in- OD oo CO CO o 1EUT.-(aENERAL E F. BURTON OF 1 JNIVERSiTY OF AN INDIAN OLIO. Qi5atlantgne JALLANTYNE, HANSON AND CO. EDINBURGH AND LONDON I' Hi AN INDIAN OLIO - to OF i; ^ RELATIONS University f CaliiV-raia _ BY LIEUT-GENERAL E. F. BURTON OF THE MADRAS STAFF CORPS AUTHOR OF "REMINISCENCES OF SPORT IN INDIA" WITH ILLUSTRATIONS FROM SKETCHES BY THE AUTHOR AND BY MISS C. G. M. BURTON LONDON SPENCER BLACKETT Successors to 3. & &. IHatforll MILTON HOUSE, 35 ST. BRIDE STREET, E.G. [All Rights Reserved} CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. PAGK Madras The harbour Cyclones Storm at Trichinopoly Climate of Madras Monsoon Reptiles and insects White ants Beetles 'and bugs The Mount .Road Gardens Native population Elephantiasis Cruel usage of cattle in India, and of camels in Egypt Society at Madras "People's Park" Fire at fair Pet birds Pet animals Snipe and duck Balapillay Jungle Jungles of the Cauvery Poaching with nets Bear-hunting in Tin- nevelly 1-20 CHAPTER II. Vellore State prisoners Reception "of Governor Sport and climate Parawat Jungle Madras Army Artillery Cavalry Body- guard and Shaik Ibrahim Infantry Sappers Native officers Services of the Madras Army Unfair treatment of it Present condition and usefulness of the army Mutinies on political grounds Emeutes for redress of grievances Military murders Shikarree Sepoys Changed relations between officers and men Power of commanding officers curtailed Improved class of native officers Proposed "Native Sandhurst" Impolicy of depriving native ranks of right of furnishing their own native officers 21-44 vi CONTENTS. CHAPTER III. PAGE Trichinopoly Seringham temples Rock of Trichinopoly Fakeer's roses Tiger in paddy-fields Wolf in cantonment Snipe shoot- ing Animal life in the fields Bees and hornets Governor- General attacked by bees Poisonous snakes Snake statistics Supposed murders hidden in snake-bite reports Toddy cat Cooking in camp Yenison and game Dr. Jerdan and native artists The Mutinies of 1857 Quiet demeanour and steadiness of the Madras Army Causes and signs of the Mutinies Authori- tative opinions on the condition of the Bengal Army The Duke of "Wellington on amalgamation of the three armies Impolitic measures to curtail power of commanders of regiments Race antipathy Baron Hiibner on the Indian Government Vilification of the Government by English writers and orators . . *. 45-67 CHAPTER IV. Journeys in South India Tanjore Fertility of district Exemption from famines Combaconum Education of natives Opinions on education of Sir L. Jackson and Professor Williams Tranquebar Negapatam Point Calimere and its game The fretid swamps Wild fowl and snipe, &c., on swamps Sea fish Curious palmyra palm Palamcottah Paupanassum Courtallum Native Christians Tuticorin Pearl and chank fishery Madura Great temple and palace at Madura Mr. Blackburne's work in Madura Jungles of the Cummum Valley Fever-stricken natives of jungles Pulney mountains Pass in the mountains from Cummum Valley to Travancore The Perryaur project . . 68 91 CHAPTER V. Cummum Valley Dindigul Serroomullays Bison Dangerous encounter with bison Effect of railroads upon game Elephant and bison slaughterers Mahseer Bhowany Rest-house Salem Minerals Unhealthiness of Salem Fever on the Shervaroy Moun- tains Cholera History of cholera Probable causes of cholera Contagion, or infection, or both ? Native ideas on cholera Remedies Dr. Macmichael Madras reports Goddess of cholera and small-pox ! Mahomedans and Hindoos Education of Maho- medans Loyal feeling of Mahomedan community Statistics of Government posts occupied by the races of India Sir Lepel Griffin on "Islam" The Shervaroy Mountains Coffee planting . . 92-119 CONTENTS. vii CHAPTEE VI. PAGE The Blue Mountains Sunkerrydroog Coolies The Colonel and his barracks Approach to the Neilgherries The Coonoor Ghaut The new road to Coonoor Tommy Atkins as a naturalist Coonoor Ootacamund Living on "the hills" "Want of sanita- tion and conservancy Game on the Neilgherries A tiger story Wolves and snipe shooting Tigers on trees Spring of a tigress up a rock Ferocity of panthers and leopards Leopard's larder Climate of the Neilgherries Amusements at Ootacamund Neil- gherry hotels Native servants on " the hills " Aboriginal in- habitants The ' ' Todas " Discovery of the Neilgherry plateau Probable extinction of the Todas The " Burghers "The " Koo- runibahs " . ^. . . . 120-141 CHAPTER VII. Mysore and Bangalore Climate of Bangalore The Maharajah Brah- minical influence Hill forts Gold-mining in Mysore Lhol Bagh Flowers, fruit, and vegetables Snakes and snake-charmers Jugglers Poisonous snakes Dr. Shortt and his cobra Death of an officer by snake-bite Shooting in Mysore Mr. Sanderson, "the Elephant man" Kestrictions upon sport in Mysore and Hyderabad Food of the soldier in India Cooking and cooks 111 effects of native cooks in barracks British soldiers should cook for themselves Health of Bangalore Enteric, properly jungle, fever Bad water supply Population of Bangalore Eurasian farm colony Bad class of Mahomedans at Bangalore . . 142-162 CHAPTER VIII. Cuddapah The climate Scenery Jungle fires A disgusted native officer The cataracts of the "Bogga" Camp ab Peddagadee Vicious flies in jungle Winged pests Mosquitoes Sand-flies Eye-flies House-flies Bugs and beetles Mason bees Ichneu- mons Winged ants Creeping pests Tarantula Harvest spiders The white ant Red ant Little red ant Great black ant Pro- cessionist ant Scorpions Centipedes The Shikarry Porcupine dog Pea-fowl Malabar squirrel Loris Manis Nullamullah mountains Diamond digging Town of Cuddapah Murder of a civilian Punishment of murderers Unhealthiness of Cuddapah 163-182 viii CONTENTS. CHAPTER IX. PAGE Cumbum Lake find tanks Wild-fowl and snipe Sugar-cane fields Wild cats and jackals Pardees Cumbum fish Perrun Murrel Comb-fish Carp Coturna Eels Rookchal Breach in lake outlet Buffalo sacrifice Travellers' tales Condition of people of India Simple wants of ryots Dress of women Authorities on condition of Indian people Sir W. Denison Mr. Macpherson Self-denial of a Hindoo villager Sir Richard Temple on con- tent of the people of India Native officials Opinion of native judge Opinion of Mr. Prinsep Indebtedness of ryots Bombay Commission on agrarian riots Hindoo law of debt Report of Commission Sir R. Temple on condition of the ryots Cholera at Cumbum 183-201 CHAPTER X. Bellary The rock fort Leopards and Hyaenas Profile of the Duke of Wellington on craggy hill Railway Dry climate of Bellary district Prevalence of fever Sport, past and present Darojee and its tank Wild-fowl and snipe Shooting on road to Gooty Camp life The "Paddy-bird" and strong drink Drunkenness in India The Government duty on liquor a great check to drink- ing "Tulsi the grasscutter" Ill-treatment of native women in India The Hindoo child-widow Hindoos should themselves agitate for abolition of "child-marriage" An engineer's dis- covery in geology ! A hysena attempts to carry off a baby Pro- ject for irrigation of Bellary Plain Water the life of India . 202-223 CHAPTER XL Secunderabad Climate of the Deccan Spear-grass The subsidiary force A show parade The Mowlally races Secunderabad in 1845, then and now Kaissera Death of a panther Small game in the rains Rock pigeon Rain quail Insects Tortoise and elephant Old woman and a wild beast Wild beasts in villages Tiger and bears in railway station Folly of following wounded tigers and panthers "on foot" Instances of deaths by wounded tigers Strong vitality of savage animals The city of Hyderabad Dangerous population Fights in the city Improvement under Sir Salar Jung's government Street crowds Tame tigers Elephants in city Dangerous elephants in the streets . . 224-245 CONTENTS. ix CHAPTER XII. PAGE The streets of Hyderabad Nobles and their equipages Marriage pro- cessions Nautch girls Funerals Meer Allum tank Ministers' pic-nic Golcondah Sport in vicinity of Hyderabad Putten- cherroo Kundy Sedasheepett Arnagoontah Muggrumpilly Changalare The Boogga valley Warungal and the Percall Koolpac Brahmins Snipe and duck at Kooramul Godavery jungles Yellmullah jungle The Hoossain Saugor Hyderabad sanitation Secunderabad bazaars Mahorum and Dusserah Taboots The 4th Native Infantry Taboot at exhibitions at Mad- ras and Meean-Meer . . 246-265 CHAPTER XIII. Kamptee Description of cantonment gardens Fruit, flowers, and vegetables Melon culture Great flood in the river Rainfall Fever and cholera Advantages of conservancy at Kamptee Population Native poaching Dhoondee Potail and the hog Sport at Kamptee Camp at Soorgaum Chandpa Boree Meejra Chankee Kopra Kotumba The Pench jungles Chindwarra The Kolbeira river Boodwarra Snipe and duck shooting Chakee and Chakoda Munsur Chappagaree Kohie Paldee Great fish, and how to catch them The Paldee tiger Bravery of a shikarry Government elephants Ailments of elephants and remedies for them Tiger-shooting Hints on procedure in beat- ing for tigers Decline of tiger-shooting in Nagpore Its causes Tigers should not be killed off too much Bears, wolves, and hyaenas Mad jackals The Tent Club Hog-hunting meet . 266-289 CHAPTER XIV. Nagpore Battle of Seetabuldee City of Nagpore Population Character of the Mahrattas Cheap litigation Story of a barrister and a Mahratta client Nagpore villages The Gonds A Moslem Gond rajah Village life in the grain-fields Seetabuldee The Eesidency Ambajirree and fishing The Paddy-bird and his fishing Roads and railways Wurroorah and Mohpanee collieries Frost at Nagpore A veteran of seventy years' residence at Nagpore Nagpore jungles My shikarry and the blue bull The new Indian police Dislike of the Sepoys and inhabitants of India generally x CONTENTS. PAGE to the police Untrustworthiness and oppression by the police Cases of police torture Opinion of Public Service Commission Savage tribes of Central India Human sacrifices "Johur" Superstition and credulity .Ridiculous scares .... 290-309 CHAPTER XV. The Northern Circars Samulcottah Small game on racecourse Godavery anicut Sepoy regiment in the olden time Strange head-dress Turband as a travelling bag The knapsack Musketry course in former days Misapplied rewards for good shooting The Colonel and the square The facetious orderly-boy The Sepoy's foot-gear Evils of boots without socks The Afghan sandals A General's inspection Cheap living in Samulcottah A shower of fish Fires in lines Pykarow hanged Chicacole Bear shooting Antelope, duck, and snipe Plover Native ideas of conservancy Dirty villages Waltair Decay of veteran com- pany Funeral of pauper native Vizagapatam Harbour Project Snakes at Waltair Cobras and Hamadryads Black ants . 310-331 CHAPTER XVI. The western coast of India Luxuriant vegetation The rainy season Mould and mildew Cannanore Villages and their gardens The Wynaad Jungle leeches Mountain forests Elephant, bison, sambur, bears, and hog Tigers and panthers, &c. Reptiles Small game Snipe-shooting Fish and fishing "The rod in India" Natives of Malabar and Canara Brahmins, Nairs, and Teers The Moplahs Strange undress of Hindoo women Opinions of " Tommy Atkins " 011 the women's undress Moplah outbreaks The drummer and the Moplah Outcast tribes of Malabar An outcast beggar The Abbe Raynal on the wild outcast tribes The seeding of bamboos Basle Mission Cannanore fort and roadstead Railway from Madras to Beypore . .... 332-349 CHAPTER XVII. A command in Burmah Andaman Islands Convicts, European and native The Rangoon river Shoey-dagon pagoda The Rangoon strand Busy scenes Old Rangoon Great trade of the new city Character of the Burmese Their cruelty and indifference to CONTENTS. human suffering Bumptiousness of the people Their extreme laziness Superior activity of Burmese women Appearance and dress of Burmese girls Tattooing Poonghees Climate Sport in Burmah Difficulty of the jungles Scarcity of game in the forests Elephants Other large game Peafowl and pheasants Snipe-shooting Crocodiles and pythons Hamadryads and cobras The tuktoo Fruit-market The Dorian Gnapee Inefficient police Mistaken policy of Burmah Government Unfortunate radical measures Disloyalty and incompetence of Burmese offi- cials Feeble policy of both civil and military authorities India is taxed for Burmah Tobacco tax desirable Future prospects of Burmah Emigration from India should be encouraged . . 350-370 CHAPTER XVIII. From Rangoon to Calcutta The Hooghly "Garden Beach" The "Great Eastern" Hotel The "Maidan" Insanitary condition of Calcutta Hindoo indifference to conservancy Mr. Justice Cunningham's lecture An executive Sanitary Commission wanted The Calcutta municipality Cholera and malarial fever The "Ilbert Bill " Opinions of Europeans on it Rancour of Calcutta Baboos Anecdote by Sir M. Grant Duff Sir Syed Ahmed at Lucknow Sir Lepel Griffin's speech? at Gwalior Probable out- come of "India for the Indians" Lord Macaulay on the Ben- galee race Trust of the people of India in the British Govern- ment Terrible failure of justice related by the Hon. Mr. Thomas The Pooree Rajah's conviction Trial of the Guicowar Judge of Madras Supreme Court on native evidence 111 feeling engen- dered by the " Ilbert Bill "Sir F. Roberts on the Bill Scurrility of Hindoo newspapers Loyalty of Indian princes Baron Hiibner on the government of India ..... r- L 371-388 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. No. - 1. ENTRANCE TO SHOEY-DAGON, RANGOON Frontispiece. 2. CAMP IN JUNGLE . . . . . . To face page 56 3. SCENE NEAR PALAMCOTTAH .... 82 4. TIGER-SHOOTING FROM TREE .... 136 5. NATIVES WITH CASTING-NETS .... 188 6. "PADDY-BIRD" STALKING DUCK ... 210 ' 7. ELEPHANTS BATHING ,, 280 8. BUDDHIST MONASTERY, RANGOON . . * . 358 AN INDIAN OLIO. CHAPTEB I. Madras The harbour Cyclones Storm at Trichinopoly Climate of Madras Monsoon Reptiles and insects White ants Beetles and bugs The Mount Road Gardens Native population Elephantiasis Cruel usage of cattle in India, and of camels in Egypt Society at Madras " People's Park " Fire at fair Pet birds Pet animals Snipe and duck Balapillay Jungle Jungles of the Cauvery Poaching with nets Bear-hunting in Tinnevelly. MY volume on " Sport in India " having met with a favourable reception, I am tempted once more to try my fortune as an author ; and, at this second essay, to touch upon subjects of general interest which, in a work avowedly dedicated to sport, could find no proper place. Not that sport shall be excluded from these pages I see no reason why it should be so moreover, I rather think it would be very difficult for me to write a book on Indian subjects without bringing in "Shikar" pretty freely. Like Mr. Dick's memorial in " David Copper- field," the ruling thought can hardly be kept out : instead of " Charles the First " read " Sport and Natural History," and my meaning will be plain enough. A 2 AN INDIAN OLIO. Having passed the greater part of my life in the " Benighted Presidency," I may properly commence with some notice of Madras itself. Though not exactly a " city of palaces," this Queen of Southern India, and oldest British settlement in India also, shows well from the sea. The palm-crowned sandy shore, with back- ground of dim blue hills shimmering in the hazy distance, the tall masts in the harbour and offing, the spires and minarets embowered in rich tropical foliage, please the eye of the approaching voyager ; the massive bastions of Fort St. George, encircling a group of two-storied bar- racks and offices, and then a long low line of merchants' houses, and the multitudinous mean and clay- daubed native huts of "Black-town," are seen to stretch for some miles along the strand. Beyond, to the south, are scattered mansions, usually called " garden houses," built by magnificent civilians in the happy days when the " pagoda tree " dropped its golden fruit to the smallest shake ! Beautifully do these houses show, " bosomed high in tufted trees ; " with the deep dark verdure of the mango, the peepul, and banian are interspersed the feathery casuarina and graceful bamboo, prettily contrasting the heavy tree masses with their lighter forms. Opposite the native town, and not far from the tall pillar of the lighthouse, are the outstretching arms of the new harbour, now (in 1888) rapidly advancing to com- pletion. Already this ambitious work, intended for a safe haven (but where, in cyclonic weather, there can be CYCLONES. 3 no safety), has been heavily damaged by occasional storms ; and it needs no prophet to foretell that, sooner or later, a " first class" hurricane will probably wreck the structure almost beyond repair. Ships caught in a heavy cyclone within the harbour will surely be destroyed ; and this is ad- mitted by the fact that, when the barometer shows coming foul weather, the first act of the marine authorities is to order all ships, whether outside or inside, to put to sea ! In truth, the only use of the harbour and its iron pier is in fine or moderate weather, when it is a great com- fort to all who " go down to the sea in ships," and a great help also in the speedy loading and unloading of cargo. A cyclone on the Coromandel coast is a terrible exhi- bition of the power of the winds and waves. With a fast falling barometer, and moaning gusts of wind pre- ceded by drenching rain, and ragged drifts of cloud flying before the storm, the full fury of the hurricane rushes up, seeming to blend the leaden sea and dull grey vapour, the drifting rain and salt biting spray, in one bewildering mass of confusion. The tortured trees groan and twist under the fierce blast ; grass roofs, torn from their sup- porting walls, rise in the air, and career, like huge bats, over the plain. Native huts collapse, tiles fly, and ill- built and rickety walls and fences are torn down. All animal life, human and quadruped, seeks shelter ; and many wretched birds crows, kites, &c. are whipped to death by the lashing branches of trees in which they have taken refuge. The sea rises in confused tossing 4 AN INDIAN OLIO. waves, and flings itself in huge billows upon the sandy shore. Such ships as have not in good time slipped and put to sea, at the repeated warning of guns fired from the fort, strain furiously, high pitching at their anchors ; and, should the cyclone be one of great severity, are driven broadside on to the fatal beach. In May 1850, the morning after a very terrible cyclone, I walked the whole length of the broadside of the Suli- manee, a large ship which had been dashed on shore, and of which one whole side was lying flat, like an overthrown park paling, on the sand. On another occasion, at Trichinopoly, I saw the result of a similar hurricane inland. The morning after the storm, I essayed to walk from my house to the farther end of the station. The road was lined with very old large banian and peepul trees, which the day before had formed a perfect shade with their massive spreading branches, impervious almost to the mid-day sun. This morning all was changed ; the road was impassable, more than half of the magnificent old trees were prone on the ground, their branches so entwined and smashed up that not even the lithe and unencumbered natives could crawl along the highway, which for many days, until cleared by the axes of a hundred labourers, was entirely closed to traffic. The cyclone months on the Coromandel coast are May and June, October and November. At other times of the year such storms are almost unknown. In the storms which, commencing with 1780, have been noted for more MONSOON. 5 than a century, only two or three are recorded as having occurred in other months. At no season of the year is the climate of Madras very pleasant. The heat is usually great, the atmosphere close and steamy, but tempered in the afternoon by the cooling sea-breeze. At its first sighing gusts all the heavy cane blinds and room-darkening jalousies are drawn up, and the grateful wind enters the hitherto closed rooms, stirring the chandelier drops with a merry sound, from which they are not inaptly designated the "joy bells " when their jingle falls upon longing ears. When the north-east monsoon arrives, and heavy clouds mount up tier upon tier, wind-driven over the darkened sky; and when rain falls, first in heavy drops, and then in rushing torrents ; when the roadside ditches and kennels run fast with reddened water swirling along under a buoyant covering of leaves, sticks, and straws accumulated during many months of dry hot weather ; when the thick coating of red dust is washed from the reviving shrubs and trees ; then does Madras enjoy, for a while, a purer, cooler climate. The glossy crows no longer sit, with beaks wide open, on verandah walls ; loud croaking frogs squat on the margin of every puddle, and sing their joyful paeans to the rain. The rainbird's monotone is loudly shrieked ; strange insects wake to life and creep abroad. Snakes, driven from their hiding-places by the flooding rain, crawl into huts, and many bare-legged natives are bitten at such times. Scorpions and centipedes also invade the huts, 6 AN INDIAN OLIO. and hosts of less noxious insects creep, and hop, and fly over the moistened plain. Winged white ants, bursting from their deep-seated nests, especially swarm ; the flickering flight of their gauzy wings glitters in the occasional sun-gleams in every direction, and they afford a fine feast to greedy crows, which assemble in noisy troops to devour the helpless visitors to the upper regions before they can cast their wings and wriggle away into safe concealment. At such times, wherever a light is seen after nightfall, there winged ants fly in thousands. Lamps are at once surrounded by a whizzing host ; and I have seen heaps of these ants swept up into the corner of a mess-room, so as to require large baskets for their removal. These ants are much relished by the natives, and bushels of them are caught by placing earthen vessels under the cavities of the ant-hills with lighted oil-lamps over them. The ants are attracted in thousands, and drop, with singed wings, into the vessels beneath. At such times also, hundreds of beetles, great and small, drone and whir in every open room, and flop on floors and tables, lying with feebly scrabbling legs on their sharded backs. These are mostly inoffensive ; but two species, commonly called "green bugs," though one of them is clothed iii russet brown, are disgusting in smell, and if touched, or worse, crushed on one's person, emit a most nauseous odour. Every damp coppice and every little swamp is alive with fire-flies, their green light sparkling like living emeralds among the leaves. MOUNT EOAD GAKDENS. 