp, near the Sutlej, Sunday, Jan. 6, 1839.
I HAVE allowed myself my accustomed four days’ rest after sending off my Journal, and it comes just at a good time. We have had only our common marches to make from Lahore, and no break except that afforded by Shere Singh and little Pertâb, who were again sent with us by the Maharajah, to see us safe across the river, and who were by way of being very sentimental at parting with us. I believe, however, our dear friend Shere is as great a rogue as may well be – at least, like all courtiers under a despotic king, he is full of intrigue and falseness, being always on the watch to provide for his own safety. He is also very extravagant, and has to go through a course of constant makeshifts to keep himself afloat.
There are various ways of getting one’s debts paid in various countries. Shere Singh is out of favour with the Maharajah; but the other day Runjeet put a pea on the point of a spear, and told all the sirdars to shoot at it from a considerable distance. Shere Singh hit it at the first shot, and Runjeet gave him six villages; and it is always by some feat of that kind that they wring a gratuity from the old man. Shere brought one evening a beautiful pair of shawls, such as are only made for the females of the Singh family, and gave them to F. and me, begging that we would really keep them and wear them, and nothing was to be given in exchange for them. I am sure we had fairly earned them by having him at dinner almost every day for a month; but, however, we handsomely added them to the public stock, and as soon as a committee of shawl merchants has sat on them, we are to buy them. The melancholy catastrophe of the week has been the death of F.’s lemur, after two days of illness. It caught cold, like the rest of the camp, in that swamp at Lahore, and died of inflammation in the stomach, so violent that no medicine was of the slightest use. Poor little wretch! it was hardly possible to bear its screams at times; though as F. could not stand it, I did my auntly duties to it to the last. It is really a great loss, it was such a clever little animal, and she made such a constant occupation of it, that she misses it much, and is in a very low state. I own I miss it too, and then its illness has been so shocking. It had such cramps, and held out its little black hands (which are shaped exactly like ours) to be rubbed, and cried just like a child. That is the worst of a nice pet. However, they are a great amusement for the time they last, and there is, on an average, at least a year’s pleasure for a week’s grief. A natural death, too, is an uncommon termination to the life of a pet, and Dr. D. did everything that could be done for it.
Moothea, Jan. 9.
We left the Sutlej on Monday, and are halting to-day. Our dear friend Mr. C., of Umballa, laid out such a long march for us yesterday, that all the cattle are knocked up. We rode about twice the distance we intended to have done, which was no joke. Luckily he had his doubts about the villany of the proceeding, and had provided provisions for two days, so that we were able to stop a day. This is a shocking country for robberies. It belongs to nobody in particular, and the inhabitants avowedly live by plunder. Last night they took two pittarrahs belonging to one of the clerks, and beat the sepoy who was guarding them dreadfully. They also robbed and beat a camel suwar who was bringing us letters from Ferozepore.
Thursday, Jan. 10.
We had another very long march, and found on arriving at the advanced camp that there had been another robbery. Some of Mr. – ’s boxes were taken, and some belonging to an officer, whose kitmutgar was cut by a sabre across the chest. The poor sepoy is dead, who was so beaten. The servants are in a shocking state of fright, though it is a little their own fault if they are robbed. At two in the afternoon, one set of them go on with all the stores, wine, grain, &c., and a strong guard; and we have settled to send our precious imperials, camel trunks, &c., by day-light. At nine in the evening, all the plate, dinner things, furniture, a great many tents, and the servants that will be wanted in the morning, go with an escort. If they stray away they are instantly robbed. All the rest come in the morning with us, when there are four regiments on the road, so that is quite safe. To-night Colonel – is going to send the fourth cavalry to patrol the road. These little warlike precautions are becoming interesting.
Moothee, Friday, Jan. 11.
Worse and worse. When we came up to the advanced camp, the servants declared there had been an engagement. I think we are doing more business than ever the army will do in Cabul. Our great battle of Mootheesund was fought in the night, which makes it curious as a matter of history. Four sepoys were guarding a train of pittarrahs. The inhabitants of the village (as was perhaps to be expected) wished to appropriate their contents. A hundred men attacked the four sepoys; the sepoys naturally screamed; the cavalry came up; the hundred men ran away; cavalry, sepoys, and pittarrah bearers all joined in the pursuit; the thieves ran home, and, I suppose, went to bed; and our forces brought off the jemadar of the village, who says he had nothing to do with it, and he wishes they would let him go again.
