Up the Country

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?

CHAPTER XXXIII

Saturday, Jan. 26, 1839.

WE made our march this morning, but found all the people who had been obliged to come on last night so knocked up that I have persuaded G. to give up his intention of marching to-morrow. We seldom have marched on Sunday, and this is a bad time to begin. In short, it was nearly impossible. The sergeant who lays out the advanced camp is in bed with fever from fatigue.

Wednesday, Jan. 30.

It is four days since I have been able to write. I was ‘took so shocking bad’ with fever on Sunday, caught, it is supposed, at that river-side – that eternal Gugga. Captain L. E. was seized just in the same way, and several of the servants, so we all say we caught it there; but it is all nonsense – every inch of the plains in India has its fever in it, only there is not time to catch them all. I think the Gugga fever is remarkably unpleasant, and I did not know that one head and one set of bones could hold so much pain as mine did for forty-eight hours. But one ought to be allowed a change of bones in India: it ought to be part of the outfit. I hope it is over to-night; but as things are, I and L. E., with Captain C. and the doctor, are going straight to Hansi to-morrow – only a short march of ten miles, thereby saving ourselves two long marches of sixteen miles, which G. makes to Hissar, and giving ourselves a halt of three days to repair our shattered constitutions.

It is so absurd to hear people talk of their fevers. Mr. M. was to have joined us a month ago, but unfortunately caught ‘the Delhi fever’ coming up: he is to be at Hansi. Z. caught the ‘Agra fever’ coming up; hopes to be able to join us at Hansi, but is doubtful. Then N., our Hansi magistrate, looks with horror at Hansi: he has suffered and still suffers so much from ‘that dreadful Hansi fever.’ I myself think ‘the Gugga fever’ a more awful visitation, but that is all a matter of opinion. Anyhow, if N. wished us to know real hardship, fever in camp is about the most compendious definition of intense misery I know. We march early each morning; so after a racking night – and I really can’t impress upon you the pain in my Indian bones – it was necessary at half-past five – just when one might by good luck have fallen asleep – to get up by candle-light and put on bonnet and cloak and – one’s things in short, to drive over no road. I went one morning in the palanquin, but that was so slow, the carriage was the least evil of the two. Then on arriving, shivering all over, we were obliged to wait two hours till the beds appeared; and from that time till ten at night, I observed by my watch that there was not one minute in which they were not knocking tent-pins, they said into the ground, but by mistake they all went into my head – I am sure of it, and am convinced that I wear a large and full wig of tent-pins. Dr. D. put leeches on me last night, and I am much better to-day. L. E. is of course ditto: the Gugga fevers are all alike.

Hansi, Friday, Feb. 1.

I went to sleep at last last night, and am much better to-day; but I see what N. means about Hansi. Such a place! – not, poor thing! but that it may be a charming residence in fine weather; but we have had such a wet day. It began to pour in the night. I am very glad I resisted G.’s offer of giving me half the horses and the shut carriage, for I suspect even with all the horses they will have had some difficulty in making out their long march. Such a road as ours was! – nearly under water. I started in my palanquin, but after the first three miles the bearers could hardly get on at all: they stuck and they slipped, and they helped each other into holes and handed each other out again, but altogether we did not get on. Captain P. was to have driven me the last half of the way in his buggy; and as his elephant was like my bearers – slipping and sticking – we sent on one of the guards for the buggy, and contrived to get on very well in that. When we came to what is nominally called ‘the ground,’ it looked like a very fine lake, in which my tent and the durbar tent and Dr. D.’s were all that were not standing in the water. P. and the jemadar carried me in a chair into mine, and there I was left alone in my glory. He and L. E. took the durbar tent, their own tents having a foot of water in them.