7 Madras roads being metalled with laterite, the fine red dust raised by traffic in dry weather is very trouble- some, especially to ladies, whose gay dresses and bright bonnets suffer abominably. The long road which runs from the Mount to Fort St. George, and which is the main line of communication between all parts of Madras, is especially afflicted, and " Mount Eoad dust " has a very evil reputation with fashionable people. This road, from the Mount half-way to the Fort, is bordered by cultivated fields, and by orchards of fruit trees, mango, guava, and pomegranate, and by well- watered gardens thick with broad-leaved plantains with their heavy drooping fruit-clusters, and abounding in every kind of Indian vegetable; the thorny egg-plant with its ivory-white fruit shot with purple, green and white striped pumpkins and cucumbers, and snake gourds hanging their slim curved lengths from light trellis frames. Here likewise the rough stalks of the "bayndee," of which the many-angled pods, filled with glutinous seeds, are, when picked young and well boiled, a delicious vegetable. Many kinds of spinach, gay patches of " chillies " (most biting of peppers) reddening for the harvest, onions, long white radishes, and climbing beans in great variety reward the assiduous care and watering of the half-clothed gardener. Everywhere is the " lodge in a garden of cucumbers " met with, a rude frame of bamboos thatched with pal- myra leaves, in which the cultivator takes his siesta, and 8 AN INDIAN OLIO. his pinch of tobacco deftly rolled in a green leaf, in the midday heat ; and if there be fear of two-legged or four- legged depredators, he remains all night wrapped in his unbleached sheet, or his rough black blanket, according to the season. Hard by, under umbrageous mango or tamarind trees, his patient bullocks lie tethered at night, and also in the heat of the day, until they are required for service of the watering bucket, which they are ever drawing, with its dripping load, from the snake-haunted well, and pacing backwards, toilsomely, to let the empty bucket be again lowered for its next draught of water. Truly, in India, water is all that is required to make the desert blossom like a rose. The fertility of the soil throughout the peninsula is amazing ; though cultivation goes on year after year almost without manure, there seems to result no exhaustion of the soil, no abatement in the fruits of husbandry. Such is the aspect of the country for four or five miles of the road from the Mount to Madras, diversified with occasional hamlets and roadside bazaars with small knots of wayfarers resting and chaffering for refreshments both solid and liquid, and coolies toiling along the broad red road under baskets of country produce carried on their heads, which escape being " pilled " by this constant carrying of loads only by having a circular pad of old rags worn on their crowns. On nearing Madras the Mount Eoad becomes more like a street, though still bordered by avenues of trees NATIVE POPULATION. 9 and occasional "garden houses," now mostly converted into hotels, where dirt, neglect, and bad cooking reign supreme. Now are long lines of shops and bazaars, and the road "is crowded with people of all castes and classes, clad and unclad, white (though not many), brown, and black; fat Chetties and Pillays (money-getting castes of Hindoos) ; well-clad Moodeliars (a higher caste), usually of good family and fair complexion ; greasy Banians (shop- keepers), with bare heads and shaven polls, naked above the waist, with thin cotton cloths wrapped round their loins ; well-featured, rather dissipated-looking Mahome- dans in gay turbans and skull-caps, white muslin jackets, and silk, satin, or striped cotton trousers usually of bright colours, crimson, purple, or orange, or else of white linen, the produce formerly of Indian looms, but now, as often as not, of those of Manchester ; half-castes (who, however, prefer the classic * designation " Eura- sian "), light and puny in figure, Oriental in complexion, and dressed in either cotton checks or white linen jackets and trousers, and with vast pith helmets on their heads. Here are also met native soldiers in red serge, or in khakee (dust-coloured) uniforms, much looser and more comfortable than those of their fathers and grandfathers, with whom I was acquainted in the " forties." Great numbers of dusky females likewise perambulate the streets, and squat and gossip in the shade of the tulip trees which line the roadway. Most of these women are " withered, and wild in their attire." Having io AN INDIAN OLIO. outlived the fleeting graces of girlhood, they are hard in feature, leathery in skin, and shrill and harsh in voice, and their fusty, sunburnt hair lies in hideous tangle on their unkempt heads. But other and more pleasing forms are not rarely met with. The younger women and girls, who take feminine pride in their appearance, and duly comb and braid their well-oiled sable tresses, and adorn their dusky ears and noses with golden gauds, relieve the generally squalid appearance of the throng with their many - coloured jackets and gaily-bordered wrappers. The Mahomedan women, of whom, by the by, only the old and ugly are allowed to appear in public, are shrouded in flapping sheets of unbleached cotton, and are far from picturesque in their appearance. A very common and painful sight on the Madras roads is that of natives afflicted with elephantiasis. Men so afflicted stump along without apparently feeling in- convenienced by the enormous "elephant leg" which they carry with them. Bad quality of drinking water is supposed to have much to do with the prevalence of this complaint. In the Annual Eegister for 1769 is a remarkable entry "Several large stills, containing 2500 gallons each, are making to be sent to Madrass (sic) in order to render the water of that place, which is brackish, sweet and fresh." By the way, how is it that this terrible disease affects one leg only, the other being slim and sound enough ? I have never seen a pair of elephant legs. CRUEL USAGE OF CATTLE. II The traffic of vehicles on the Mount Eoad is incessant and varied. Prom the handsome equipages of "Euro- peans," attended by gaily dressed syces (running foot- men), to the jutka, a kind of box upon wheels, usually occupied by three or four half clothed and perspiring natives, and drawn by the most miserable of ponies, every kind of conveyance, whether horsed or bullocked, helps to raise clouds of stifling red dust the whole length of the crowded road. Hard and cruel is the lot of the draught cattle em- ployed by the " rnild Hindoo : " rarely is an ox seen with a whole unbroken tail. By constant twisting at the hands of brutal drivers, the joints of the poor animals' tails are dislocated and wrung out of shape, and even broken off short ; while their scarred bodies, cauterised in a dozen places, evince the equal brutality of native veterinary treatment. The slightest ailment gives occasion for the hot iron. For a stomach-ache the wretched animal is fired over the nose ; for a cold in the head it is fired under the tail. Everything seems to go by contraries, and the hot iron is the almost sole remedy used by the bullock owners. Nor is the treatment of the sacred (!) animal any better in the rural districts. Overladen and exhausted teams are met with on every country road. Where such roads dip down into sandy watercourses, or cross the beds of rivers dry or nearly so iu the hot season, miser- able bullocks, exhausted by dragging carts over the deep sand, are urged on by the most inhuman expedients. 12 AN INDIAN OLIO. Besides the use of the goad i.e., a sharp spike fixed on the top of every whip handle the poor brutes are beaten furiously, sometimes on the body, sometimes on the horns ; their tails are never out of the driver's hand, and every dislocated joint is again and again twisted. Not seldom, as a last resource, fires are lighted under the unfortunate creatures' bellies as they lie, dead beat, on the burning sands. Another, and, I believe, the most efficacious as well as one of the most diabolical means of getting the last ounce of strength and the last nicker of vitality out of a done bullock, I once myself saw exercised in the bed of a river. One of a pair of cart bullocks would not get up ; it lay quietly on the sand, impregnable to all attacks upon head, sides, and tail. My syce (native groom) went to the scene of action, pushed aside the cartmen with the remark that they were not up to their work, took a strong thin cord from his haversack, and wrapped it tightly round and round the bullock's nostrils and muzzle. The bullock smelt death ! His breathing was utterly stopped ; he made a few convulsive efforts to draw breath, and finding suffocation imminent, sprang to his tottering feet, ready for another supreme effort to aid his yoke-fellow in toil. It was clear that, unless so utterly exhausted as to be unable to move a limb, the poor animal's obstinacy, or disability, whichever it may, could not resist the deadly stoppage of breath. How- ever, I did not approve of the expedient, and went for that syce. ILL-TKEATMENT OF CAMELS. 13 Whether there is a branch of the " Cruelty " Society in Madras I am not aware ; but it is much needed in the interests of the unfortunate beasts of draught and of burden. The wretched ponies which draw native vehicles are not only half starved, as evinced by their skeleton frames and staring coats, but are cruelly galled by saddle and harness, and are driven in this state without attract- ing notice to their wrongs. Not only in India, but in other Oriental countries, an utter want of humanity towards the brute creation is the rule. Once at Suez I strolled out to the great camel encampment beyond the town, and was horrified at the state of the camels, which, divested of their pack saddles, were standing or lying on the scorching plain. All of them were shockingly galled and covered with sores ; many of these sores were more than a handsbreadth each way, and eaten deep into the flesh. The Arab cameleers were dressing these wounds, clearing them of handful s of maggots, and stuffing in various remedies, apparently turmeric, &c. The groaning and roaring of the tortured animals was terrible to hear. Helpless for good, I fled the ground ! Society at Madras is not very lively. Though the short morning hours, before the sun is too high in the heavens, are good for outdoor exercise, early rising is not much in favour. Men who are so fortunate as to have employ- ment are at their office work, under swinging punkahs, from ten or eleven in the morning till four or five in the afternoon, and then wend their way home, and to " the 14 . AN INDIAN OLIO. beach," until they and the ladies who had remained indoors until the shadows were well lengthened from the west drive languidly up and down the beach, close to the ever-sounding surf, or draw up their carriages at the band stand. At dusk carriages also congregate at the club, a fine building which enjoys the reputation of being the best institution of the kind in all India. Garden parties are numerous, where lawn tennis, having long ago ousted the tamer game of Badminton, is played with vigour, not- withstanding the great heat of the climate. Except the beach, it may be said that there is no place of public resort. The Botanical Gardens are little visited ; the " People's Park," thus named by its founder, is relegated pretty much to the people, i.e., the natives, for whose delectation it was planned. In this swampy but well laid out pleasaunce there are boats, baths, and a small menagerie, including (or which, when I knew it, did include) a tail-less lion, whose caudal appendage had been playfully bitten off by a fellow- captive. Here, for some few years past, has been held an annual fair, which, on one occasion, through the almost incredible folly of its managers, who filled the enclosure with ranges of leaf and grass structures of the most inflammable kind, ended in a great conflagration, causing a holocaust of several hundred natives, who were burned to death or suffocated in the fiery ring. The menagerie, with its scanty collection of beasts and birds, being in a different quarter of the park, escaped damage. PET BIRDS. 15 Natives of India, Mahomedans especially, are fond of bird pets. Men and boys, carrying little bamboo cages covered with white cloth, roam over the grass lands catching grasshoppers for their favourites, of which the chief are grey partridge, calling cheerfully, though cap- tives, in their darkened cages ; and larks and crested bulbuls, which pipe their merry song, seeming not to know what freedom means. The green paroquet is also a great pet, and enlivens its master's or mistress's hut with its glib talk in Hindu- stani, or Tamil, or Teloogoo, according to the speech of the family in which it has been reared. If kept in an English household, it learns not only many sentences of words, but also to whistle tunes with accuracy. I once had one which talked very well in short sentences, and whistled " Eory O'More " in fine style ; but as it usually finished off with fearful screeches, I got tired of its noise, and gave it away. The little weaver bird, which builds its pensile nests on twigs of trees overhanging wells and water-holes, is a great favourite also. It will fetch and carry, and (a wicked trick taught by its masters) will pick off the "teeka," a red wafer-like mark of caste, from the fore- heads of Hindoo girls, who are carrying well-balanced vessels of water on their heads. Good-looking girls are usually chosen as victims of this " mechancete." The maina (grackle), especially the large variety, known as the hill maina, found in the north of India, is a handsome and lively bird, and can be taught to 16 AN INDIAN OLIO. speak almost as glibly as a parrot. It will imitate any sound, even the most unmusical the barking of dogs, mewing of cats, and the harsh cries and cackles of the poultry yard. Four-legged pets are not very common with natives. Now and then a big fighting ram is seen following his master, ready to take the offensive against either man or beast, should occasion offer. Long-bodied, fluffy dogs, something of the Maltese type, are popular among the women, and are rather clever in learning tricks. They often carry two sticks Or bamboos in their mouths, with gay-coloured silk or cotton wrapped round the twirling ends; and where great education has been given they will carry these sticks tipped with burning slow-match, to the pride and delectation of their owners. These dogs are commonly known as " Custooree," signifying " musk ;" and from its frequency as a name it has been applied to the whole race of messan curs in India. The country round and about Madras is not very in- teresting. There are extensive plantations of casuarinas along the .sandy shore, and the wind sighs amid their branches with a peculiar melancholy sound. Tanks, large and small, are numerous, and irrigate great stretches of rice cultivation. Some shooting may be had by journey- ing an hour or so on the railway towards Arconum, for there are from October to March abundance of snipe, and very wild duck and teal on the swamps and tanks. Farther on the line of rail, beyond the famed pagodas of Tripetty, where tigers are said to wander, harmless and BALAPILLAY JUNGLE. 17 unharmed, over the high scarped mountains on which the temples stand, is the Balapillay jungle, the haunt in former years of all kinds of wild beasts, from the lordly bison (gaur) to the smallest of the deer kind, and in which, even now, though the jungle has been pierced and partly destroyed by the railway running through its depths, are a goodly remnant of animals left to reward the zealous sportsman. It is best to alight, with tents, &c., at the little road- side station, near which the ruins of the Balapillay bungalow still stand in a small clearing, hard by a deep tank of no great size, environed by heavy jungle. Hither, in bygone days, I once came for sport, and found the tank to be full of large murrel, for which the bungalow Sepoy was fishing with mauy bamboo rods stuck into the slimy bank, to which were tied stout lines armed with hooks, baited with live frogs squattering in the water. The jungle was thick, and afforded cover to all kinds of game close up to the clearing. Vast tracts of tall forest and heavy bamboos overhanging the swamps and watercourses extended to the low hill ranges, which thrust their thornclad spurs into the low lands. Pea-fowl and jungle-fowl swarmed in every nullah, and the barking call of spotted deer was ever heard. Our party of three saw marks of tigers in several nullahs, and we sat up at night for them without success. We shot a few spotted deer, and had good sport with small game, jungle-fowl, imperial pigeon, and, in some cultivated patches, hares, partridge, and quail. B 1 8 AN INDIAN OLIO. Another good venue, for bears especially, is the jungle on the bank of the Cauvery river, accessible in one night's rail from Madras to the station of Womaloor, whence the Veeranoor jungle, which is about two miles from the left bank of the river, is twenty miles. A very nice place for a tent is on the fields of the deserted village of Veeranoor, close to a rocky hill, which often contains both bears and panthers. From this camp a great range of jungle is commanded ; and at the village of Sampully, across the Cauvery, and four miles from Veeranoor, another fine range may be explored, as well as the Paullamullay mountain and its heavy jungle, abounding in tiger, bison, &c. I must, however, write with considerable reserve as to big game to be now found in jungles which I have tra- versed in old times, for they may be, and probably are, not so well tenanted as when I wandered, gun or rifle in hand, through their pleasant glades, though I do not much think that the Veeranoor and Sampully wilds can be so very different from what they were when I first knew them. The small hills which, range after range, border the Cauvery are full of dens, and afford a succession of fastnesses to both bears and panthers, and are sufficiently far from beaten tracks to have preserved a good deal of their former character as sporting localities. The villagers in this part of the country are sad poachers : they keep enormous nets, each village fur- nishing two or three lengths of perhaps a hundred yards each made of stout card. On battue days, many villages POACHING WITH NETS. 19 assemble with their bundles of nets, and with spears, clubs, and dogs, and spread the combined line of cordage across a large tract of jungle among the hills, and then, with aid of their dogs, have a grand drive of hills and valleys, rousing out bears, hog, and deer, and every now and then a royal tiger, which, once entangled in the falling nets, becomes as helpless as the less dangerous animals, and is speared to death by the excited and shouting throng. Once, when riding along the bank of the Cauvery, I was met by a host of villagers in Indian file, with what appeared to be small barrels, or puncheons, on their heads, and which on nearer approach I found to be rolls of nets. Each man had also a broad-bladed spear or a club in his hand, and there was a numerous attend- ance of dogs, all in a state of high delight, with tails fast wagging in anticipation of a good day's sport. The wild hog is the chief and favourite object of these battues ; all, from the grisly boar and lanky sow to the little striped squeakers, are good fish to the owners of the nets and spears. While on the subject of sport as enjoyed by the people of Southern India, I may mention an extraordinary plan of shikar, which is made use of by denizens of the plains at the foot of the hills in the Tinnevelly district. These hills abound in bears, which, after the manner of their kind, descend at nightfall into the plains and valleys, enjoying their meal of grubs and ants, and also sweet toddy which is collected in small earthen vessels hung on the stems of the low date-trees which fringe the watercourses. Bears do much mischief to these stores of '20 AN INDIAN OLIO. toddy, breaking the chatties, and guzzling the palm juice as it runs out. . To circumvent the robbers, four or five sturdy men, guiltless of all clothing save a scanty breech-clout, are armed, two with long spears, cross-barred on the handles close to the sharp two-edged blades, and two or three with ten-foot bamboos, of which the ends are smeared with bird-lime. Thus equipped, and leading several powerful Poligar dogs (a hairless breed much renowned for strength and fierceness), the party sally out an hour or so before dawn, and coast along the base of the hills with the fresh morning wind blowing up from the plains below. If they are to have luck, it is not long before the fierce dogs wind the bear ; and though this species hunts as silent as death, their straining on the leash informs their masters that the shaggy game is nigh. The dogs are slipped and disappear in the darkness, and soon a terrific roaring and growling shows that the jfight has begun. The hunters run up to the spot where the bear is fighting with the dogs, sorely hampered by their combined attacks, but still making way as fast as its enemies permit to its wished for den on the hillside. And now the men with limed poles dash up, one or two on each side, poke the bear in the ribs, and adroitly twist the ends in its long hair, thus holding it fast on either flank. The spearsmen also run up and complete the tragedy by repeated spear thrusts. It is said that a party of experienced men with good dogs never fail to bring the bear to bag in this way. CHAPTER II. Vellore State prisoners lleception of Governor Sport and climate Parawat Jungle Madras Army Artillery Cavalry Body- guard and Sbaik Ibrahim Infantry Sappers Native officers Services of the Madras Army Unfair treatment of it Present condition and usefulness of the army Mutinies on political grounds Emeutes for redress of grievances Military murders Shikarree Sepoys Changed relations between officers and men Power of commanding officers curtailed Improved class of native officers Proposed "Native Sandhurst" Impolicy of depriving native ranks of right of furnishing their own native officers. VELLORE is one of the prettiest stations in the Carnatic Though situated on a wide plain, there is no want of fine scenery close by ; for out of this plain arise many hills of picturesque form, studded with rocks and enlivened with noble trees ; and there are spreading groves, chiefly of the dark-leafed rnango, on the plain itself, marking sites of villages and hamlets, and thickly clustered round the cantonment and the native town. The ancient forts which crown the summits of steep hills dominating the town are now in ruins ; but the fortress which stands below is of modern construction, though it contains an old pagoda now utilised as an arsenal or store depot. Within this fortress are ranges of barracks, officers' quarters, &c., and a large block of 22 AN INDIAN OLIO. buildings formerly used as residences for state prisoners, of whom many, of various creeds and countries, have been here confined. In 1840, besides descendants of Tippoo Sultan, was the young King of Candy, a scion of the royal family of Ceylon ; and when I was on guard in the fort I used to see this boy riding his pony round the parade square. He wore a white cap of many corners, something in shape like a Chinese josshouse, wanting nothing but the bells to make it a very perfect resemblance to such an edifice. Vellore, which is now only a depot for native regiments on foreign service, was in those days a well garrisoned and lively station. There was a Brigadier and several staff officers ; a brigade of two native regiments occupied the lines. Soon after I joined my regiment at Vellore, Lord Elphinstone, Governor of Madras, visited the station. The light company, under its captain, and with myself its subaltern, mounted as a guard of honour at the brigadier's quarters, where his lordship was to be a guest. We paraded very early in the morning, and after waiting a while the monotonous cry of palanquin bearers was heard approaching. We pulled ourselves together, and as the palanquin came under the portico our captain ordered "present arms" in a most sonorous voice, when, to his and our horror, a wizened object tumbled out and said "His lordship is following!" It was the French cook ! SPOET AND CLIMATE. 