Budhoo, Saturday, Jan. 12.
We had a nice short march this morning, just ten miles. I am quite able to ride again now, which lessens the fatigue materially; and I believe it is now universally allowed that my horse is entirely faultless. Of course it cannot be so in fact, but it has every appearance of it at present. It is beautiful, and it does not kick nor bite, which all the others do, nor stumble as most Arabs do, nor pull, nor dawdle. I am so obliged to it. I hate a vicious horse, don’t you? and you cannot guess how troublesome they are in this country.
Tuesday, Jan. 15.
This morning we went half-way in the carriage and then got on elephants, to meet the Rajah of Putteealah, whose territories we enter to-day. His son came last night to meet G. He is a fine-looking boy, about eighteen. Mr. E. says that the usual custom among the Sikhs is, that once grown up, a boy ceases to be a son, or a brother – that he becomes an individual, bound only to take care of himself; but the Putteealah rajah has broken through this system, and has kept his son in his own palace, under his own control. Last night was the first time he had ever slept from under his father’s roof. He had a grey-bearded tutor, who never left his side, and an immense suite. Mr. E. says father and son are on excellent terms. The rajah’s procession was beautiful; not so large as some of Runjeet’s, but more regularly handsome, as all his followers were equally well dressed, and their riding was very striking. Runjeet’s men cannot ride at all. Some of the men we saw this morning put their horses into a gallop and then stood up on their saddles, stooping down to the right and left to cut away the weeds with their swords, very much what people do at Astley’s, only there the horses go round in a circle, which makes it more easy. Here, there is not even a made road. Another man would ride up and fire off his matchlock at a friend and then throw himself on the side of his horse, hanging only by one stirrup, till his pursuer had returned the fire, and then he would rise up again and stop his horse with the greatest ease. Two little dwarfs rode before the rajah. We had them here this afternoon to draw, and gave them two shawls, which pleased him much. He knows the rules about presents in the Company’s service, and when he and Mr. E. were coming to the durbar in the evening, he saw these dwarfs strutting along with their shawls on. He asked where they got them from; they said the Lady Sahib gave them: upon which the rajah turned round to his Sikh and asked, ‘May they keep them?’ and then laughed with Mr. E. at his knowing exactly what the English would say. This evening the Bombay extra arrived with news to the 27th of October; all good news.
Wednesday, Jan. 16.
Besides the overland letters, this has been a great day of idle business for G. and his staff. F. and I left the camp at the usual time, and a bitter nasty day it was; a regular thick Indian fog. We rode most part of the way with Captain X. and – ‘Frump,’ Esq., as we always call him, not but what he is rather a pleasant man, but he frumps things in general, and wears a rough coat and stern-looking gloves, and never can see the fun of anything, and his name begins with an F., so I think it very likely he was christened ‘Frump.’ He was remarkably frumpish with the fog, which almost blinded us till the sun rose. The unhappy G. remained with his staff to breakfast at seven, and then set off in full-dress to return Putteealah’s visit. He gave them magnificent presents; amongst others, a horse with a gold howdah, and caparisoned like an elephant, and it sticks out its leg for the rider to mount by just as an elephant does. The little howdah would make Chance’s establishment quite complete, but the idea of presenting it to him has not yet crossed C.’s mind apparently. From that durbar they came on to the camp, and were met by the old Rajah of Nabun, a Sikh chief, and a fine-looking old creature, and he brought G. home. Then they dressed, and at two had to full-dress again for a durbar to this old creature, and he asked G. to bring us in the evening to see his garden, so the gentlemen had to put on their uniforms a third time. Towards dusk, young Nabun (Nabun junior) came to fetch us, and we all scuttled along on elephants to a very ugly dilapidated garden, lit up in an elaborate manner, where the old man met us, but could hardly walk from age. A. and Mr. C. kept charging G. on no account to sit down, as the rajah was not of sufficient rank to receive a visit from the Governor-General, and G. kept declaring that he knew he should sit down at last, so he might as well do it at once. However, they would not hear of it, but kept walking him about; and the old man went up into a garden house to rest, while the son did the honours. Then G. would go up to this house, and then up the steps, A. and C. objurgating him all the while; then the cunning old Nabun asked him to look at the paintings in the room. A. and C. grew desperate, and said the pictures were very improper. G. declared they were very pretty; and so we all went in and found a whole row of chairs, and a select assortment of nautch girls. G. sank down on one side of the rajah and told me to sit on the other, and so ended the advice of A. and C., and Nabun now thinks himself as good as Putteealah. That is the great result of this great measure, and C.’s hurt feelings were soothed by a pair of diamond bracelets that the old man gave me, and which I delivered to him. A large display of fireworks took place, and we came home in the dark.