Captain D. went to live with his brother, who has a bungalow here, which he very kindly offered me. It is pouring so again to-night that I wish I had taken it; but then if I had carried off the cook and the dining-tables and the lamps, &c., I thought the aides-de-camp would be wretched, and L. E. is not well enough to go out; but to be sure, these tents! If it were not for the real misery to so many people, the incidents of the day would have been rather amusing. There is not of course a tent for the servants, so they are living in the khenauts (the space between the outer covering and the lining of our three tents), and there are thirty sleeping in my outer room, if room it may be called. The difficulties went on increasing. W.’s greyhounds, ten of them, were standing where his tent (now at Hissar) usually is, and the men said they would die, so we put them in the khenauts and told the dogs that they must not bark and the men that they must not cough, and hitherto they have been very quiet. My syce came to tell P. that my horse was not used to stand out all day in the rain, and that if it did Mr. Webb would kill him. I should assist at the execution, though how the poor syce could help it I don’t quite see. I would have given Orelio my own blankets willingly and put him to bed with my own nightcap on, but unluckily the bed did not come till the afternoon, and was then a perfect sponge. However, we lodged the horse somehow. Then F. had two Barbary goats, which she had ordered on the lemur’s death, thinking they were pretty, soft, hairy things, instead of which there arrived two days ago, large, smooth, bleak-looking English goats. However, she told me to take the greatest care of them when they came up. At twelve, a coolie without a stitch of clothes on, walked in with a Barbary kid on his back, stiff and stark. No interpreter at hand, so where the mother was remained a mystery. F. might have fancied to her dying hour that I had let her Barbary goats die – nobody ever thinks their children or pets are properly taken care of; so I set off rubbing, and made my two boys, Soobratta and Ameer, rub the kid too, and we poured hot things down its throat. We should have been worth millions to the Humane Society, but the kid would not come to. Then I made them dig a hole in the outer tent and put charcoal in it, and when it was quite hot we took out the charcoal and put in the kid – just like singeing a pig; but it was a bright idea, and quite cured it. Just as we had got the little brute on its legs, the mother was brought in, and we went through the same process with her. When they were quite well, they were also sent to sleep in the khenauts.

The bandsmen, who are chiefly Europeans, came to say they had no shelter. ‘Sleep in the khenauts,’ was the only answer; and we gave them what remained of our dinner, for the kitchen was under water. Mr. – arrived, and I asked him to dinner too. It is fine to-day, and the tents came up in the middle of the night. We have got a paper of the 24th November, so the overland has arrived, and G. will bring us some letters to-morrow.

Saturday, Feb. 2.

And he has brought plenty – your’s and E.’s Journals amongst others.

Mahem, Tuesday, Feb. 5.

I was taken with a worse attack of ague than ever as I was writing to you on Saturday, and was obliged to go to bed for two days. Luckily, it went off just before marching time yesterday morning, and I am taking narcotine at all convenient hours. I believe it is a remedy that has been invented in this country – at all events introduced – by Dr. O’Shaughnessy. Dr. D. has tried it in many cases, and it has never failed where the patients can bear it, but it makes many people quite giddy and delirious. I do not mind it at all, and am much better to-day. Two of our bearers, old servants, are dying of cholera from that last wetting.

CHAPTER XXXIV

Wednesday, Feb. 6, 1839.

ANOTHER rainy night, and we have come on to another sloppy encampment, and I am sorry to say those bearers, and two more, have died of cholera to-day – all owing to the wet, Dr. D. says. The magistrate here has politely offered us his house to-morrow, and as Captain P. sends back word he cannot find dry ground for half the dripping tents, U. Hall will be a God-send.

Thursday, Feb. 7.

Dear U.! such a nice, dry, solid house. I suppose it would strike us as small on common occasions, but it looks to me now like the dryest, best built, most solid little palace I ever inhabited, what people call ‘quite Palladian.’ I rather like hitting myself a good hard knock against the thick solid walls, and then the pleasure of walking along the hard floor without fur slippers and without hearing the ground squelch! The quiet, too, is worth its weight in gold (though how it is to be weighed I don’t quite know).

F. and W. went out coursing this evening. G. was detained by letters just as he and I were going out, so I thought it would be polite and sent to ask U. to go out with X. and me; and he brought me a little wooden cup of his own turning, with which I was obliged to be quite delighted, in fact I was; it was a very good little cup, and then he said, ‘I did it from recollection of the famous vase in the Vatican. Does it remind you of Rome?’ I could luckily say I had never been there, but I am not very sure that that little box-wood cup and the mud walls of U.’s house would naturally have brought Rome into my mind.