23 Presently the palanquin carrying " his lordship " dashed up with double noise of grunts and howls of its bearers, and the "present arms" and shrill bugling were gone over again ; but it was too early for the noble traveller to be dressed and ready for such a reception. He was in his sleeping suit of light and airy cut and material, and with a coverlid thrown over his shoulders he rushed into the house and disappeared. We did not hear the last of the fiasco for some time ! We liked Vellore as a station very well, especially as there was good shooting to be had in its vicinity. Under embankments of numerous tanks, where strips of swampy ground extended into the rice-fields below, on the borders of little stagnant pools surrounded by tall flags and tufted rushes, snipe were very plentiful, and we had many pleasant outings in the cooler season of the year. I say cooler season, for it is never cold, or even very cool, at Vellore. The one blot upon the fair reputation of the station as a pleasant residence is the lack of a real cold season. Too far inland to benefit by the fresh sea breeze which tempers the heat of the seaboard of the Carnatic, the wind sweeps hotly over the arid plains, which, except in the short rainy season, lie brown and bare in the glaring sun- shine. There is, a few miles from Vellore, a lofty mountain, by name Koilasghur, where a small bungalow was years ago built by an enterprising engineer officer. Steep and difficult of access, this mountain is notwithstanding re- sorted to by picnic parties, for its two thousand feet of 24 AN INDIAN OLIO. height afford a welcome change of climate from the hot plains below. On this mountain retreat tigers are not unknown, and have more than once been met with on the hillside, to the consternation of pleasure parties who were neither prepared for nor seeking such dangerous company. About twenty-four miles east of Vellore is the lovely forest jungle of Parawat, full of bison, sambur, and spotted deer, and stretching away to the Jawady and Coollery mountain ranges, which rise to three or four thousand feet, and which years ago contained herds of elephants, at times known to wander even so far west as Parawat. The jungle is one of great beauty; its hills are well wooded, and its valleys, intersected by brawling mountain streams, are filled with dense forest and masses of tall bamboos. On great banian and peepul trees in the clearing which surrounds the village of Parawat were flocks of green pigeon, climbing with parrot-like toes from branch to branch, and uttering their strange melodious whistle, so unlike that of any other Indian bird. Imperial pigeon also, great fat fellows, with bronze and slate-coloured plumage, frequented those trees, and likewise the high forest along the watercourses in the deep jungle. At Vellore I made my first acquaintance with the Madras army, and passed my drill under native instructors supervised by a smart adjutant. I had likewise the services of the regimental Moonshee, a handsome black- bearded Mahomedan, among whose hirsute honours, MADE AS AKMY. 2 however, time had begun to strew some silvery threads. Thus my education in drill and in the vernacular (i.e.> Hindustani) advanced with equal pace. In 1840, the time of which I am writing, the Madras army was fully officered, and was in a state of good discipline and efficiency. The artillery were remarkably good. I have never seen smarter work than that of the Native Horse Artillery, of which, as well as of European, there were several troops. The men were all Eajpoots and Mahomedans, tall, strong fellows (one Eajpoot jemadar was six feet four inches in height), and imbued with the utmost esprit de corps. The foot artillery guns were drawn by bullocks of a fine race, bred by Government in the Mysore country for army purposes. It was wonderful to see these animals manoeuvre. They would drag their guns over the most rugged ground (so long as there was no sand) almost as well as horses. In these native batteries the gunners, or " Golundaz," were part Mussulmans, and part Hindoos of various castes. The drivers, who were not armed, were styled Gun Lascars, and were mostly men of inferior and even low caste. The mutinies of 1857 were tne death of the native artillery throughout India : it was seen to be more politic to keep the cannon out of native hands, and all batteries are now manned by Europeans. As regards the Indian cavalry, there were, when I came to India, many regular, and few irregular regiments. The Madras Light Cavalry were a smart and soldier-like body, in handsome French grey uniform, but far too much 26 AN INDIAN OLIO. assimilated in equipments to British dragoons. They were chiefly Mahomedans of Southern India, notably of Arcot, where the pensioners and families of the eight regiments (now reduced to four) seemed to gravitate as to a cherished home. The horses were Arab, and country- bred, of no great size; but active, and well up to the light weights of the men. The early history of the Madras cavalry is full of incidents showing their good material and fitness for war when opportunities were given for display of conduct and valour. They were raised by the Nawaub of the Carnatic, and officered by Europeans, about 1768, and transferred to the East India Company's service in 1784. Their regiments fought abreast of British cavalry from that time in all the Mysore, Mahratta, and Pindaree wars, and the 4th Eegiment in particular was so associated, in quarters and in the field, with the ipth Dragoons, that it was long known as the " Black ipth." At Seringapatam, Mahidpore, and Assaye, under the great Duke, then General Wellesley, their sabres gleamed redly. The pages of Orme, that facile princeps of his- torians of India, show how well they fought, and how distinguished were their native officers. It needs only to turn to the record of Subadar Cawder Beg, 4th Cavalry, and Subadar Shaik Ibrahim, of the bodyguard, to know what the Mussulman troopers of the olden time could do in battle. The bodyguard, a troop of about a hundred men, was also greatly distinguished in the field. At the siege of SUBADAR SHAIK IBRAHIM. 27 Punjalumcoorchy, in the Poligar war of 1801, it charged and broke up a body of spearsmen thrice its number, and in a desperate combat lost its leaders and nearly a third of its number in killed and wounded, including Subadar Shaik Ibrahim. A general order of Government recorded as follows : " A rare combination of talents has rendered the character of Shaik Ibrahim familiar to the officers of the army ; to cool decision and daring valour he added that sober judgment and those honourable sentiments that raised him far above his rank in life. An exploit of uncommon energy and personal exertion terminated his career, and the last effort of his voice breathed honour, attachment, and fidelity." A few days afterwards a jemadar of the bodyguard, with only six troopers, came across a body of the enemy over two hundred in number, killed their leader, and with his little knot of men cut his way out of the crowd of foes, but was immediately afterwards shot. Before engaging on this desperate service he sent word to his commandant that "he would discover that there were more Shaik Ibrahims than one in the bodyguard ! " I have seen the tombs of these brave men, and of several other officers, both British and native, still standing on the bleak plain where the fort of Punjalumcoorchy was so gallantly defended by the Poligar spear and matchlock men. Not less famous in the history of the bodyguard was its last deed of arms at Seetabuldee in 1817, when, with the 6th Bengal Cavalry, under the brave Captain Fitz- 28 AN INDIAN OLIO. gerald, it charged and overthrew an army of eighteen thousand Arabs in pay of the Nagpore Rajah, and de- cided the fate of that hard-fought battle. Several tombs of officers slain at the siege and battle are carefully pre- served on the Seetabuldee Hill Fort. From that time, with exception of the present Bur- mese war, with exception also of some desultory cam- paigning against the mutineers in Bengal, the Madras cavalry have seen but little service in the field. Re- duced from eight to four regiments, and with six or seven British officers only to a regiment, instead of from sixteen to twenty in former times, they have yet kept up their good name, and have done excellent service against the Burmans. The Madras Native Infantry were embodied at various times, commencing with 1758, when the ist Regiment, styled "Poorana," i.e., the old regiment, was raised. In the ranks of this infantry are men of every caste and of every language known in Southern India ; also a small proportion of Oudh men, and of Mahrattas, who find their way south for enlistment. Some regiments hold a large proportion of Tamil Sepoys ; others have a great preponderance of Teloogoo men, chiefly from the Nor- thern Circars. In all, there are a considerable number of Mahomedans, ranging from one-third to one-fourth of the whole body ; formerly the Mahomedans were more numerous in the ranks than they now are. The Raj- poots and Mahrattas number perhaps from thirty to fifty in a corps; and native Christians, inclusive of the band, INFANTRY AND SAPPERS. 29 the same. The drummers and fifers are Eurasians, the native blood in them generally showing more strongly than the European. Thus in a Madras infantry regi- ment the tongues spoken are English, Hindustani, Teloogoo, Mahratta, Canarese, and Tamil. The Mal- yalum speaking people of the western coast do not enlist. The men are not tall, but there is no want of activity and of strength in proportion to their size. They are mostly well featured, but dark in complexion ; they are always ready to work with spade and pickaxe, an excel- lent trait which the Bengal Sepoys do not so commonly possess ; they are good marchers, frugal feeders, and possess, in short, many good qualities on active service. They have few caste prejudices, and when properly led are fully as reliable as their more showy brethren of the other presidencies. Separate mention must be made of the regiment of Madras Sappers. This excellent corps, whose reputa- tion is high throughout India, was raised in the latter part of the eighteenth century, and its long roll of badges and honours testifies to the eminent services of this hard-fighting and hard-working corps. It bears on its appointments the Koyal cypher with Seringapatam, Egypt, Assaye, Bourbon, Java, Nagpore, Mahidpore, Ava, Lucknow, Central India, Per ok, Afghanis- tan, Egypt (Tel-el- Kelir), Suakim. Some companies have a dragon with China, Taku Forts, Pekin. Some have also Meeanee, and Hyderabad, and Pegu, and Persia, 30 AN INDIAN OLIO. aiid Abyssinia. If the regiment could only be sent to Europe, it would have almost as good a right to the proud title " Ubique " as the Eoyal Engineers by whom it is officered. As the sappers stand in the van of the Madras infantry, though separate from them, this notice may be completed by adding that the corps is composed almost entirely of "low caste" men, inhabitants of the Carnatic in general, and of Madras in particular. There is also a sprinkling of Southern Mussulmans. As a rule, the native officers are low caste men also ; there are seldom more than one or two Mahomedans among them. The men are short and sturdy, mostly dark, and not so well featured as the infantry Sepoys. They affect the " European," speak English more or less, and unhappily carry the imitation so far as to have a corresponding love of strong drink ; but nevertheless they are a body of real soldiers, brave, enduring, and hardy to a degree, and with very great esprit de corps. The reorganisation of the Indian army, so injurious to the cavalry and infantry, has not much affected the sappers. They are still under complete European con- trol, for their companies, mostly detached from head- quarters, have always one or more European officers and several sergeants and corporals besides their complement of native commissioned and non-commissioned officers. To return to the native infantry. Until the "re- organisation," which placed the officering of regiments upon the same footing with the " irregulars," always NATIVE OFFICERS. 31 excepting selection of officers, which was so great a feature in irregular corps, the complement of British officers was on a very sufficient scale. The strength of regiments was altered from time to time, but taking as a common strength eight companies of a hundred men each, every regiment had on its roll a colonel (non-effective), lieu- tenant-colonel, major, six to eight captains, eight lieu- tenants, and six or eight ensigns. Of this total number probably eight or ten were away on staff duty or on furlough, &c., leaving fourteen to eighteen officers with the colours. There were also two native officers, as now, with each company, usually old and time-worn men, who had risen slowly and painfully from the grade of lance- naigue to the non-commissioned and commissioned ranks. Still among these old native officers there were excep- tions. In my first regiment I specially recollect two excellent subadars, Hindoos of good caste, who spoke and wrote English perfectly, were as smart and well instructed as any European officers, and having received promotion when quite young, were in their prime when they attained commissioned rank. The system was, however, such as to advance a great many men who, though good and steady soldiers, were too old to have any chance of rising to commissioned or even non-commissioned rank while they would be efficient ; hence many of both grades were in reality past work, and only fit for the invalid or pension list. Nevertheless, there being British officers in command of every company, the old coast army got on well enough, 32 AN INDIAN OLIO. and did good service when it had the opportunity. It fought against the Trench, and against Hyder Ally and Tippoo Sultan ; it fought under General Arthur Wellesley at Mahidpore, Amboor, and Assaye ; also in the Poligar war, and against the robber hordes of Central India; likewise at Nagpore and at Sholinghur, where the 2Oth Madras infantry behaved most gallantly, and bear to this day a third colour in memory of one captured from Hyder Ally ; and in Burmah, in the former wars of 1 824 and 1852, as well as in recent campaigns of 18856-7, which, though not fruitful in honour, have yet been very much so in privations, hardships, and even hard knocks. It shared with British soldiers in the campaigns against the Bengal mutineers in Central India; also it has been more than once engaged in China. In these wars, and on many other occasions both within and with- out its own territory, the Madras army has always done good service. In Afghanistan, though kept back in favour of Bengal regiments which were pressed on to the front out of their turn, its men were second to none in endurance, cheerfully and healthfully bearing the rigour of so ungenial a climate. Madras has, not without reason, been termed the " Cinderella " of the Indian presidencies, and assuredly its army has shared in this ill-treatment. Tor many years past, until Sir Neville Chamberlain denounced the unfairness and impolicy of systematically keeping the Madras troops in the background, it was denied any SERVICES OF MADRAS ARMY. 33 opportunity of distinguishing itself, and was treated, especially after the mutinies, with spiteful contempt: When the Bengal army went to wreck, and the Bombay troops were also confessedly shaky, there was no sign of mutiny in the old coast army ; and since that time most bitter feeling has been manifested whenever Madras native troops have been discussed in Bengal prints. Writers have made it their business to run the Madrassees down on all occasions ; their merits have, however, been done justice to by the present Governor- General, Lord Dufferin, and by officers high in command in Burmah. Doubtless the Indian army, not in Madras only, has suffered in efficiency by the reduction in the number of British officers in regiments ; but the Madras Sepoys have nevertheless, as proved in Burmah, marched well, fought well, and endured hardships well. Their native officers, likewise, under an improved system of promotion, by which younger men than heretofore have been raised to the commissioned rank, have exercised independent command, and done their duty in it in a most praise- worthy manner. There has probably been here and there an instance of slackness or unsteadiness among the many thousand men, both of Bengal and Bombay as well as Madras, who have been employed in Burmah ; but the Bengal papers have taken care to preserve silence on the laches of their own troops, but have industriously sought out and exaggerated all rumours affecting the Madrassees. There is ample testimony to the bravery and good c 34 AN INDIAN OLIO. services of the coast army. Search the pages of Orrne, of Malcolm in his " Political History of India ; " read the lives of Olive and Coote ; and greatest authority of all, the Indian despatches of the great Duke himself, and there will be found no want of just appreciation of the Madras Sepoy. Tew names are more renowned in India than that of native Commandant Mahomed Esoph, who fought under Clive and Coote from 1748 and on- wards, a man of heroic mould, worthy to rank among the best soldiers who have ever drawn sword. If the Madras Sepoy is now of less worth than he was in the days of our first struggles for empire in India, it is because of disuse to war, and of enforced inactivity to which the dominant policy of the Supreme Government has of late doomed him ; and likewise owing to the ruinous reduction in the number of his British officers, a misfortune which he shares with the armies of the other presidencies. When British officers of native corps marched at the head of their companies, there was no thought of hanging back even when pitted against an enemy vastly superior in numbers no possibility of defeat by Eastern foes, however overmatched by such enemy's hordes. The evil to an army which has become mortified and dispirited by neglect and contemptuous treatment is very serious, and no protest against such treatment can be too strong. It is on account of this ill-treatment that the Madras army needs an advocate. Once let it have a fair share of active service, and its turn in the front line POLITICAL MUTINIES. 35 with the men of the other presidencies, and it will perform its own advocacy in a sufficiently practical manner. I will now advert to matters which must be impar- tially rendered, though they may in some ways militate against the good character which I have been endeavour- ing to set forth for this army. Of no soldiery can the history, especially of mercenaries as the armies of India must be confessed to be, show an entire freedom from mutinies and like crimes of more or less gravity; and though the Madras troops have been second to none and superior to many in loyalty and discipline, still there have been occasional mutinies of regiments, and also individual murders of officers, which require relation, and of which the cause should be laid bare as far as possible. There have been two political mutinies one by two native regiments at Vellore in 1 806, a terrible mas- sacre, which was successful for a few hours, but was completely quelled and sternly and fully avenged by the 1 9th Dragoons and the " Black I pth ; " and another, more properly a conspiracy than a mutiny, for it was stopped while hatching by information given by an accomplice. This conspiracy was concocted by certain adherents of the descendants of Tippoo Sultan, and men of influence in one or two native regiments stationed at Bangalore were concerned in it. The ringleader was the Mahomedan drill havildar of the 9th Eegiment Native Infantry, who was convicted and blown from a gun on 36 AN INDIAN OLIO. the parade ground. Some others were also found guilty and punished in various ways. All other emeutes have been in the nature of protests, more or less stained with mutinous conduct, against real or supposed breach of faith on the part of Government in matters affecting the allowances of the native army. In such matters, Sepoys, no matter of what presidency, are most sensitive ; their pay and allowances are the great bond of union between them and the Government they serve ; and any attack upon their emoluments is certain to cause immense dissatisfaction ; and if not settled according to precedent and (in their eyes) justice, is likely enough to occasion a most serious breach of discipline. Another class of military crime, viz., the murder of officers, European or native, by one of their own men, has been by no means infrequent, any more than in the armies of the other presidencies, and in the British army also. I have, during my service, known many instances. The causes are varied : sometimes hatred of the particular officer, with or without just cause ; sometimes refusal of promotion or other advantage; sometimes, also, wrath, nursed till it became a passion, at a punishment pro- bably justly inflicted; and not unfrequently from no apparent cause at all, except to gratify a morbid, even insane, desire to "kill some great one," and so to "get a name " in the army, as has been expressed in a boasting way by more than one such murderer. But, except in such instances, when the innate SHIKARRY SEPOYS. 