Thursday, Jan. 17.
A rainy miserable sort of day, but not bad enough to prevent the tents from moving. We had several of the camp to dinner. St. Cloup is longing for our arrival at Kurnaul, that he may vary his cookery a little. We cannot kill a cow in the face of all these Sikhs, and at Simla the natives do not like it; so it is a long time since we have had the luxury of a beef-steak or a veal cutlet.
CHAPTER XXXII
Soonair, Friday, Jan. 18, 1839.
WE halt here till Monday. There is a great gathering of petty chiefs, and our arrival was very pretty. Each man came on his elephant, with a few wild followers on horseback, some with a second elephant, and they all scramble up to G., every individual giving him a bow and arrows, or a matchlock. His hand was soon full, then his howdah was hung with them; the hirkaru behind was buried in bows; then they boiled over into our howdahs, and at every break in the road a fresh chief and more bows appeared.
At last we came to Mr. E., bringing the Nahun rajah. Don’t you in your ignorance go and confound him with the old Nabun rajah. This is the Nahun chief whom we visited last year in the hills, and who is very gentlemanlike and civilised. I have found out why I was so glad to see him again. He has light blue eyes, and after three years of those enormous black beads the natives habitually see with, these were mild and refreshing. They all brought us to the camp in a drizzling rain, which came on to a pour in the course of the day, and a wretched business it always is. All the servants and camp followers look so miserable and catch such bad colds. I thought when we were at Nabun that an old man, a sort of prime minister of the rajah’s, would make a good drawing, and I told him so; and to-day he arrived, having made two marches to have the picture drawn. He gave me his matchlock, which I asked Captain D. to return with the usual speech, that it was much better in his hands than in mine; but the old man said no; it was a particularly good matchlock; he had shot with it very often, and I should not easily find so good a one, so C. gave me a watch to present to him in exchange, which quite delighted him. While Captain L. E. was gone to fetch the watch, the old man took the opportunity to question my jemadar about our habits, and I understood enough of the language to make out that he was asking how many times we eat in the day. The natives generally only eat once, but I believe they think our way of eating at several different times rather grand; at all events, the jemadar did not omit a spoonful, and it was rather shocking to hear how many times in the day we were fed, beginning with the cup of coffee before marching; and the afternoon cup of tea sounded wrong and waste-not-want-not-ish. However, the old sirdar said it was all ‘wah wah’ – excellent, to be able to eat so much.
Saturday, Jan. 19.
There was rather a pretty durbar this morning – two hundred of those Sikh chiefs who gave our great Apollo his bows yesterday; and as they were only shown in by fives and sixes, it made a very long durbar, and we went over to make a sketch of it. I never can make a likeness of G. to my mind, and yet there is always a look of your M. in my drawings of him, so there must be a likeness somehow, either in the sketches or in G. and M. That gentlemanlike Nahun rajah made Mr. A. bring him all across the tent to shake hands with F. and me, all owing to his blue eyes. Nobody with black eyes would have dreamed of so European an idea. G. went out shooting this afternoon. There are heaps of partridges and quails in this part of the country.
I thought of going out too, with my matchlock, only C. has claimed it for the Company. We had a large dinner to-day, forty-five; all the officers of the cavalry and artillery who leave us on Monday. One or two of them got particularly drunk. They say some of them are always so, more or less, but it happened to be more this evening.