Sunday Evening, Feb. 10.

We went into our tents again on Friday, with a long march of fifteen miles. The tents were still damp. By twelve o’clock I began to shiver, tried to go out in the afternoon and came back in a regular shake, had a horrid night, and after yesterday morning’s march was obliged to go to bed again with violent head-ache and fever. It has gone off this afternoon, and the day’s halt has been a great mercy; but Dr. D. says he does not think I shall get well in a camp, it disagrees so utterly with me. G. has ascertained there are four good rooms in the Residency at Delhi, which is never occupied now, so X. has gone on with my furniture and servants, and to-morrow I am going to drive straight on there; the camp will come to Delhi on Tuesday. I shall only be half a mile from them, but out of the noise and in a dry house. I have grown just like that shaking wife of ‘Jonathan Jefferson Whitlaws.’

Monday, Feb. 11.

I made out my double march most successfully with three relays of horses. X. rode out to the other camp to show me the way in; he had had all the broken windows glazed, and Mrs. B. had sent curtains; the rooms look very clean and nice. The house stands in a small shady park, with a nice garden, and the quiet is delightful. I went to sleep directly after breakfast, and am better, thank you. W. came on to Delhi to set all his shooting expedition going, and he dines here with X. and Dr. D., who are encamped in the court-yard, and they will drink tea with me. I often think of former days and of being ill at Bower Hall and at Langley, with you and L. taking all the trouble of it, and that it is done in a different method now – X. coming in when I am in my dressing-gown on the sofa, to ask about the numberless articles that a crowded camp necessitates, and saying, ‘I have had relays of bearers for Rosina, because I should like her to be there with me, that she may show me how to arrange your rooms; and is there any particular diet the khansamah should provide? I shall send on the young khansamah, he says he knows what you like; and when I am gone, Captain L. E. begs you will send to him, if you think of anything that will make you more comfortable.’

It is very good of them, poor dears! and I think I give them a great deal of trouble; but then I never meant when I came into the world to be nursed by all these young gentlemen. It cannot be helped; everything in India must be done by men. Giles is very useful on these occasions, and what people do without an English man-servant, I can’t guess.

Tuesday, Feb. 12.

This must go. Such a volume! it may as well go to the Admiralty. G. and F. arrived at the camp this morning, and F. is sitting here. They are only half a mile off, but Dr. D. has made up his mind that I shall not go near the camp till all parties and dinners are over. G. is going to drive me out this afternoon.

Residency, Delhi, Monday, Feb. 18.

I have been staying here a week to-day, with some degree of success, though I had a great deal of fever yesterday. F. went over yesterday with three or four of the sketching gentlemen to the Kootûb, and comes back to-morrow. Dr. D. would not let me go when it came to the time, and indeed it was impossible, as it turned into a fever day, but I should have liked to see it again. I heard from F. to-day, and she says it is more beautiful than ever, and that they shall stay till to-morrow afternoon, for they have found such quantities of sketching to do. It is certainly the place in the plains I should like to live at. It has a feeling about it of ‘Is not this great Babylon?’ all ruins and desolation, except a grand bit or two of magnificence kept up by the king. Then, in the modern way there are nice drives, and a considerable congregation of shawl merchants and jewellers. Our agate mania still continues, and there is no end to the curiosities that have been brought to light, or the price to which they have risen. They have been a great amusement, as I have not been able to sketch, and altogether this is rather a comfortable life for India. F. comes here for two hours in the morning. Captain X. and Dr. D. superintend breakfast and luncheon. At four, G. always comes, and we take a drive, and then, after six, I grow feverish and am glad to be quiet till bed-time; and there is a little undercurrent all the morning of W. O. and Captain L. E., and agates and presents of flowers, &c. Major J. and Captain T. have come over to see us; indeed the whole plain is dotted with the tents of people who have come to see G.; he says he never had so many applicants before.