37 devilry of the Oriental temperament bursts through its usually phlegmatic, apathetic covering, the Sepoy is a quiet, even-tempered soldier, attached to his officers, especially if he has known them long ; clannish as regards his regiment, which he usually considers as the best of all possible regiments ; and conservative in everything. No man upon earth can have a greater idea of the wisdom of forefathers and the superiority of bygone days, and of almost obsolete habits and customs. "What was good enough for my father and grandfather is good enough for me " is a very common saying in the mouth of a Sepoy when he is called upon to admire some im- provement in the drill, or in the regulations, or the dress of his service. With his will he would have none of them ; but he is as docile as he is conservative, and submits. Many men in a native regiment are exceedingly fond of sport, and nothing delights them more than to be taken out on a shikar expedition. In every regiment that I have served in, I have had a little band of men always ready to accompany me into the country at the shortest notice, and who were hand and glove with my long-legged shikarry, Venketasawmy. Most of them were privates ; but now and then I enlisted the services of a zealous naigue or havildar, and it was amusing to see how the " Paddy-bird " (my shikarry) asserted and maintained his superiority when in the jungle over the better born and better brought up non-comrnissioned 38 AN INDIAN OLIO. officer. " Havildar Jee," he would say (" Jee " is a term of politeness in addressing a Mussulman), " you know all about ' Left Eight ' and ' who cum dhare/ but what do you know about jungles ? Tell me " (pointing to some half obliterated impressions on the sand of a nullah), " what marks are these?" The havildar had to confess his ignor- ance, and the long-legged shikarry triumphed exceedingly. Forty years ago the relations between the Sepoys and their British officers were much more intimate than they now are. When off duty the men considered their officers as friends rather than masters, and this cordiality of feeling was thoroughly reciprocated. Not only the native officers, but the privates also, made constant visits to their company officers, and opened their minds freely to them on their family affairs, their wants, and wishes. They were always, in those days, encouraged to do this ; but when, after a long absence on staff duty, I returned to regimental duty as a commandant, I found that this good feeling and intimacy between officers and men had very much diminished. For one thing, the men knew that the officers had no firm standing in the regiment, and that they were liable to removal to other corps at the shortest notice. More- over, the tendency of army rules and regulations had been to diminish the power of regimental officers, espe- cially of commandants. About the time of the mutinies, commanding officers had been invested with power to summarily reduce havildars and naigues to the ranks, and discipline had gained much thereby. It cannot POWER OF COMMANDANTS CURTAILED. 39 be too strongly urged that officers serving with native troops should have all possible authority vested in them according to their several grades, most especially com- manding officers of regiments. These should be as free as possible from the trammels of centralisation, and should be looked upon by their men as the supreme dispensers of rewards and punishments ; but the summary power of which I have just made mention was very soon taken from them. It happened that at Madras itself a hot-headed Irish commandant became incensed against a havildar who was on duty at his quarters. The man committed some fault which deserved no very severe notice, but the comman- dant, losing all discretion in his anger, seized a pair of scissors belonging to a tailor who was working in the verandah, and then and there cut the chevrons off the havildar's coat, thereby reducing him to the ranks. The unfortunate man, overwhelmed with shame and despair, rushed off at speed to Fort St. George, and threw himself at the feet of the adjutant-general. I do not recollect how the unbecoming conduct of the commandant was disposed of, but he was not, I think, deprived of his command, but advised to take furlough. Instead, there- fore, of removing an officer from a post which he had proved himself unfit for, the opportunity was taken, for the fault of one, to throw discredit upon the whole body of commanding officers, by cancelling the power of sum- mary reduction a power which, when properly exercised, and on the understanding that officers who did not show 40 AN INDIAN OLIO. themselves fit to exercise it would not be considered fit to hold a command, was most conducive to maintenance of good conduct, and to proper performance of their duty by the non-commissioned ranks. The effect of this and similar action has much weakened the power of commandants, and has produced an ill effect upon discipline. Of late years the number of anonymous petitions to officers commanding divisions and brigades, and to army headquarters also, has greatly increased, the more so that, instead of such petitions being disregarded, or, at most, sent without comment to commandants of corps, they have been commonly forwarded to them " for report." When mud is thrown some of it will stick, and no men are better aware of this than natives of India, who con- sider anonymous charges and complaints to be their most powerful weapons, coupled, as their use generally is, with perfect safety to those who use them. I have already made mention of the native officers, but more remains to be said. Much fault has been found with them, as a body, for incompetence and want of zeal. The native officer of the present day (1888) is, however, a different style of man from the typical subadar of thirty or forty years ago. At that time, when native regiments were amply supplied with British officers, most of the subadars and jemadars were very elderly, often very old men, advanced as a matter of right from grade to grade, because their feet had some decades previously been placed upon the ladder of promotion as lance-naigues. IMPROVED CLASS OF NATIVE OFFICERS. 41 Once a naigue, nothing but death, entire failure of health, or misconduct could stop the man's 'advancement ; it was an almost unheard-of thing to put one non-commis- sioned or one commissioned officer over the head of another. As years went on (and an Oriental saying is, " The world goes round like a wheel "), these hitherto vested rights came to be questioned, and many veterans were disagree- ably surprised by having more efficient juniors promoted over their grey heads, and being told, when they remon- strated against so unheard-of a proceeding, that they might take their pensions and enjoy well-earned rest in their native village ! And so it has gone on till promotion by seniority has become obsolete, and promotion for efficiency, both mental and bodily, is the rule. The result has been good ; the native officers have become more self-reliant, and have acquitted themselves much better in independent com- mands, vide the many instances in Burmah in 1886-87, where small parties of Sepoys, of all presidencies (Cin- derella not excepted), have routed large bodies of Burmese rebels, or Dacoits, whichever term may be considered best applicable. There should be no difficulty in making a good selection of one man out of a hundred, which practi- cally is what is done when a native officer is appointed, especially when it is remembered that very many of the men are born soldiers, whose fathers and grandfathers, and even more remote ancestors, have served under British colours. It is a much cherished ridit of a regiment that its 42 AN INDIAN OLIO. native officers shall be chosen from its own ranks that, to travesty a well-known saying, every Sepoy carries a subadar's epaulettes in his haversack. This right should not be lightly meddled with, nor should the idea of bringing in outsiders be entertained. Great heartburning will assuredly ensue among the native soldiery if the practice of bringing native officers from outside, already, I believe, made trial of in some regiments, be generally adopted. There are, of course, as in most things, several dis- advantages attendant upon the regimental promotions. Native officers have too many family connections and family or friendly interests in the corps for strict im- partiality ; probably their own brothers and sons are in the ranks, looking up, as is natural enough, to the head of the family to push them on in promotion. Doubtless this militates against discipline, for the native officer is likely enough to be partial, and to screen his relatives if in trouble, as well as to advance their interests when he has the power to do so. But for this it is not difficult to find a remedy. A rule can be established that a havildar on promotion to jemadar shall be removed to another corps, and that no relation of a native officer shall be allowed to serve in that officer's company. This would obviate the objection, and good soldiers would still retain their right, and right it ought to be, to rise to the highest grade in the native ranks. It cannot be too strongly insisted that, by de- priving the Sepoys of this right, universal great and just PKOPOSED " NATIVE SANDHURST. 33 43 dissatisfaction will be felt throughout the army, and that a falling off in spirit and in attachment to the service will be the result. A plan has lately (1887) been mooted and argued in some Indian newspapers for a "Native Sandhurst," the avowed object being to establish a native military college for "all classes of the native community" in fact, to throw open to all comers, for competition, military commissions, so that the commissioned ranks of regi- ments shall be filled with young men entirely uncon- nected with the body of the working soldiers, to the lasting injury of the whole native army. The arguments advanced in favour of this scheme are, first of all, that such neophytes, having already received a theoretical and (in a very small degree) practical training in military matters, would be capable of render- ing valuable assistance to the European officers. But what training, for the role of a native officer, can be better than the practical knowledge of a soldier who serves from his early youth with the colours, and who is selected from a hundred or more of his fellows ? As to education, these selections are now invariably men who. are required to pass stiff examinations in both scholarship and military duties. Another argument is that with which I have already dealt, that " nothing is so detrimental to duty as the indis- criminate association which now goes on between native officers and those under them." This I grant, but I be- lieve that a sufficient remedy can be found in the measure 44 AN INDIAN OLIO. which I have recommended, i.e., to promote men as jemadars into other regiments. This would do much, but I question whether anything can be devised to put a stop to caste and family favouritism among Orientals, the very essence of whose lives is intrigue. The prevalence of intrigue in all native regiments is well known to their British officers, and it would prevail just as much with native officers appointed by competition as it now does with men who rise from the ranks. On the political question involved I do not desire to say much. It seems to me, however, as I think it will to those who know the native army, that there would be a danger in forming a class of officers who would possess, or imagine that they possess, high military knowledge ; and who would, it cannot be doubted, in event of trouble again arising in the native army, exercise an influence which was not possessed by the native officers of the mutinous regiments in 1857. ( 45 ) CHAPTER III. Trichinopoly Seringham temples Kock of Trichinopoly Fakeer's roses Tiger in paddy-fields Wolf in cantonment Snipe shoot- ing Animal life in the fields Bees and hornets Governor- General attacked by bees Poisonous snakes Snake statistics Supposed murders hidden in snake-bite reports Toddy cat Cooking in camp Venison and game Dr. Jerdon and native artists The Mutinies of 1857 Quiet demeanour and steadiness of the Madras Army Causes and signs of the Mutinies Authori- tative opinions on the condition of the Bengal Army The Duke of Wellington on amalgamation of the three armies Impolitic measures to curtail power of commanders of regiments Race antipathy Baron Hiibner on the Indian Government Vilification of the Government by English writers and orators. FKOM Vellore to Trichinopoly is a convenient transit. As I spent seven years, i.e., from 1851 to 1858, at the latter station, I had an intimate knowledge, not only of Trichi- nopoly itself, but of the whole southern division, of which it was the headquarters. In September 1851 my regiment moved from Vellore, and our last camping ground was the stony plain of Samiaverarn, known as the place where Olive was nearly taken prisoner by a French force, which, however, was ultimately defeated. As morning dawned we saw the temple-crowned rock of Trichinopoly outstanding in the coming sunlight in 46 AN INDIAN OLIO. one bare mass of ruddy granite above the endless cocoa groves which fringe the banks of the rivers Cauvery and Coleroon. Soon we came under the long shadows of luxuriant trees and bamboos rustling in the light morning wind, overhanging the sandy road which leads to the two rivers, both of which are spanned by fine bridges, and between which lies the sacred island of Seringham. The Coleroon, which branches off from the Cauvery about ten miles above the bridges, is there blocked by an anicut or dam of solid masonry, and shows nothing but a barren waste of sand, except when a heavy rain-fresh in the Upper Cauvery causes the swollen stream to over- top the dam. Six miles or so below the bridges the Cauvery and Coleroon again unite their courses, thus forming the island of Seringham. This island is exceedingly fertile, and filled with orchards and gardens, and in it is the vast enclosure of the renowned Seringham Pagoda, covering more than a square mile of ground, and containing within its walls a large Brahmin town, as well as the great temple, with gateways towering high above its evergreen groves and thickets. From the south end of the Cauvery bridge to the old fort which girdles the rock is but a short distance, and here we skirted the stone walls, since demolished, famous for sieges in the last century, and whose crumb- ling bastions yet bore the marks of the Frenchmen's battering cannon. The great rock is over four hundred feet in height ; and besides the Pagoda buildings, the lower parts of ROCK AND TOWN OF TRICHINOPOLY. 47 which were utilised as an arsenal and powder magazine, the fort contains a large native town and bomb-proof barracks, giving what was in former days considered fitting accommodation for a British regiment ; also many public buildings, and officers' quarters round a large stone- walled tank filled with lotus plants, and swarming with fish mostly of the carp tribe. The native town nestles round the outer walls of the Pagoda, and overflows also in populous suburbs, and garden houses, and bazaars, without the fort walls. Although Hindoos preponderate, there are a great many Mahomedans in the town and suburbs, many of them being men of substance and of good family. There is no very good feeling between them and the Hindoos ; but of this more hereafter. One very objectionable part of the Hindoo population is the " Kullar," or thief caste, who furnish " Cowulcarras " (watchmen), whom every resi- dent must keep in pay if he wishes to remain unrobbed. A few months ago (in 1887) a Nepaulese nobleman touring in India was robbed at Tuticorin of jewels and money to value of nearly two lakhs of rupees, and it is supposed that Kullars, who are found as far south as Cape Cornorin, committed this depredation. There is a passage up to the temple on the rock wide enough for the Pagoda elephants which pass daily, with band and banners, to the shrine of the deities. This passage has steps cut in the rock, wherever its steepness requires such aid to those who traverse it, and by it the summit is gained, and a magnificent view is obtained of 48 AN INDIAN OLIO. the fort, cantonment, and wide expanse of rice- fields, irrigated from the bountiful river, and melting in the far distance into the high plain studded with smaller rocks the "Golden" and the "Fakeer's" rocks, the "French" rocks, and the great walled Pagoda rock of Elimiseram, which rears its high temples four miles east of Trichinopoly on the road to Tan j ore. At the Fakeer's rock, an old Mahomedan derwesh resided, and cultivated a garden filled with beautiful roses. He used to lie in wait in the morning for ladies and gentlemen riding round the racecourse, which is close to the rock, and present them with " fresh-blown roses dipped in dew." Towards Christmas he paid visits in the can- tonment with a large tray of his roses, and a ready purse to receive donations from those who had accepted his flowers during the past twelvemonth. The delta of the Cauvery, as seen from the apex of the rock of Trichinopoly, is one mass of verdure : rice-fields, gardens and orchards, and sugar-cane plantations, fed by innumerable channels, and intersected by line upon line of spreading cocoa groves, afford a pleasing picture ; the well-cultured fields shining with the green young "paddy," or ripe and yellow to the harvest, according to the season of the year, and filled with cultivators, both men and women, in checkered clothing, stooping in long lines over their daily work. In 1851, and for some years afterwards, the station was garrisoned by artillery, cavalry, and infantry, well housed in lines and barracks ; but now its glories in this TIGER IN PADDY FIELDS. 49 way have departed. The iron horse, with its inevitable crowd of employes, European and native, has taken pos- session of it ; not even sparing the ample parade ground, where the railway now stands. The garrison is reduced to a wing of native infantry, and some depots of regi- ments which are serving in Burinah. There is no large game near, that is, within a morn- ing's ride of Trichinopoly ; but the yapping bark of the fox is still heard on the racecourse, floriken are plentiful near Samiaveram, and snipe shooting of rare excellence can be enjoyed in the irrigated fields and along the reedy watercourses round the station. I recollect, in the fifties, a tiger being discovered, sadly draggled and smeared with mud and slime, in a swampy field on the bank of the Coleroon, about three miles below the fort. It was supposed that he had come from the mountains, Collamullay or Puchmullay, full thirty miles north of where he was found, and that he was overtaken by daylight in that unpleasant locality ; where, an alarm being raised, he was speedily mobbed, and shot to death by a horde of matchlock men. About the same time, a wolf was found in the Judge's " compound," a great wilderness of a place on the border of the Wycondah channel, and he was speedily chased and shot by some officers who heard of this strange visitor to the cantonment. Antelope which strayed from the Poodoocottah country were sometimes to be seen on the dry uplands beyond the racecourse. When, from 1851 to 1858,! was quartered at Trichi- D 50 AN INDIAN OLIO. nopoly, and had a house in the suburb of Warriore, I used to find snipe in the rice-fields close under the hedge of my garden. We sallied out nearly every day in the season, and pursued our sport until the mid-day heat and the fatigue of our ploutering through the thick mire made us desirous of rest in the nearest cocoa-grove at hand, where we drank the cool water from the burly nuts, which the owners were ever ready to bring down for the remuneration of a few coppers. It is curious to see a native climb for cocoa-nuts or for toddy. With a strap between the ankles, and a stiff leather and straw band or hoop round both the tree and his loins, and which he holds before him, he jumps, as it were, with stiffened legs up the smooth perpendicular tree trunk. Sometimes alone, sometimes with one companion, I went out in my buggy (Anglice trap), drawn by first-rate trotting bullocks, and stopped at the rice-fields which lay along the Tanjore road about four miles from Trichi- nopoly, and which were watered from the irrigating channels of the Cauvery river. Among these fields were numerous patches of fallow ground, overgrown with long grass and rushes, and gay with wild flowers, especially a prickly plant with a thistle-shaped purple blossom. These fallows were full also of holes where buffaloes had wal- lowed, and where slimy mud afforded rich feeding ground for snipe. Here we made good bags, wading in line across the embanked fields, often counting ten to twenty couple to ANIMAL LIFE IN THE FIELDS. 51; each gun in a morning's shooting. When half through our day's sport we would rest, and have our lunch basket out, under shade of a thick clump of trees, and stay for perhaps an hour watching the swarming animal and insect life around us. Often did little blue and orange kingfishers alight near us, intent on pursuit of their finny game in the wells generally found in these cool retreats ; or the large mottled black and white bird of the same genus was seen hovering, with rapidly vibrating wings, over some adjacent channel, ever and anon dropping like a stone into the stream, and again emerging with a tiny fish in its beak, with which it flies off to a naked bough or a tree stump to discuss the booty at its leisure. The sociable little tailor bird had its cluster of pensile bottle-shaped nests hanging from boughs of trees which spread over a deep dark well. Flocks of glancing sand- pipers hurried over the fields, and not seldom did snipe, in twos and threes, roused by passing cultivators, attract our drowsy attention to mark them down at some distant spot, to be beaten up again when we resumed our sport. Not uufrequently a long brown-yellow water-snake made its way, in a great hurry, from the waving rice- fields to the well brink on which we were sitting ; and seeing its natural enemies, would dart rapidly into the water, where no doubt it had many a safe hiding-place in the crumbling brick- work. While we sat still and silent, lizards would creep out .and climb over the grassy mounds to bask in the pencilled sun rays which broke in bright streaks through the wind-stirred foliage of the thorn-trees. 5? AN INDIAN OLIO. There were many varieties of these little creatures. The rough-skinned yellow lizard, with serrated back, (" girgoot " in the vernacular), and known by us as the " blood-sucker," about as correctly named as the nightjar (which, by the way, is very common in India) is desig- nated a " goat sucker ! " Two of these lizards, if captured and held opposite each other by their respective whip- like tails, will fight fiercely, seizing one another in their powerful jaws with bull-dog tenacity of grip, and during the battle flushing bright red over their broad heads and necks. Presently the " Brahminee lizard," a beautiful, smooth- coated reptile, gleaming with iridescent tints of pink and purple, would glide through the dead leaves at our feet, at first sight marvellously like a glistening snake, and cause us to jump up for closer investigation. Now and then we spotted a slender grass-green snake, with greyhound-like head, among leafy branches as green as itself, from which it could hardly be distinguished but by close inspection. The insect world was well represented. If there were large stones and fragments of brickwork lying about, we turned them over, with the result of finding a great black scorpion, or a banded " fiery-brown " centipede, curled up in the hollow beneath, or a swarm of beetles of many species, the rhinoceros beetle being the most common. Great scarlet and blue dragon flies hovered over the well; and if, as often happened, we were trying for fish with small bamboo -rods, settled in the most persevering BEES AND HOENETS. 