Sunday, Jan. 20.
Mr. Y. set off after church to go back to Simla for his wife’s accouchement. He will go scrambling up to Simla in a shorter time than the post goes. He borrows a horse here, and rides a camel there, and the Putteealah rajah is to lend him a palanquin; and he set off with some cold dinner in one hand and ‘Culpepper’s Midwifery’ in the other, which he borrowed of Dr. D. at the last minute. He is very pleasant and amusing; more like R. than ever.
Such a pleasure! a letter from the agent at Calcutta to say a box of millinery has arrived at the Custom House per ‘Robert Small.’ Mine, to a certainty! It has been rather more than seven months making its voyage, and will be three more coming to the hills. I think it is about the last great invoice for which I shall trouble you. Calcutta may provide itself for the last few months; and my next order will be for a pelisse and bonnet, &c., at Portsmouth. Good!
Monday, Jan. 21.
Rather a long march; and that generally brings a large riding party together at the end; and once more W. and I had one of our hysterical fits of laughter at the extraordinary folly of a march. We feel so certain that people who live in houses, and get up by a fire at a reasonable hour and then go quietly to breakfast, would think us raving mad, if they saw nine Europeans of steady age and respectable habits, going galloping every morning at sunrise over a sandy plain, followed by quantities of black horsemen, and then by ten miles of beasts of burden carrying things which, after all, will not make the nine madmen even decently comfortable. We have discovered that a mad doctor is coming out here, and we think it must be a delicate attention of yours; but when he sees us ride into Rag Fair every morning, for no other reason than that we have left another Rag Fair ten miles behind, I am sure he will say he can do us no good. It is very kind of you to have sent him, but we are incurable, thank you, and as long as we are left at large we shall go about in this odd way. There is your missing September letter, with T.’s and E.’s dear Journals. It went to Calcutta, and came with the October packet. Newsalls sounds very delightful, and I mean to live there constantly, and to see a great many cricket matches. How very disagreeable that Sister should look so young. I look much older now than she did when we came away, so we shall never know which of us ought to respect the other.
Tuesday, Jan. 22.
We are more mad than ever! – at least we have got ourselves into one of those scrapes that mad people do. There is a wretched little rivulet, a thing not so big as that ditch by old Holledge’s, at Elmer’s End, which we were to have crossed this morning. This little creek, which is quite dry ten months of the year, and at the best of times is only called the Gugga, suddenly chose to rise in the night, and there is now seven feet of water in it, which puts crossing out of the question. There is only one boat, and a helpless magistrate on the other side.
The cavalry and artillery who left us yesterday will of course be stopped by the same river higher up, and Mr. C. has sent to carry off their one boat too; and in the meantime we are at a dead lock. Luckily, there is very good shooting here. I could not imagine this morning why Wright did not come to dress me after the bugles sounded, and I kept sending message after message to her, with a sort of wild idea that everybody would march, and I should be left lying in bed in the middle of this desert, with nothing to put on, and no glass to dress by; a sort of utter destitution.
The hirkaru who slept in the tent happened to speak no English, so I never understood a word of the long Hindustani speeches he kept screaming through the partitions, and at last Wright came, cold and sleepy. ‘Law, ma’am, did not you know the river was full, and we can’t go? and all the things have come back except the kitchen things, so I thought you would like a good sleep.’ Luckily, the kitchen recrossed before breakfast time.
Noodeean, Thursday, Jan. 24.
That little ditch the Gugga is quite pompous with twenty feet of water, and it has been dry for three years, and was nearly so on Monday, so we are just a day too late. We moved eight miles nearer to it merely for the love of moving, and are now at Noodeean – evidently a corruption of Noodleland, or the land to which we noodles should come. I want to leave the last camp standing, and to march backwards and forwards between the two; it would be just as good as any other Indian tour. We came on elephants to this place, careering wildly over the country, that the gentlemen might shoot; there never was anything like the tribes of quails and partridges, but it is very difficult to shoot them from an elephant. The hotty goes lumbering on, and it is just a chance whether the gun that is pointed at a hare on the ground, is not jerked up so as to kill a rock pigeon overhead. G. killed ten quails, which was more than anybody else did. Rajah Hindu Rao, who is now so habitually with us that we look upon him as a native aide-de-camp, took pains to miss, I think, that he might not seem to shoot better than G.