53 manner on the top joints, returning again and again when petulantly shaken off by the vexed fishermen. We were very careful not to disturb the bees and wasps so often found on trees and bushes, especially near water. Very slight provocation will bring a swarm out in fury, and even flight will not always save their victims. The hornet is not so dangerous as the bee, for it will not pursue to any great distance, whereas the bee follows the objects of its wrath for miles. Even the smell of a cigar will sometimes occasion a turn out of these vicious insects ; if thick jungle be at hand it be- comes a useful refuge, for bees are bothered by thickets, and will probably give up the chase. Should there be water (not too deep), it is a safe haven to those who sit in it up to their chins, and splash with both hands to beat off the incensed swarm. Should there be neither thick jungle nor a pool or stream hard by, the only plan to escape destruction is to lie down quiet, and, if possible, get some covering, horse- cloth or what not, over head and hands; anyhow, to lie quiet until the bees are tired of stabbing. Bees are no respecters of persons, for in March 1 887 no less a personage than the Viceroy, on his way to church, was placed in imminent peril by a swarm which inhabited the church porch. The Governor-General and his party were fortunately just enter- ing when the swarm turned out ; the doors were immedi- ately closed, and they sustained little damage, but the body- guard escort had to fly in disorder. The enemy remained in possession of the field that is, of the church porch. 54 AN INDIAN OLIO. The banks of the irrigation channels were thickly clothed with willow-like oleanders both white and red, and their stems were studded with the glistening, waxy cocoons* of great moths, in two varieties, commonly called by us gold and silver Mohr cocoons. They are of a beautiful pale green colour, wonderfully in keeping with the oleander leaves, shining like the finest wax, and adorned with either golden or silvery knobs and traceries, according to the species. The flower of the oleander is poisonous, and a few years ago, at Bellary, a little child was killed by eating a quantity of them, which its " ayah," in either ignorance or carelessness, had given it to play with. Poisonous snakes, chiefly cobras, abound at Trichino- poly. Euined masonry, especially of dried-up wells, mud walls also, ever full of cracks and holes, of native huts and enclosures, are their favourite haunts, and many deaths, of man and beast, are doubtless justly laid to their account, though it is commonly believed that very many " snake bite " deaths are falsely so entered, and are really owing to murders committed in families. The snake statistics of the Madras Presidency for a few years, commencing with 1880, are as follow: Killed by Snakes. Human Beings. Cattle. In 1880 1,182 227 1 88 1 1,064 270 1882 920 329 1883 1,269 278 1884 1,192 304 ,, 1885 1,487 284 SNAKE STATISTICS. 55 The small number of cattle killed, compared with the great destruction of human life, is most extraordinary, and gives ground for the suspicion that a fearful amount of crime lies hidden in these figures ; in fact that, as stated lately in an Indian journal, the mortality from snake bite, so called, is always open to suspicion, since it must be comparatively easy, in remote localities, for an unscrupulous person to poison a relative, and then, by a puncture or two in his victim's foot, to shift the responsi- bility of the casualty on to a cobra. It is strange that these statistics do not give the number of men, women, and children respectively. I rather think that if they were so given the number of women and children would far exceed that of the men. The subject may well be concluded with the following extract from the statement by Government of the loss of human life in all India in 1886 : Human beings killed by snakes . . . .22,134 Human beings killed by other animals . . . 2,707 Total deaths by wild animals and snakes . 24,841 In the same year the destruction among cattle was 59,029, but I have not the means of separating the deaths among them by snake-bite from those by other wild animals. , There is in South India an animal, not unlike a pole- cat in size, shape, and colour, known as the "toddy- cat " a harmless creature, and, as its name denotes, a frequenter of palm-trees, and a tippler of the toddy which 56 AN INDIAN' OLIO. is drawn from them ; but the toddy-cat, not content with its habitat among the leaves and branches of palm and other trees, is fond of the roofs of houses, and is thus a nuisance making night hideous with its squealing and quarrelling, and not improving the condition of the ceiling cloths, over which it is continually promenading. It was easy to see the movements of the animal on these cloths, for each foot indented the cloth as it walked. Hog spears were therefore used to abate the nuisance, and a vigorous thrust between the four paw* dents produced a great patch of blood, and death of the unlucky cat. Sometimes a pistol was used. In either case it was a nasty operation, and the cloth had to be opened for removal of the dead animal, and then a great deal of cobbling up and whitewashing was required to make the ceiling look decent again. Two or three days' leave may be profitably spent at several places near Trichinopoly. We used to make up parties to the Collamullay and Puchmullay jungles, about thirty to forty miles north of the station. We either rode the distance on horseback, or, if time were pressing, we travelled all night with posted bullocks in carts covered with matting, and with our bedding spread in them on an elastic substratum of green boughs (sub- stitute for springs) and straw. In this way we got out in one night, and arrived at our tents very early in the morning. There is much comfort in a well laid-out camp under shady trees : the servants and horses are kept at a suffi- COOKING IN CAMP. 57 cient distance to leeward. The kitchen is a simple arrange- ment. It consists of three large stones, each of them about twice as large as a brick, arranged in three sides of a square, inside which is the fire, and on which .the cooking vessels are supported above the charcoal or the wood fire, as the case may be. If more than one vessel is required to be on the fire at a time, other similar fireplaces are placed in a row, with separate fires under each. When stones are not to be had, the fireplaces are made with earth mixed with water, and shaped into mud walls on the same plan as the stone kitchen. With very simple appliances a knife, a wooden spoon, three or four large earthen vessels (chatties in the common speech of the country), and a piece of board on the ground to serve as a kitchen table the cook turns out an excellent dinner ; stews, curries, and, if a roast is to be served, then a couple of forked sticks supporting an iron, or even wooden spit, to be turned by a cooly over a charcoal fire, serves the purpose, and secures a capital piece de resistance and prop to our jungle dinner. The viands are not very varied ; the main reliance is on fowls, which, also eggs, are requisitioned from neighbouring villages. Sometimes a sheep is bought, and then the fowls enjoy a respite for a day or two. Doves are a great stand by nothing, is. better than a dove curry ; and when there was no real game I often sent my shikarry, or any servant who could use a gun, with orders to go to the cultivated fields and shoot four or five doves for my dinner. 5 , AN INDIAN OLIO. Game shot in India is never an entire success, because it cannot be "hung." Eaten fresh, and therefore eaten tough, it must be ; and another failing, it is deficient in fat. Antelope and spotted deer venison are well tasted, but there is rarely an ounce of fat on a whole carcase. The " Bairkee," often called Jungle Sheep, is excellent ; fat or no fat, there is no better game, and jungle sheep curry is a thing to remember. A Sambur, except its marrow bones, and perhaps a steak from the " undercut," is not desirable for the table. The same may be said of the dry meat of the Neilghye and of the Bison, always remembering that bison's tongue and marrow bones hold a high place in the list of jungle dainties. Wild hog is seldom eaten. In India one gets a pre- judice against pork, and this extends in most people's practice against wild hog as well as tame, though not justly, for as a rule a wild hog is a clean feeder. It is only now and then, when it comes across a carcase of an animal which has died in the jungle, that the hog shows its carnivorous, or perhaps I should say omnivorous pro- pensities. For instance, a friend of mine saw some wild hog in these very Puchmullays (green mountains) re- galing themselves on the remains of a flock of sheep which had been destroyed by a furious hailstorm while they were at pasture. Also I have read an account of a party of hog found at supper inside the carcase of a dead elephant! But these are quite exceptions to the usual clean diet of the fruit and grain-eating porker. Of wild birds, the foremost is the bustard, a magnificent VENISON AND GAME. 9 bird for the table, whether old or young. The pea-fowl is exceedingly good, especially a young one ; but even an old cock, with a tail coruscating a full yard behind him, is by no means a bad roast ; and being a very " cut and come again " fowl, a savoury mince will be the result of his second day's cooking, with lime juice in default, of other sauce piquante. The floriken is, I think, overrated, or else I have been un- fortunate in the specimens which have " walked through " my jungle kitchen; for, to most people's taste, it can hardly be too underdone a state of things which does not commend itself to my palate. , Of partridge, the grey, much like to the " Frenchman " which is met with in England, is usually a dry and taste- less viand ; and is unpopular when found, as it so often is, in vicinity of villages, where its habits are looked upon with much suspicion. In more remote localities, in wide expanses of corn-fields and thick hedge-rows, it is often a capital bird, succulent and fat. The only other variety of partridge with which I have a personal acquaintance is the painted partridge, not often met with in the south, though I have heard its queer creaking call in the Cauvery jungles, but very numerous in " bheers," or grass plains, and in dry cultivation also, in Central India. It is an eminently good bird for the spit, and few game-birds in India can compare with it in this respect. The jungle-fowl would be good if it could be kept. On the Neilgherries, where it can be hung for a week, it is excellent ; so also is the little spur- fowl, which is 66 AN INDIAN OLIO. about the size of a bantam, and not unlike it in appearance. The rock pigeon or sand grouse (Namaqua partridge of South Africa) is a poor game-bird, tough and tasteless ; it is best in a pie. Quail, of many varieties, from the fat heavy grey to the little button quail, are all good, especially when caught alive and fattened for table. They should be roasted in vine leaves ; or, if none are avail- able, in paper shrouds. I have omitted to mention, among four-footed game, the Indian hare ; it is best in soup, or jugged. The porcupine is dry meat, and should be cooked, with slices of bacon, in a pie. Many of the cranes and other waders are good eating. In the first rank, above all others, is the " Coolen," a large handsome grey crane, found chiefly in the cold season in Central and Upper India. It is very difficult of approach, and is generally stalked, when feeding in the ripe grain-fields, from behind a trained bullock. Several other cranes, the " Sarus " and " Demoiselle," also are excellent in flavour, but not to be compared with the coolen. A few words will dispose of the smaller waders, and of the water-fowl which abound on the swamps and tanks. All are good snipe, greenshank, plover, duck, teal, and widgeon, in a hundred varieties. The ibis, spoonbill, and the heron tribe, &c., are better avoided, though I have eaten them when real game has been scarce, and there has been a threatening of famine in the camp. DR. JEKDON AND NATIVE ARTISTS. 61 But iny hobby has run away with me, and to com- plete this chapter, which is running to too great a length, I must turn to some different theme before I leave Trichinopoly for another station. Though Trichinopoly is a very sacred place with Hindoos, and contains a large Hindoo population, it has likewise a great many Mahomedan inhabitants ; more, perhaps, than any town of like size and importance in Southern India. It is a favourite residence of pensioned Sepoys, both Mussulmans and Hindoos, who live in the town and suburbs, and from whose families many good recruits are obtained for the native army. Many years ago Dr. Jerdon, the well-known author of " Birds of India," maintained at this place a staff of native artists, and taught them to paint in a much better style than they had been accustomed to. Before he took them in hand, their art was confined to quaint representa- tions of natives of all castes and callings, and coaches drawn by impossible bullocks, and laden with yellow- skinned Eajahs and Kanees, all painted on talc or on rice paper. But under Dr. Jerdon's teaching these people became apt in faithful and laborious representation of the feathered tribes, and attained a really very high pitch of excellence. With true Hindoo patience, every feather nay, every vane, and cirrus of each feather was separately and truly shown ; the pictured bird was a laboured and exact presentment of the bird itself. These also were painted on rice paper or on sheets of talc. 62 AN INDIAN OLIO. In the last year of rny sojourn at Trichinopoly the mutinies broke out. We felt anxious as to the event, and whether the rumours of those sad and shameful doings would injuriously affect the minds of our Sepoys, but no hint or suspicion of mischief ever came to notice ; the men were as ready and willing as ever to do their duty; if any small number were inclined to disaffec- tion, they kept it carefully to themselves, and they were wise ; for the disposition of the coast army was that of reliance on their officers and upon, the Govern- ment ; and a traitor, if he had endeavoured to ventilate his views, and to make converts, would certainly have been at once given up. The Madras army had no grievances, and no sympathy with the Brahmin Sepoys of Bengal. What they had seen of the Bengalees, in taking over garrisons from them occasionally, and especially in Burmah in 1852, had not tended to camaraderie. The Brahmin and other high caste soldiers looked down, as from an immensely superior height, upon the Madrassees, and took every opportunity to show this feeling. Is it a wonder that a feeling also against the Bengalees sprang up in the minds of the Madras men ? It was, perhaps, fortunate, as adding another reason for preservation of peace in the ranks of the Madras regiments. It is a vexed question whether the " greased cartridge " was a real cause of the mutinies, or whether it was not a pretence for carry ing out a long conceived resolution. Whether or not, it is certain that for many years pre- THE MUTINIES OF 1857. 63 vious, that great army of mercenaries, puffed up with the idea of their own strength and importance, had "shown their teeth," and had exhibited an unsoldierlike and in- solent spirit to their own officers, as well as towards the Government which maintained them. To adduce a few well-known instances, on high authority, for this statement, and without going back to some mutinies of Bengal troops in the last century the 34th Bengal Infantry was disbanded in 1844 at Meerut by Lord Ellenborough for refusing to serve in Scinde. In 1 849 Sir Charles Napier declared that forty-two regiments had banded together to resist, even to mutiny, a reduction from field to cantonment allowances after the conquest of the Punjaub ; and this ended in the disbandment of the most peccant corps, the 66th. In 1852, the 38th refused to embark for Burmah. What does Sir Charles Napier say of the Bengal army of his time : " Treachery, mutiny, villainy of all kinds may be carried on among the private soldiers, unknown to their officers, to any extent, where the men are of one caste of Hindoos, and where the rules of caste are more regarded than those of military discipline." In 1850, Lord Dalhousie, writing to Sir Charles Napier, says: "The Sepoy has been over-petted and over-paid lately, and has been led on by the Govern- ment itself into the entertainment of expectations and the manifestation of a feeling which he never held in former times." Colonel Hodgson writes in 1851 : " Of late years it 64 AN INDIAN OLIO. has Been the fashion to over-pay, over-laud, and over- caress the Sepoy." Madras officers who met Bengal troops in Burmah in 1852, spoke with astonishment of the want of respect with which they treated their own officers, and which mounted into absolute insolence to officers of other presidencies serving in the same locality. Sir Kichard Temple, in his work " Hyderabad, Kashmir, Sikkim, and Nepal," says : " The real fundamental cause of the mutiny was the undue proportion of native troops in the army;" and in his "India in 1880," that one of the causes which led to it was the enormous preponderance of Oudh Brahmins also in the army. This then was the condition of the Bengal army up to 1857, when its grave defects, from enlisting none but natives of the upper provinces, pampering and petting those caste-proud men, and giving way to all their fancies and insolences, culminated in the great mutiny which brought them to destruction ; and, but that there were three separate native armies, would have caused, not merely the Bengal Presidency, but the whole of India to have been involved in one blaze of revolt and ruin. In a minute upon the proposed amalgamation of the Eoyal and the Company's armies, the Duke of Wellington, among other remarks, gave his opinion that " the three armies (of the three presidencies) ought to remain separate and distinct," and yet it is now seriously con- tended that there should be, not three armies, but one only, under a commander-in-chief of all India ; the sepa- rate: commands of Madras and Bombay to be abolished. RACE ANTIPATHY. 65 What might be the result of this welding together the three armies is in the womb of the future ; but there is no doubt that in 1857 India was saved from utter ruin by the fact that there were then three distinct armies, of which one, the Madras, had no sympathy or fellow-feeling with the other two, and the Bombay had but little with Bengal. The Madras army remained unscathed by the flame of mutiny ; the Bombay army, though, through having too many Poorbeahs in its ranks, it was not alto- gether untouched by disloyalty, yet came out of the fire not gravely injured, though scorched and shaken. Besides the pretext or cause, whichever it was, of the greased cartridges, there were many other reasons for the feeling which broke out against the British Govern- ment. The tendency to curtail the power of commanding officers of regiments, and to centralise it in the head- quarters bureaux, did great mischief. The annexation of Oude, and consequent confiscation or abrogation of many privileges of the Oude Sepoys, was another factor in the revolt. The liability to serve beyond sea, the increasingly frequent forays into lands far beyond the charmed circle of Hindooism, was another deep-lying grievance. There was also working in the men's mind a certain amount of that innate antipathy (deny it who may) which exists between white and dark races, and which, whatever negrophiles may contend, has always existed, and will continue to exist. True it is that the peasantry, except in the case of some lawless tribes, the Goojurs for instance, did not in any great degree join the E 66 AN INDIAN OLIO. mutineers ; but this is the manner of the rural masses of India in times of war and commotion. The cultivators and the monied classes keep out of the row as much as they can: their fields and their money are all they care for : it matters little to them who may get the mastery, so long as they are not laden with additional burdens. No doubt Hindoos would, as a matter of sentiment, prefer a Hindoo, and Moslems would prefer a Moslem ruler, but yet the great majority seem well content with things as they now are, with a powerful and just Government, and a fair and increasing amount of trade and prosperity. Hear the impartial opinion of Baron Hiibner : " What do we see ? Instead of periodical, if not perma- nent wars, profound peace firmly established throughout the whole empire ; instead of the exactions of chiefs always greedy for gold, and not shrinking from any act of cruelty to obtain it, moderate taxes, much lower than those imposed by the feudatory princes ; arbitrary rule replaced by even- handed justice ; the tribunals, once proverbially corrupt, by upright judges, whose example is already beginning to make its influence felt on native morality and notions of right. No more Pindarries ; no more armed bands of thieves ; perfect security to the cities, as well as in the country districts, and on all the roads. The former bloodthirsty manners and customs now softened; and, save for certain restrictions imposed in the interests of public morality, a scrupulous regard for religious worship and traditional usages and customs. Materially, an un- exampled bound of prosperity, and even the disastrous BARON HUBNER ON THE INDIAN GOVERNMENT. 67 effects of the periodical famines which afflict certain parts of the peninsula more and more diminished by the extension of railways, which facilitate the work of relief. And what has wrought all these miracles ? The wisdom and courage of a few directing statesmen; the bravery and discipline of an army composed of a small number of Englishmen and a large number of natives led by heroes ; and lastly, and I will venture to say principally, the devotion, the intelligence, the courage, the perseverance, and the skill, combined with an integrity proof against all temptation, of a handful of officials and magistrates who govern and administer the Indian Empire ! " The above is the candid and disinterested testimony of a foreigner. Alas ! there are some Englishmen, evil birds who foul their own nest, who are always vilifying the British rule and the brilliant Indian Civil Service, of which, and of its workings and results, they absolutely know nothing. Unscrupulous in their statements against the Government of India statements mostly founded upon the lying stories with which they are continually stuffed by native agitators and demagogues they would, if successful, do much to destroy the empire. Fortunately, however, neither they nor their native inciters have as yet been able to produce any appreciable bad impression upon the population, who, especially the Mahomedans, and the honest rural classes of Hindoos likewise, have a very just appreciation of the good government they receive, and a wise distrust of those who would fain make them believe that they would be benefited by a change of masters. CHAPTEE IV. Journeys in South India Tanjore Fertility of district Exemption from famines Combaconum Education of natives Opinions on education of Sir L. Jackson and Professor Williams Tranquebar Negapatam Point Calimere and its game The fo3tid swamps Wild fowl and snipe, &c., on swamps Sea fish Curious palmyra palm Palamcottah Paupanassum Courtallum Native Christians Tuticorin Pearl and chank fishery Madura Great temple and palace at Madura Mr. Blackburne's work in Madura Jungles of the Cummum valley Fever-stricken natives of jungles Pulney mountains Pass in the mountains from Cummum valley to Travancore The Perryaur project. DURING my stay of seven years at Trichinopoly, I made many tours round what was then known as the " southern division." With gun, rifle, and fishing-rod, and my trusty shikarry always in attendance, these expeditions, on duty and sport combined, were very pleasant. My first stage was usually Tanjore, the seat in old times of first the Gentoo, afterwards the Mahratta Eajahs, from whom, after several changes of masters, Hindoo and Mahomedan, it was finally acquired by the East India Company; the descendants of Surfojee, the last reigning Eajah, being pensioned off in the usual manner. The titular Eajah's palace is a large rambling structure, with an immense audience hall adorned with black TAN JOKE. 69 stone pillars, and roofed with long slabs of black stone likewise ; and is situated in the largest of two forts, as are also several pagodas and an ill-built town, with a swarming population, mostly Hindoo. In a smaller fort hard by is another grand temple,- with a towering " Goparum," a pyramidal gateway of many stories, all of carved stone, and said to be the finest in India. The fort wall also is of cut stone, with a ditch hewn out of the solid rock round its mile of circuit ; and this fort stoutly resisted the French under the gallant Lally, who long besieged it, but in vain. Tanjore, both town and country, is eminently Hindoo, and the delta of the Cauvery, which overspreads the greater part of the province, is more thickly peopled than any other part of India, except perhaps a few districts in the lower part of Bengal. It is full of large and prosperous towns and villages; and from the dense cocoa groves which environ them peep temples and shrines of the best style of Brahminical architecture. No famine can ever directly affect this rich country, which is irrigated by innumerable channels fed by the never-failing river. In times of drought, when adjacent provinces are groaning under the miseries of famine, prices even in Trichinopoly and Tanjore must rise, owing to the drain of cereals, rice especially, carried off to less favoured districts by road, rail, and sea ; but this again is largely compensated to the Tanjorines and to their neighbours of Trichinopoly, as not only does money pour into the hands 70 AN INDIAN OLIO. of the ryots and merchants, but also there is no inter- mission of cultivation, and of its needful employment of the poorer classes. Colonel Chesney, writing on the Indian famine, says : "The deltas of the Cauvery and Godavery have never been more prosperous than at the present time, when the contiguous districts are in such a horrible condition." It may be more truly said of India than of any other country in the world that with water it is a garden, without it a desert. How greatly then does it become the duty of Government to strain every nerve and to expend every available rupee upon the storage and utilisation of the quantity of water, almost too great to name in figures, which now runs waste yearly to the sea. Tanjore is then a country of agriculturists, and of such merchants as live upon the outcome of agriculture. Beyond some textile fabrics, silk and cotton, produced in the great towns, there is little in the way of special manufactures and of skilled labour, so to speak, for the conveniences and luxuries of life. The only specialty which I can just now call to mind is the production of brass vessels, some of considerable size, artistically inlaid with copper devices, mostly of Hindoo mythology, beaten in rather low relief into the brass which is chiselled out for their reception. From Tanjore, a good road lined with trees, and also with what seems to be almost one continuous village, leads through the rice-fields to the large and learned "HIGH EDUCATION" OF NATIVES. 71 town of Combaconum, famous for a great college for education of natives of high caste, and mostly Hindoo parentage, who acquire a smattering of English literature, as well as a knowledge of their own tongues, Teloogoo or Tamil, as the case may be, and the end and aim of whose learning is to obtain a Madras University degree, to be- come a " Bey Yeh " (B.A.), as they say, in order to obtain employment under Government. In the Asiatic Quarterly Review, in 1886, is an article by Sir Louis Jackson, a Judge of the High Court of Bengal, which, coming from so competent an authority, is of singular value. Sir Louis says : " For many years past we have maintained in India a system of education, from which the religious, the technical or practical, and the physical elements were all absent, and which was purely literary. This has inevitably produced swarms of so-called educated young men, with a large stock of undigested ideas, a smattering of history, much readiness in expressing their thoughts, and a strong propensity to use that gift. These young men filled the public service and the professions (the legal profession in particular), and many found no employment. This bred discontent, and obliged them to look for other means of turning their talents to account ; whence the modern Bengali dema- gogue." This is the exact case. " High education " has brought forth a brood of frothy agitators and " Home Eulers ; " but plain practical knowledge, which might have done real good, has been cast aside as a thing of no account. 72 AN INDIAN OLIO. A " highly educated " Hindoo, whether a " Bey Yeh " of Madras, or a Baboo of Calcutta, is seldom a pleasant person in his youth, when flushed with success in his examinations, overbrimming with Shakespeare, and Mil- ton, Bacon, &c. His conceit is intense, and is offensively exhibited. He thinks nothing of correcting an educated English gentleman in the English language ! and is puffed up with an inordinate belief in his own book-knowledge and superiority. He is very usually a disappointed man, in that he has not, when armed with his degree, received the high Government appointment, judicial or revenue, to which he conceives that his merit and learning entitle him ; he is consequently a violent Eadical, a hater of all Englishmen and Englishwomen, of all English laws, and all English customs. He is full of the catch-cries of the day " India for the Indians " - " Representative govern- ment " " Even laws for black and white " " Direct share in government," &c. ; all excellent watchwords according to the ideas of peripatetic M.P.'s and globe- trotters, and stay-at-home revolutionists also, who know nothing in reality of 'India or Indians ; but which, if car- ried out, would mean nothing less than subversion of the British rule, return to barbarism, and general culbute, and ruin of India. Professor Monier Williams, in the Contemporary Review, says : " The great object (of native scholars) is to gain a knowledge of English, and, through that knowledge, employment under Government." And again "I fear we too often wean boys from the plough, the chisel, and TRANQUEBAR. 73 the loom, to make them ambitious of Government employ- ment which they cannot all obtain." And further " They neglect their own languages, disregard their own litera- ture, abjure their own religions, despise their own philo- sophies, break their own caste rules, and deride their own time-honoured customs, without becoming good English scholars, honest sceptics, wise thinkers, earnest Christians, or loyal subjects of the British Empire." There can be no harm in giving education in the English language, but it should not be to exclusion of or even marked preference over the vernaculars. Moreover, edu- cation in both one and the other should be thoroughly practical, and its aim the infusion of useful knowledge to help their prospects in any condition of life for which they may be fitted not merely to lead them on to the desire for Government employ, which is now apparently the only object of their " high education." Combaconum is not only a very learned but also a very sacred city, and in every direction tall temples rear their heads ; and bevies of dancing girls, in crimson and purple attire, with faces and arms made yellow with tur- meric powder, and eyes encircled with antimony, parade the precincts of the several shrines. Leaving Combaconum, the old-fashioned Danish fort and town of Tranquebar is reached in thirty miles of a prettily wooded road, still through rice-fields, and still over numerous bridged channels, and past villages snugly embowered in their clumps of fruit trees, tamarind, mango, jack (with its giant fruit springing from its roots and 74 AN INDIAN OLIO. trunk), and broad-leafed plantains lavishly intermixed with them all. Through the gateway of the old fort we passed along a street of very un-Indian-looking houses, one of which had been appropriated by Government as a " traveller's bungalow " or " rest-house." These Tranquebar houses were built very much as if the architect thought that an European climate might be realised in India by " making believe very much " in a house built in European style. Front doors opened on the street, without the privacy of courtyard or compound ; windows were small, rooms small ; the streets, running at right angles to one another, were narrow and treeless ; and the few ancient Danish ladies and gentlemen who remained (and there were several very antique specimens, with outlandish names, in 1854) walked the streets in heavy silks and broadcloth, as if still denizens of their northern clime. These fossils had some very good cherry-brandy from Copenhagen (pronounced by them " Kippenhoung ") ; and when the effects of an old gentleman who had lately died were brought to the hammer, our mess at Trichinopoly secured a great supply of one of the finest liqueurs we had ever met with. On one occasion of visiting Tranquebar on embarkation duty, I took a Mahomedan Sepoy on board a transport, a fine, sturdy fellow, who afterwards rose to be a native officer. Shaik Bram was greatly interested in the ship and all that he saw, when, as ill luck would have it, the ship's pigs, some half-dozen in number, were let out of FRENCH SETTLEMENT OF KARICAL. 75 their stye for a run on deck, and came aft capering and snorting in their delight, and in the exuberance of their spirit very nearly upset the horrified Mussulman, whose disgusted face and loud exclamations of " Toba ! toba ! " (Fie ! fie !) and " Lahoul ! " (May they be cursed !) pro- voked us all to mirth at poor Shaik Bram's expense. He was glad indeed to get out of such unclean company ; and as he afterwards went with his corps to Malta and Cyprus, he doubtless had many other opportunities of cursing the unclean beast on his voyages. My next halting-place was Negapatam, about twenty miles south of Tranquebar. Half way is the French settlement of Karical, a small but neatly-built town, situated on one of the mouths of the Cauvery, which is, except in heavy freshes, closed with a bar of sand. Once, passing through Karical, we saw the best part of the population, white and black, engaged in netting this river mouth, the French ladies and gentlemen sitting in chairs to enjoy the sport, backed by a crowd of Sepoys in Zouave uniforms, and of other natives of all sorts and sizes. The excitement as the great net was pulled in was very great, and the jabber of French by all hands tremendous ! Negapatam is not an interesting place. It was for- merly a Dutch settlement; and the old neglected grave- yard, full of heavy tombs and monuments, obelisks, &c., stands close to the signal flagstaff on the seashore. In 1854 there were many houses, some occupied by civilians, but mostly empty and desolate, on the sandy shore. 76 AN INDIAN OLIO. About four miles north of Negapatam is Nagore, a large town, in which is a famous Mahomedan shrine, and also several Hindoo pagodas. At Negapatam is a large Jesuits' College and a Eoman Catholic Church of preten- tious architecture, arid the black and white gowned priests and pupils were seen in great numbers, morning and evening, gravely pacing along the strand, and enjoying the cool sea breeze. From Negapatam to Eamnad, the next military post which I visited, the sandy road was along the seashore, within hearing, if not always in sight, of the " sad sea wave." One exception, however, was the passing inland of Point Calimere, that sandy jungle jutting into the sea, which, from its fresh, pleasant climate, and also varied sport hog, antelope, and spotted deer is so favourite a resort with residents in Southern India. The wide ex- panse of sand, covered with low jungle, intersected by broad, grassy glades, is the habitation of great herds of these animals, and excellent sport may be enjoyed there. Inland of the point, where the Negapatam road crosses its base, are great swamps and sheets of water, stagnant and brackish, full of wild fowl, snipe (on reedy mud-flats), and large fish, perrun, murrel, &c. They are entered in maps as the " foetid swamps," and well deserve the name ; but they, like the point to seaward, are very " happy hunting grounds." The scene on these swamps when a gun is fired is very animated. Great flocks of geese and duck rise with a roar of wings ; long lines of flamingo, bright with rosy plumage (''parrots of the sea" the THE FCETID SWAMPS. 77 natives call them), lift their ungainly, long-necked, crooked- beaked, and long-legged forms into the air. Old Peter de Yalle, in his "Travels into the East Indies," thus describes them : " We beheld at a distance many fowls, as big or bigger than turkeys, go up and down, rather running than flying. They told us they were the same which the Portugal s call Paxaros Fla- mencos, from their bright colour ; and I think they are those of whose beaks Mir Mahomed in Spahan makes bow-rings for the king, though he erroneously takes it for the beak of the cocnos or phoenix, which good authors describe not as water-fowl, but rather as inhabitants of high mountains." Pelicans oar shyly into the middle of the ponds, and all kinds of waders hover in long lines over the reedy distance: the spoonbill, the African and black ibis, a dozen different species of heron, hosts of greenshanks and redshanks, and stilt plover, with long crimson legs and pied plumage, and clouds of little sandpipers, make a wonderful show ; and ever and anon the sharp squeak of the snipe is heard, as in its erratic twirling flight it joins the clamorous mob. In the reed beds are heard strange croaks and mew- ings ; great squads of blue coots, and various diving fowl, creep among the sedges ; but those we do not meddle with, and they are " quit for the fright." I will give a few extracts from my journal in 1853, from Eamnad to Negapatam : "February i$th. Arrived at Titrapoondy. The road 78 AN INDIAN OLIO. lay through a swamp more or less the whole way. I have never seen a finer country for snipe, not even the famous Yelgode in the Ceded Districts. The smell of the swamps, from Moottoopettah to Titrapoondy, was exceedingly dis- agreeable, particularly the last half of the way, where is a long causeway over the most gamy-looking swamp I have ever seen. "February i6th. Eode to Keelaoor. Three miles after leaving Titrapoondy, came to a vast tract of swamp, in which were thousands of snipe. I had but little time for shooting, and was short also of ammunition, but I shot nine couple, and went on. I have never seen such a snipe country. There were likewise flocks of duck flying in all directions ; shoals of fish also ; big murrel, jumping and splashing in the deep places, and in the canals which intersect the watery plain." On the Eamnad, or south side of the swamps, a note- worthy town is Adrampatam, which is the prettiest place in its way that I have seen in South India. The town, on the shelving seashore, is all but hidden in thick groves of fruit-bearing trees and bamboos ; the scenery is peculiar, but very pleasing ; the country, though flat as a whole, is undulating, being composed of small sandhills covered with a fine green turf, and crowned with little groves of palmyra trees and flowering undergrowth, and having shallow ponds and tanks of clear water winding among the hillocks. At Adrampatam was a native official, who informed me that " salt is cultivated here ; " and I saw many ranges of salt-pans, and great mounds KAMNAD. 79 of salt itself covered from the weather with tempered clay. On this coast we always got fine fish, especially the perch-shaped pomfret, weighing from two to five pounds, the best fish in the Indian seas. There are two varieties, the black and the white pomfret. The black are by far the best. Other fish met with are the mighty seer fish, which grows to an enormous size, and is, when cut into thick pieces and fried, one of the best possible breakfast dishes. There are also several varieties of (so-called) mullet, and another fish of bright steel colour, in size and shape like a large mackerel ; and many others, great and small, some good for food, and some far otherwise. Also large turtle of livid, unwholesome appearance, to taste which I never ventured. At the end of this coast journey we came to Eamnad, a large town, fort, and palace, owned and occupied by descendants of the ancient Zemindars, who, in bygone times, were independent chiefs, but are now under the tutelage and protection of the British Government. The palace is a large building, with the usual contrasts of magnificence and squalidity. I saw nothing in it very worth notice except a package covered with matting, said to contain a lion or a tiger of solid silver. In the jungle at Eamnad there is a palmyra which is considered by the natives to be not only a curiosity but a very sacred one. Instead of having one trunk, with which its thousands of congeners are content, and which I never before had seen exceeded, it branched out at the 8o AN INDIAN OLIO. height of five or six feet above the ground into seven distinct trunks, each bearing a goodly head of the fan- shaped leaves peculiar to this palm. Of course this " lusus " is attributed by its Hindoo admirers to the action of one of their deities ; and stones, smeared with oil and vermilion, and broken cocoa-nuts, and fowls' feathers lying about, testified that " poojah " and sacrifice were from, time to time here performed. The palmyra palm is one of the most useful and cherished productions of the eastern seaboard, and only inferior in value to the cocoa which supplies its place on the west coast. Its trunk is good timber (under cover only), and is used for rafters, verandah posts, &c. ; the broad, hard leaf for thatching, for baskets, umbrellas, fans, &c., and under the vernacular name " cadjan," it is cut into long, narrow strips, and used as paper, being written upon, or rather scratched, with a sharp-pointed style. Its fruit, a bunch of hard-coated purple-green nuts, each as large as a nine-pound iron shot, contains three gelatinous compartments, the contents of which are very pleasant and cooling when not hardened by too great ripeness. A coarse sugar, termed jaggery, is made from the sweet juice or "taree" (Anglice, toddy), collected in earthen vessels suspended under gashes cut just under the crown of leaves. This taree is much sweeter and more wholesome than the " saindee " or " neera " col- lected from the date-palm in the interior of India. Palamcottah, about seventy miles south of Eamnad, lying under the great range of forest-clad mountains PALAMCOTTAH AND PAUPANASSUM. 81 which terminate in Cape Comorin, is, or rather was, the southernmost military station in India. When I knew it, in 1 8 5 4, it held a battery of artillery and a regiment of native infantry, quartered in a fort now demolished. Palamcottah, though one of the hottest and most out- of-the-way stations in South India, was rather a favourite garrison. On the plains which extend to the mountains were numerous herds of antelope, and an abundance of duck and teal, on tanks, and on irrigated land under the embankments. At the foot of the mountains were two ver,y favourite resorts : one 'of them, Paupanassum (the cleanser of sins), a sacred temple of the Hindoos, situate on the brink of a waterfall, which dashes from a great height into a deeply-hollowed pool full of immense fish of the carp kind ; but these fish are sacred also, and no sacrilegious rod can be put together, or line dipped, in the holy pool. The ardent fisherman must be content with less massive prey in the shallows far below the temple pool, for the great carp, said to run to a hundred pounds' weight, never leave the deep water where they are fed and jealously guarded by the attendant Brahmins. The mountains, which rise to four and five thousand feet, contain every description of large game. Elephant, bison, tiger, sambur, leopard, bear, and hog abound, and the only drawback is the denseness of the forests, and difficulty of access to the more retired haunts of the animals. The western slopes, upon which the monsoon impinges with full violence, are very thickly wooded. Some, but not very much of the deluge, escapes over the 82 .' AN INDIAN OLIO. mountain tops, and affords a welcome and moderate rain- fall to the Tinnevelly plains. About thirty miles north-west of Tinnevelly is a notch, or gap, in the chain of mountains, through .which, as through a funnel, the monsoon clouds hurry, and cause the climate to be cool and enjoyable in the gap, when the eastern plains are burnt up with scorching heat. Here, also, is a sacred place, and a small town, Courtallum, in the narrow valley through which the road to Travancore winds amid the encircling hills. The scenery is charming, and its most delightful feature is a series of waterfalls which rush down from the mountain tops, the last of them tumbling in a broken cascade of about two hundred feet, under a portion of which are bathing places, where such bracing shower- baths as are nowhere else met with can be enjoyed. Close to this waterfall is a very comfortably furnished house, built many years ago by a commandant of a native regiment stationed at Palamcottah, and bequeathed by him, in perpetuity, to the commanding officer, for use of officers of the regiment stationed at Palamcottah. Now that the garrison is abolished, it is most probable that the district civilians have " annexed " the whole pro- perty, and enjoy the delights of Courtallum as their own, and have the monopoly of the lovely gardens, and the herds of game which rove over the forests and moun- tains. The population of the Eamnad and Tinnevelly districts is mainly Hindoo, but of the lower classes of Hindoos, I PEARL AND CHANK FISHERY. 