In the afternoon G. went out on foot with Captain X. and shot an antelope, which is really a great feat. There is a Mr. N., the magistrate to whom we rightfully belong to-day, and who ought to be wringing his hands constantly, and plying eternally between our camp and the river, a victim to remorse that he has not made a bridge of boats in time; instead of which, N.’s tents are seen in the distance the other side of the water, and he never stirs from them, and all the notice he has taken of us is a message that perhaps he had better go back and prepare for us at Hansi, as there seems little chance of our crossing for a week. We tell Mr. C. that if he had been N. this never would have happened. He has got two boats from those unhappy regiments up the river, and moreover he has succeeded to-day in recovering great part of Mrs. B.’s stolen property, her bracelets and some of her gowns, which have been buried in some Sikh village, and I fancy are not the better for the operation. The thieves have been sent up to Runjeet, and his justice is rather severe, I am afraid.
C. set off yesterday with all his clerks and establishment, and writes word that by making the villagers work all night, he has passed them all, except the camels, who detest water and will not swim. X. and A. went off this afternoon to pass our goods, and W. went in the evening.
Friday, Jan. 25.
We marched this morning, that is, we rode five miles to this wicked little Gugga, which is not forty yards wide, and yet gives us all this trouble. Captain S. overtook us half-way, and said that he had been detained by finding Wright and Jones at the last camp left without any conveyance. Their elephant, by some mistake, had been sent on to the ghaut, and all the usual spare resources had been sent away last night, so he found them walking. He sent them his elephant as soon as he could overtake it, but they had walked two miles, much to the wonder of the natives.
I never saw such a scene as the ghaut – such a conglomeration of carts, sepoys, bullocks, trunks, &c., and 600 camels, who would not go any way. About 200 had been coaxed over. F. and I went down there after luncheon, and sat on the shore to see the fun. W., X., P., and L. E. had each taken the command of one of the boats; and with one European the natives work very well. They each had on their broad white feather hats to keep off the sun, and a long stick to keep the people from crowding into the boats, and looked like pictures of slave-drivers, and were screaming and gesticulating, and hauling packages in and out. The only way of passing the camels was by tying six of them in a string to the tail of an elephant, who then swam across, dragging them all after him. They did so hate it! I suppose it must be much the same as we should feel if we were dragged through a bed of hot sand, which is what the camels really love. The water was like a deep canal; nothing was to be seen of the elephant but his trunk, and the mahout standing on his back holding on like grim death by the elephant’s ears. The hackeries were pushed into the water, some of them very high covered carts, but they disappeared instantly, and were dragged under the water; then if they stuck anywhere, a dear, good elephant would go in and rake about and push them along with his great hard head. A little further up, there might be seen a troop of bullocks refusing to take the water, and at last driven in, and their owners swimming behind and holding on by their tails. This has been going on ever since Tuesday morning. Captain P. and his sergeant have not had their clothes off for three days, and look thoroughly exhausted. The tent pitchers have also been at work in the water for three days. What I hate most in a camp is the amount of human and brute suffering it induces; luckily, there were no lives lost this time; an elephant picked up one little boy who was drowning. Webb’s tame bear was nearly lost, and when he got into the boat, he turned round to X. and said, ‘I hope, sir, Miss Eden seed me a saving of my bear; it would make such a pretty skitch.’ The villain N. met us at the ghaut, and came to visit us in the morning – not the least ashamed of himself – but he is by no means an unpolished jungle-man: rather the contrary, jolly and pleasant, only that he has nearly forgotten his English. He laughs like that Dr. G. we used to know, and says with a great ‘Ho! ho! ho!’ If it had not been an inconvenience on account of supplies, it is just as well you should have been stopped in this way. You ought to see the hard-ships of a camp life.’ I wonder what the ships of a camp life are which are not hard-ships?