8j especially of the Shanars, or toddy drawers. Many thou- sands have become Christians, so that native Christians may be reckoned here in thousands, to tens almost in any other part of India. About thirty miles from Palamcottah is Tuticorin (in the vernacular Todeegoree), which, when I knew it, was of no importance except as a port at which produce, such as cotton, oil-seeds, rice, &c., was shipped on country vessels. As a seaport for large ships it is not convenient, for they have to lie off about four or five miles from the shore, and I have seen English vessels thus anchored for cargo looming dimly through the haze. There is a pearl fishery here once in every few years, superintended by the master attendant ; also a conch shell fishery, which affords employment to many people, not only in fishing up the great shells, but also in cutting their whorls into armlets, known as chanks, very popular with women of coloured races. The spires of these shells open, except in the rarest instances, to the left ; but now and again, though very seldom, one is found which opens the contrary way, and this is considered a most valuable find, and fetches a fabulously high price. Sharks are common in this sea, and I saw a large fellow, about nine feet long, the colour of a healthy white pig, landed by fishermen, in whose strong nets it had got entangled. Tuticorin is an ugly, flat, sandy place ; but there are many palmyra trees, and some scrub jungle, in the deep sand; and partridge and rock pigeon are not scarce. 86 AN INDIAN OLIO. little village in a clearing surrounded with thick forest, the chosen habitat of elephant and bison. Deep and dark are the valleys which wind among the hills : the mountains are favoured with much rain, and their higher summits are, more often than not, wrapped in clouds and mist, On every mountain side are seen patches, bare of forest, where woods have been felled and wastefully burnt to ashes to nourish scanty crops of millet raised by the wretched fever- stricken inhabitants of the hamlets below. The ordinary natives do not seem to get acclima- tised in their miserable dwellings, neither raised from the ground nor properly weather-proof ; and enlarged spleens, and necks bearing ugly marks of festered glands, testify the prevalence of malarious fever in these unhealthy regions. There is no want of timber, large and small, of bam- boos, of leaves and grass for thatching, or of tough plants and tree-bark with which excellent rope and string may be made to bind materials together, but the apathetic and listless natives take no trouble to build good huts. The wild region seems to induce carelessness for comfort ; isolated from the more civilised people of the open country, they drag on their existence without improving or seeking to improve their low condition of life. I had great difficulty, especially when I first visited these jungles, to get the people, more particularly the " Pulleers," or half-wild aborigines, to come with me on my shooting excursions. I always paid them well, and ABORIGINES. 87 (a needful precaution) saw myself that they were paid ; but they would, I feel sure, have much preferred to have kept away. They were good trackers, and, I doubt not, enjoyed sport in their own careless way, for many of them carried bows and arrows, and even a few pos- sessed matchlocks ; but they did not care to be made to beat for game, nor, to say the truth, did they like the unaccustomed and awful presence of the white man. I met one of these villagers going out on a sporting excursion. He had on his head a great chatty full of water ; and an old brass-bound matchlock in the hand not employed in balancing the chatty. It was the height of the dry hot season, and, except in the Vigay some miles away, all the jungle pools and water- holes were dried up; so he was taking the water to a hollow in a rock which he kept carefully replenished, and then ensconced himself in a clump of bushes hard by, and waited all day, if necessary, with true native patience, for hog, or deer, or pea-fowl to approach his ambush. Except in three months of hot weather, March, April, and May, these jungles were damp and chilly ; so cold indeed that two young civet cats, which I brought with me from the Dindigul plain, both died of cold in one night, though carefully supplied with hay and cotton- wool in their cage, which again was kept in the shelter of my tent ; but care availed not, and the pretty little animals, which had become quite tame, and would eat 88 AN INDIAN OLIO. plantains from my hands, were stricken by the cold, and perished. From Menachpooram the next move was to Wur- sanaad. a hamlet in the depths of the elephant haunts, and thence to Nursingpooram, in both which localities I shot many elephants, of which I have said quite enough in my book on Indian sport, and will now go on to Dindigul, the next military post which it was my duty to visit. Leaving Nursingpooram, a pleasant ride of about nine miles along the banks of the Vigay took us put of the jungle, and into the wide Cummum valley, shut in, on three sides, by high mountains, of which the tallest are the Pulneys, rising, at the village and settlement of Kodicanal, to full seven thousand feet. The first settlers were American missionaries, of whom it was profanely asked whether they had come to convert the bison ; more houses were built at various times by civilians and others, who wished for a cool retreat from the fierce hot season of Dindigul and Madura. At the first occupation of these grand mountains, access to Kodicanal was tedious and difficult ; but now there is a railway station at Amanaickanoor, a town on the east border of the valley, whence a night's journey, v/ith posted bullocks, carries the traveller to Periacolum, at the foot of the mountains, and then pony-back, or a chair slung on poles, and carried by coolies or bearers, finishes the journey with an arduous but exhilarating climb up the great mountain side. PULNEY MOUNTAINS. 89 The Pulney mountains used to be famous for large game, especially bison, which often came from the forest glades, and browsed like cattle in full view of the bunga- lows ; but this soon ceased, and now a bison is nearly as rare a sight as elephants, which in former years had a regular track over the Pulneys to cross from the Palghaut and Animullay forests (ani is Tamil for an elephant) to the quiet,, seldom-trodden jungles of Wursanaad. At the south end of the Cummum valley is a pass, where the hills on both sides bow down to the head of the valley, and by this pass access is gained to the Travancore country. The top of the pass is several hun- dred feet in height, and on reaching it a fine undulating plateau meets the eye ; grass plains, and swamps and forests, and vast clumps of enormous bamboos large enough to make water-buckets of ! This tract is also a favourite resort of elephant and bison ; also of sambur, bairkee, and jungle-fowl. About eight miles over this summit, the deep-flowing stream of the Perryaur, i.e., " great ri\ 7 er," rushes from its source in the " high waving mountains covered with impenetrable forest " (vide the " Atlas of India " Maps), tearing its way down the western slopes into the Travan- core seaboard below. For many years past (I can answer for more than thirty) there has been a project for carrying off a portion of the Perryaur waters eastward into the Cummum valley, and thereby enormously increasing the supply to the thirsty fields of Madura and Eamnad. After these many years of incubation, the plan has been 90 AN INDIAN OLIO. matured and sanctioned, and it may be interesting to transcribe a portion of a very lucid account of the place and project. "After leaving the forest, and traversing some low swampy ground, comes a fine park-like plateau, with sholas (thickets) and mountain streams interspersed. Numerous traces of elephant and bison were met with. The river ran close beneath our camp, about the width of the Severn at Shrewsbury, running six or seven feet deep, through a gorge clothed with jungle. " The idea is to dam up the Perryaur, and, by diverting its course, utilise its waters for irrigation of a portion of the Madura district ; to construct a dam of concrete, one hundred and sixty feet in height, across the river, thereby impounding the drainage of upwards of three hundred square miles of country with an annual rainfall of upwards of a hundred inches, and forming a lake twelve square miles in area, and from one hundred and twenty to one hundred and fifty feet deep. The water thus stored will be drawn off by a tunnel through the watershed ridge dividing Madura from Travancore. The water, thus drawn off, will travel some eighty-five miles to where it is required for irrigation purposes, and the cost is esti- mated at sixty-seven lakhs of rupees (670,000), and the net revenue to be realised at five and three quarter lakhs (53,000)." A statement made in 1887 i n an Indian paper, giving the credit of originating the project to the engineer officer who has lately reported it, must be corrected. The scheme THE PERRYAUR PROJECT. 91 was carefully made out nearly forty years ago, and the only credit due to its present promoter is its revival. A great drawback to realisation of this grand scheme will probably be the excessive unhealthiness of the plateau, and consequent sickness and mortality among both officers and men employed on it. CHAPTEE V. Cummum Valley Dindigul Serroomullays Bison Dangerous encounter with bison Effect of railroads upon game Elephant and bison slaughterers Mahseer Bhowany Rest-house Salem Minerals Unhealthiness of Salem Fever on the Shervaroy Mountains Cholera History of cholera Probable causes of cholera Contagion, or infection, or both ? Native ideas on cholera Remedies Dr. Macmichael Madras reports Goddess of cholera and small-pox ! Mahomedans and Hindoos Educa- tion of Mahomedans Loyal feeling of Mahomedan community Statistics of Government posts occupied by the races of India Sir Lepel Griffin on " Islam" The Shervaroy Mountains Coffee planting. WE now pass the length of the Cummum valley, not very fertile, but with some fine tanks near the towns of Periacolum and Butlagoontah, feeding a considerable amount of cultivated land among the scrub jungle. Fifty miles' journey takes us to Dindigul, a town at the mouth of the valley, with much well irrigation about it, feeding extensive fields of tobacco, for which the district is famous. The fort of Dindigul stands on the top of a naked granite hill near the town. In it are bomb-proof barracks and magazines, and deep natural water-holes on the sum- mit of the rock, inside the walls. In these water-holes are shoals of small fish, which I tried for, and caught a BISON. 93 great number, to the delight of a tame mongoose, the pet of a Sepoy on guard, which came sniffing up, and begged for a share of the spoil, which was readily granted to it. Natives have an idea that much treasure lies buried among some extensive ruins which are scattered over the interior of the fort, and once an exploration was sanc- tioned, but nothing was discovered. At the foot of the rock, which is about three hundred feet high, and has a natural scarp for three-fourths of its circuit, there is a large reservoir ; and on the top of the fortress is, moreover, a well of excellent water. The Seroomullays, a fine range of mountains, in height near three thousand feet, which lie half-way between Dindigul and Madura, were the haunt of herds of bison, which roamed peacefully over the sholahs and fine grassy glades. When I knew these hills, the quiet of the herds was now and then broken upon by sportsmen from Madura and Dindigul, and, as in my case, from Trichinopoly also ; and we mastered the trophies of some tremendous bulls. Now, probably, the herds have been nearly or quite exter- minated; for since the mutinies, British gunners, both those with great and those with small guns, and also those who wield the grey goose quill (steel pens in our days !), have greatly increased in numbers in most parts of India. At risk of being thought to tell " travellers' tales," I must relate an adventure which happened to an old friend of mine, who, by the way, contracted a terrible jungle fever on these hills, and was obliged to take sick leave to England ; but, though he got rid of the fever for a time, 94 AN INDIAN OLIO. it again attacked him on his return to India, and ended in his death at Madras. . To go on with the story, my friend was stalking bison in the Seroomullay jungle, and came across a fine bull, at which he incontinently fired. The bull, wounded and furious, made a desperate charge, and he retreated over the rough and rocky ground, and, losing his footing, fell straight on his back between two rocks, each of them about two feet high. The bison came on, and his mas- sive horns and broad frontal bone rang loudly on the rocks, which were just far enough apart to receive the body of the discomfited sportsman, but not to admit the spreading horns and big forehead of the enraged bull. My friend's remark, in telling the story, was that the hair of the bison's chin tickled his nose as it charged several times in vain before it left him. He then picked himself up, and his rifle also, and had his revenge by securing one of the finest heads which he had ever shot in the Seroomullay jungles. Since the establishment of railroads, game in general, large game in particular, has suffered great diminution in numbers. The bison is a shy, solitude-loving animal even the woodchopper's axe is sufficient to make him decamp : how much more then must the sound of engines and all other devilments connected with a railway upset his delicate nerves ? Instead of the occasional trumpet of a frisky wild elephant, he hears the diabolical screech of the steam whistle, and the demoralising puff and snort of the rushing engine ; in lieu of the scent of jungle SLAUGHTER OF ELEPHANTS. 95 flowers, and of the fresh trodden herbage in which he roams, he snuffs with disgust the " tainted gale," laden with the evil odour of coal gas, penetrating to his choicest haunts and forest fastnesses. Moreover, this wretched railroad is the means of multi- plying exceedingly the number of his enemies. Sportsmen, and many who have no right to that name, can now jump into a morning train at Madras, and be frightening and driving away the game in a good jungle before night. By this the large game cannot but suffer greatly. Moreover, guns have of late years come much more generally into use with natives. Where there was, fifty years ago, perhaps only one matchlock, or venerable flint musket, in a village, there are now a dozen, and natives have got much more the habit of killing game the eatable animals for food, the fierce and dangerous beasts (potted from a safe shelter) for the Government reward. I knew a party of natives go out, under supervision, in fact, in pay of a Brahmin (save the mark), with a big jinjal, or wall piece, carried between two of them, until they came upon the fresh tracks of a herd of elephant. They then crept to within ten or fifteen paces, and tied the jinjal, ready loaded, and laid for the biggest elephant, to a tree trunk, lighted a slow match, and retired to a safe distance. Presently the great weapon, which had been pointed straight for the vitals, behind the shoulder of the elephant, exploded with a report like that of a small cannon echoing through the forest. The stricken elephant either fell at once, or more often, rushed off to die 96 AN INDIAN OLIO. miserably a few miles off in a day or two, and the slaughterer then collected his trophies, tail, &c., and claimed the blood money, of which the Brahmin employer would get by far the greater part. Once in the Cauvery jungle I came upon a freshly slain cow bison, and two men sitting by it. One of these, who were Hindoos of respectable caste, had shot it, and they were waiting for the " chucklers " (leather dressers) to skin it, their own caste preventing them from doing so themselves, though it did not prevent them from killing this wild cousin of their sacred animal. However, my long-legged shikarry, the Paddy-bird, summed them up very concisely, saying, " They are d d rascals, and will all go to hell ! " Leaving Dindigul, we now passed on to Salem, over a country of no particular interest. In the scrub jungle were hares, partridge, and rock pigeon, and great numbers of the thick-kneed or stone plover, with great projecting forehead and staring round eyes ; from the dry grain fields rose, in huge companies, the " Popoy-mainah," a species of small grackle, and settled in thick clusters on the roadside thorn- trees, and many a stew and curry was made of the dozen or more which would fall to a judicious shot. Then we came to the tall conical hill, Eungamullay, warm and bright in colour with variegated rocks of pink and white porphyry. In the plain, dotted with small hills, which lies between Eungamullay and Salem, there is much wet cultivation, fed by numerous streams, some of them almost deserving MAHSEER. 97 the name of rivers, such as the Noel and the Amrawutty, affluents of the Cauvery, which flows in the same plain, but nearer to Salem, of which district it forms the western boundary. At Erode, now a railway station, is a large irrigation channel from the river Bhowany, which forms a junction with the Cauvery at the town known also as Bhowany. The Bhowany is a specially fine stream, taking its rise as a mountain torrent on the highest slopes of the ISTeilgherries, and draining the heavy jungles between the mountains and the growing town of Mettapolliam. This river is full of fish of all sorts and sizes, and at Metta- polliam, and further up in the direction of its sources, mahseer of enormous size are met with. In a Neilgherry newspaper of 1887, the following is found regarding Bhowany fish : "Mr. 1ST. S. Symons . . . was fortunate in killing a great many mahseer, and amongst them he landed two monsters, weighing, severally, sixty-five and a half and seventy-three pounds, four and a half feet long, and thirty- four and a half inches round girth. He had to play each fish for full five or six hours before he could succeed in landing them." Truly this is sport, and will make the mouths of salmon fishers water. The largest salmon pale in comparison with such tremendous fish. One hears of lines " strong enough to hold a whale ; " without going quite so far, it must be a very special line to hold such a mahseer. What these great fish were tempted with is G 98 AN INDIAN OLIO. not stated, but probably with a " spoon bait/' which is about the most killing thing that can be used for them. On Indian fish connected with Indian fishing, Mr. Thomas' delightful book, "The Eod in India," is the very best authority. The public bungalow, or rest-house, at Bhowany is a peculiar one. It was in reality a good upstory dwelling- house, built upon the foundations of old walls appertaining to a temple, and was erected many years ago by a civilian of the old school. He lived in native style, as many people did sixty or seventy years ago, and he left his mark behind him, not only by building this house, but also by establishing a corps de ballet, i.e., set of Nautch girls, whose accomplishments actually extended to singing " God save the Queen " (King it was, by the by), and this has been kept up by their descendants, so that in 1852, when I first visited the place, I was greeted by the whole party, bedizened in all their finery, and squalling the National Anthem as fervently as if they understood it, which they did not. After Bhowany, my next point was Salem, and while there I visited the Shervaroy Hills, which rise to the height of five thousand feet about ten miles north of the town, which is fairly well built, but presents no features worthy of special remark. At Salem a very clever cutler, Arnachellum, lived, who was famed throughout India for the excellence of his shikar knives and spear- heads, and I never passed through without visiting his little shop. MINERALS. 99 The iron ore of the district is very good and pure ; it is said to yield from seventy to eighty per cent, of the finest metal. In the laterite, or iron-claystone, almost pure nodules or nuggets of iron pervade its masses like plums in a pudding; and every nullah and stream-bed is paved, as it were, with bright black iron-sand, much used as pounce by native writers. Besides iron, many other minerals of value are found in Salem district ; notably chrome, corundum, and fine porcelain clays. Of crystals there are abundance in the Salem as well as Trichinopoly districts. Between Trichinopoly and Tanjore is found the beautiful Vellum crystal, in masses up to twenty pounds' weight, and is fashioned into many articles connected with Hindoo superstitions, as well as into lenses. Amethysts, smoky quartz crystals, and garnets, are dug up on the Trichi- nopoly parade ground ; and aquamarines at Kongyum in the Coimbatore district. Gold is said to be found, though not in paying quantities, at Pulkanode, on the eastern spurs of the Pulney mountains. In the matter of health, neither the district nor the town of Salem have a good reputation. Fever, that is, malarious fever, is at all times rife. This insidious disease is known to slay more people, on the whole, than even cholera, in all parts of India; and all classes, white and black, suffer from malaria, especially the poorer natives, who are badly lodged, who despise all sanitary conditions, drainage of houses and court-yards, and of stag- nant water-holes, &c., and who commonly sleep on the ioo AN INDIAN OLIO. floors of their huts, without even the ordinary low " charpoy " (bedstead) of the country, and with only a date-leaf mat, at most, between them and the damp and dirty ground. Nor are the beautiful Shervaroy mountains free from fever; every few years malaria prevails, and much detracts from their value as a sanatorium. Being so accessible, and so near Madras, they would be much more frequented, and more houses would be built upon them, were it not for fear of this dangerous fever. In 1854 there were only four or five houses, built by coffee planters, and by civilians who were stationed at Salem; and these civilians came up on Saturdays, and returned to their work on the plains each Monday morning. The fever was not then much spoken of as existing on the hills, though terribly prevalent at Salem and in the sur- rounding district. Several times I came across deserted villages, and was told that they had been so on account of malignant fevers which had destroyed the people ; also I saw some which had been abandoned after frightful visitations of cholera. Salem is very subject to violent cholera epidemics ; indeed, it almost seems that the disease is endemic, as it is in many large cities of India, such as the three presidency cities, also Hyderabad in the Deccan, Luck- now, &c., which are rarely, if ever, free from the scourge ; but whether or not, it lies dormant in the ill-kept purlieus of this town. It often rises in a wave of pestilence, and rages over both town and province. HISTOKY OF CHOLERA. 101 It is rash to enter upon subjects which are the special property of the medical profession; nevertheless, I have seen so much of cholera, and have so carefully considered what I have seen, during a residence of over forty years in India, that I will e'en venture to go into the history and the peculiarities (as visible to a non-professional eye) of origin and spread of the disease ; and will not shrink from offering opinions, taking care to have the support, and to quote the opinions also, of some who have a right to give them authoritatively. It is a common idea that cholera first broke out and became known as a disease in Lord Hastings' army in 1817, but it is on record that in 1783 there was a terrible outburst at the Hurdwar festival ; and Colonel Yule, in his " Anglo-Indian Glossary," somewhat queerly entitled " Hobson- Jobson," says that "Mort de Chien," by which French term cholera is also widely known, is really a corruption of the Portuguese "mordexin;" which again represents the Konkanee and Mahratta " modachi," " modshi," or " modwashi," from a Mahratta word " mod- nen," to IreaJc up, sink, collapse. Colonel Yule gives many recorded proofs that, besides the great outbreak at Hurdwar, this pestilence had been known so far back as 1503, and following years, in the sixteenth and seven- teenth centuries. In Hindustani, cholera is variously named : " Wooba," pestilence; " kie-julaub," vomiting and purging; third, and expressively, " golee ka mar," gunshot, signifying that a man might as well be shot dead as assailed by cholera. 102 AN INDIAN OLIO. These early visitations of cholera appear to have occurred under like circumstances with those of the present cen- tury, i.e., at great gatherings of people, whether in peace or war; preferentially among multitudes assembled at religious festivals and fairs, as at Hurdwar, and among troops on the march, as in the " grand army." It would seem as if the congregation of people, especially in move- ment, and undergoing daily fatigue, were one great cause, if not of the production of the disease, at all events of its spread and intensity. It seems, therefore, to be always present in India, lurking, as it were, in the soil, or, more than likely, in the water, probably in both, ready to establish its influence upon those who, by travel or fatigue, are predisposed to its attack. Whether there is contagion in cholera seems to be a matter for argument ; but there are good grounds for belief that when once established in any place, or among any set of people, it does become both infectious and contagious. At the same time, its peculiarities are great. It will attack marching men at a spot where it has not lately prevailed ; it will accompany them, mowing down its hundreds, to one bank of a river, and leave them on the other side ; or, and more frequently, it will attack such a body on the bank of such a river, as if it had been there waiting for its victims. It is well known that it will capriciously single out one block of barracks, or even one long barrack-room, and leave the rest un- touched. Where cholera is prevalent, strangers arriving within CONTAGION, OR INFECTION, OR BOTH? 103 its influence are particularly liable to be seized. I have known many instances, especially of travellers suffering from fatigue. Another peculiarity is that cholera seems to have a vitality of its own. Each out- break has its birth, rapid growth, and more gradual decline and death a death, however, which unhappily leaves the seeds of a new birth behind it. It is like a weed which springs up under favourable conditions, grows to its proper height and luxuriance, and then withers down again, leaving its seeds unseen, but ready to be revivified on occurrence of some change of season, or other good opportunity. I say this without in the least joining in the hunt after cholera " germs," as discoverable in the human body. Whether such germs may or may not exist in polluted soil or water, or both, is quite another matter; from such earth or water it by its emanations or its contact may very likely be introduced into the human frame, just as the infection or contagion of other zymotic diseases fer- ment after similar introduction. But, after all, nothing is really known, however much may be surmised, of the original cause of an outbreak of cholera; why it is so capricious in its onset, so strange in its selection of localities, and so little amenable to treatment. It really seems as if there were something in the native idea, that when a man is attacked with cholera, if he is to die, he will die, and if to live, will live, whether he has medicine or not; but this idea does not extend beyond the turning-point of the malady that point 104 AN INDIAN OLIO. once reached, medicine and care will do everything for recovery, and their neglect, or, as is the case with thou- sands, the impossibility of procuring such aid, will be fatal. I have known several medical officers in India who have at one time or other imagined that they have dis- covered a specific against cholera, such as bleeding, salt eaten in quantities, opium and brandy, once a very common but now discredited treatment, and many other things. They have been quite "cock-a-hoop" at the fancied success of the new plan, and have prepared a list of a wonderful percentage of recoveries ; but, alas ! the very next year this brand new remedy has entirely failed, and the disease remained as much an " opprobrium " as ever. The fact is that specifics there are none. Careful living, cleanliness, avoidance of unnecessary contact with the infected, and of localities known to be dangerous or doubtful, are all that can be depended upon ; most of all these, and most difficult of all, water known or suspected of having received the poison must be avoided. Empiri- cal, i.e., strictly experimental treatment, may succeed or appear to succeed occasionally, but fails to stand the test of time. So far back as 1831, Dr. Macmichael raised the ques- tion of contagion or no contagion in cholera. He wrote of it as a new pestilence born in 1817 (now known to be an entire mistake), which, in the space of fourteen years, had killed off fifty millions of people. He stated (and the truth of his statement has been con- tinually confirmed for more than fifty years since his CAUSES OF CHOLERA. 105 time) that the " new " disease invariably foljowed the course of rivers, the routes of caravans, great lines of communications, and the march of armies ; also that it was carried in ships to remote countries in fact, that it is communicated by contact. All observations go to prove that the seeds or germs of cholera exist over the whole of India, ready to be called into activity, vivified as it were by circumstances favourable to their development viz., heat, dirt, foulness occasioned by overcrowding, whether in cities or in bar- racks, &c., or even in tents all of which appear to be such circumstances. It is an order in Madras that carts, which in great numbers accompany the march of troops, and which are crammed full of women and children, and other camp followers, shall on each halting day, i.e., when the troops do not make a march, be taken to the nearest tank, and there thoroughly scrubbed and washed out. This precaution is believed to have had good results as regards the health of the occupants of the carts ; but surely the fouling of the water supply of a district by such a process may have very unhappy consequences ? Troops attacked with cholera are, while suffering from the disease, not allowed to enter a cantonment, but are kept outside until a clean bill of health, extending over many days, is handed in. This quarantine is very neces- sary, for it is well known that persons coming from an infected district have, on arriving at their destination, many days' journey from such district, been attacked io6 AN INDIAN OLIO. with the disease, evidently brought with them incubat- ing, in fact, all the time. I have known people to have thus brought cholera into the lines of a regiment through a perfectly healthy country, from a place fully a hundred miles distant. In 1864, while that part of the ISTagpore district which lies on the left bank of the river Wurdah, also the whole province of Berar, especially the highroad from Nagpore to Bombay, was terribly visited by cholera, scarcely any travellers, European or native, escaped the loss of one or more in each family or party. Some died before they reached the river Wurdah, others in Berar before arriving at the railway, which was then advancing towards Nagpore. Towns and villages which lay wide of the highroad were comparatively free, but every place, large or small, on the great line of communication was infected. The sanitary custom of cremation, which seems to have been taught by nature to the original inhabitants of India, is, strange to say, not adhered to in the case of deaths from cholera. The bodies are not burned, but are buried in shallow graves, probably to be dug up by hysenas and jackals ; also the foul clothing of the poor wretches, their bed-quilts and cots, &c., where they have had any, are thrown on the grave a horrible custom, and doubtless fraught with great mischief. When cholera is rife, and people are depressed and alarmed, such a sight appears to be quite enough to bring on an attack (predisposition being inferred). An MADRAS CHOLERA REPORTS. 107 officer who died at a rest-house near the Wurdah, in 1864, was walking in the verandah, apparently in good health, when he saw a native ayah, belonging to a family who were halting there, die of cholera in a corner of the verandah. He was immediately seized with the disease, and died in a few hours. He said, before he died, " That sight turned me, and I shall die." In adducing early published reasons for believing cholera to be contagious, I will confine myself to Madras reports. In 1 8 1 8 the official medical report says : " It appeared at Gooty, where no case had been ob- served for six months before, immediately after arrival of first battalion i6th Native Infantry, in which it pre- vailed with great mortality. It is remarkable that the same formidable type of the disease which prevailed in the marching corps was communicated to the corps at Gooty. It also spread on that occasion to the adjacent villages. It appeared in a detachment of artillery, pre- viously perfectly healthy, on the encamping ground pre- viously occupied by the first battalion 8th Native Infantry, in which corps the disease prevailed. Bodies of several persons who had died of cholera remained exposed on the ground when it was taken up by the artillery. " When cholera is once established in a marching regi- ment, it continues its course in spite of change of posi- tion, food, or any other circumstances. Its approach to a town has been traced from village to village, and its first appearance in a town has been in the quarter which is nearest to the track of its progress. When cholera ioS AN INDIAN OLIO. appeared in the 34th Native Infantry, en route from Bellary to Bangalore, all the villages which they passed suffered from it immediately afterwards, and a native soldier, travelling from Bangalore to Nundidroog, pass- ing through the camp of the 34th Regiment while the disease prevailed, was attacked by it and died shortly after reaching Nundidroog. A detachment of Euro- peans, in which cholera was prevalent, arrived at Hyder- abad in May 1819, and were encamped about two hundred yards in front of the quarters occupied by the artillery. The disease did not at that time exist in the cantonments, but in three or four days afterwards it appeared in the artillery. "The detachment who had marched from Madras were attacked with cholera at the river Kistnah. It continued to infest them on the road to Secunderabad. The villages on the road were at this time free from the disease, but a medical officer who travelled on the same road from Kistnah to Secunderabad about two weeks afterwards found it prevailing in every village. The inhabitants asserted that it commenced after the passage of the detachment." Madras Reports, 1818-19. I could add instances by the hundred to these, from medical and military reports, and from other sources, up to the present time, but I think that these reports, made out at a time when it was first minutely attended to and reported upon in India, are sufficient. That the disease is still as fatal and as much beyond the control of any really restraining remedies is but too true. In the year GODDESS OF CHOLERA. 109 1887, the reports in the North- West Provinces, for two months during which cholera prevailed, are as follow : Population, forty-five million ; deaths from cholera, seventy thousand. Natives of India helieve that cholera does not twice attack a person ; but this is certainly not an absolute truth, for I have known second attacks to occur to both Europeans and natives. There may, however, be a good deal in it, as in many popular notions. My shikarry told me that having in his youth recovered from an attack of cholera, he should never have another, and had no fear whatever of being in a cholera-stricken place, or in being in any way exposed to its influence. Certainly on one occasion, journeying through the Berar country, when the disease was frightfully prevalent, and when my camp was attacked, with fatal results to two of my servants, the shikarry was the only cheerful person in camp, and evinced not the slightest fear, but attended on the sick with perfect composure, assuring me that having once had the disease, he was cholera- proof ever afterwards. It is a common belief with the Hindoos that a goddess, " Sittla Matha," has special authority in matters of pesti- lence ; and to deprecate her wrath, and to induce her to hand over the disease to some other place or people, religious ceremonies, sacrifices, and perambulations of boundaries, with deafening noise of tom-toms, &c., are resorted to when cholera or small-pox appears to be imminent. i io AN INDIAN OLIO. I remember great excitement being caused, in cholera time, by a friend of mine sending into the jungle a great wooden tiger-trap, i.e., a cage of wooden bars about ten or twelve feet in length, with inner compartment for a goat as bait, and all complete. This apparatus was mounted on a cart, and, escorted by a couple of shikarries, it set out one afternoon for the jungle. At nightfall it essayed to pass through a village : it was cholera time, and the vil- lagers were on the look-out to prevent their neighbours from coaxing the goddess to come across their limits. When the tiger- trap equipage was seen lumbering into the village, the whole community turned out with clubs and bamboos, and swore that come in it should not. " How do we know what it is ? " said they, when the shikarries began to explain matters ; " how do we know what you have got in that box ? You may have got the devil there ! you may have got the cholera there ! Be off, or we will beat you to a jelly ! " And so they had to turn back, tiger-trap and all, and to find some other road to their destination. The population of Salem, while chiefly Hindoo, yet contains a large number of Mahomedans. The relations between the Moslems and the Hindoos, never very cordial, have of late become greatly "strained" strained, in fact, to the point of breakage. Some four or five years ago a furious riot broke out, the Hindoos having exas- perated the Mahomedans by having, contrary to custom, played music at idol processions in front of mosques, and afterwards shamefully defiled and desecrated one of those MAHOMEDANS AND HINDOOS. in sacred buildings. Eioting ensued, lives were lost, and several Hindoo notables were tried and convicted, and sentenced to various terms of imprisonment, some of them beyond sea. The Mahomedans came out pretty clear, as being the aggrieved parties in the first instance. A long time afterwards, several of those who had been convicted and sentenced were either pardoned or had their convictions quashed on legal grounds by Govern- ment, but that the convictions were morally just is not doubted. There have subsequently been outbursts of ill-feeling, and consequent riots, in several parts of India, between Mahomedans and Hindoos, plainly showing that whatever may be our dangers in India, a combination to any perilous extent between the two races is not to be feared. At Delhi and at Etawah, rioting was very serious, and attended with fatal consequences, and has resulted in violent animosity, which is not likely altogether to sub- side. The leading Hindoos of Allahabad have come forward with an Anti-Mahomedan Association. They have, it is stated in the Indian Chronicle, taken a foul leaf out of western books, and have commenced to " boycott " the Mahomedans. It is said that a separate market has been opened in order to cut off all communi- cation with them, and a resolution passed at a general meeting requiring all Hindoos not to use an "Ekka" (hired carriage) driven by a Mahomedan, or to buy any article from one of that faith ; also, that no Hindoo shall ever evoke the aid of a Mahomedan "Hakeem" or 112 AN INDIAN OLIO. doctor, and that every Hindoo shall shun the atmos- phere of a Mahomedan "Mookhtear" or lawyer. The same native newspaper strongly deprecates the feeling which is growing to so great a height, and, says that "secret or open rupture" (between the races) "cannot benefit any one but the Anglo-Indians." The fact is, for one thing, that the Hindoos of the large towns have conceived a great jealousy of the Mahomedans, of whom, be it observed, there are about fifty millions in India a somewhat small minority when compared with the Hindoos, but still entitled to the earnest regard of the British Government. For many years of British rule the Moslems were kept entirely in the background as regards civil employ- ment; they were considered as mere soldiers, and as interlopers in India, and were not in any way encouraged to qualify themselves for such employment nor, it must be said, did they put themselves forward. They rather shrank from sharing in the progress of civilisation and education, and left the field open to the astute and pushing Hindoo. . They were regarded as a disaffected and dangerous race, nursing an undying hatred to their British con- querors ; and unfit, by both nature and education, to hold offices of trust under a British Government. Doubtless, while the throne of Delhi, tottering and effete though it might be, was nominally occupied by a Mahomedan emperor, there was a strong undercurrent of attachment to the princes of their own faith ; but since the collapse LOYAL FEELING OF MAHOMED ANS. 113 of the Mogul dynasty, they have accepted the new order of things, and have shown, to say the least, fully as loyal a spirit as any race in India, and have likewise mani- fested a disposition to march with the times, and to fit themselves by education for other than mere military service. For some years past also a change has become apparent in their treatment by Government. Commencing with Lord Hobart's government of Madras in 187276, they have received much encouragement, and have met wiljh genuine cordiality the measures which have been taken to raise the status of their schools and colleges, and to provide education for their children as for other classes in the Empire. They are no revolutionists, but have, indeed, a reverence for established things, and have not the least leaning to Socialism, or to action against an. acknowledged government. They have held themselves aloof from the agitation which has been got up of late by disloyal Hindoo town demagogues, and their news- papers are most markedly superior in good feeling and loyalty to those of the Hindoo press. Government have for some time endeavoured to give their Moslem subjects a fair share in those appointments which had long been monopolised by the Hindoos, and the result has been great alarm and jealousy among the latter race. I can aver of my own knowledge of affairs in the "regulation" provinces from 1840 to 1858, after which I was moved to Central India, that the whole native civil service, with so few exceptions that they H ii 4 AN INDIAN OLIO. might be counted on the fingers, was filled with Hindoos, all of " caste," and mostly Brahmins. The Mahomedans were nowhere ! Peons, viz., court and office orderlies, were largely recruited, as was the army, from the Moslem ranks ; but from employment in posts of emolument, in which educated men were required, they were practically shut out. Certainly they were not qualified by education (they were always soldiers rather than scholars), but their failure in education was much owing to their conviction that no employment except such low posts as might be held by illiterate men was open to them ; even now, when their education has been fostered by Government, and has be- come a reality, and when a great many of them have fully qualified themselves, the disproportion of Hindoos in State employment is excessive. Dr. Hunter, in an official report, states that, in 1881, out of 504 gazetted appointments held by natives in Lower Bengal, only 53 are held by Mahomedans. One- third of the population of that province is Mahomedau, but only one-tenth of the Government patronage falls to their share. Even this is very much more than it was a few years ago, and has been kept up, to the intense jealousy and anger of the "Baboos," who complain in their newspapers that " the Hindoo is losing his long- recognised supremacy in influence in competition with the Mahomedans;" but in the Government Gazette of 23rd September 1886, in the announcements of appoint- ments, promotions, &c., of 129 names published, there STATISTICS OF OCCUPATION. 115 are 105 Hindoos, 9 Mahomedans, 3 Eurasians, and 18 Europeans; of 63 names of employes in the judicial de- partment, there are 60 Hindoos, 2 Mahomedans, and I European. There does not, therefore, supposing, as I believe is the case, that much the same averages still obtain (in 1888), seem to be much reason for Baboo complaint, nor that Baboos should grudge the very small number of appoint- ments which now fall to the Moslems. In 1886, Sir Rivers Thompson, Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal, issued a minute enjoining impartiality in bestowal of appointments, and ruled that while the efficiency of the public service is always to be first regarded, places of emolument are to be so distributed that the depression of a numerous and influential class (i.e. the Mahomedans of Bengal) will be prevented. Now, see the figures. In the twenty-four Pergunnahs' (i.e. Bengal proper) revenue establishment the proportion of Hindoo to Mahomedan civil servants is 209 to 6. In Burdwan, Hooghly, &c., about the same. In Jessore, where the Mussulman population preponderates, 1 1 o Hindoos are employed in offices under the judge as against 9 Mahomedans. In Calcutta itself there is not a single Mahomedan clerk in the custom-house, shipping office, or stamps and stationery departments. No doubt much of this is still the fault of the Mahomedans themselves in allowing the Hindoos to give them the go by in educa- tion, but it is quite as much owing to the ring of Hindoos of influence in every department of the State n6 AN INDIAN OLIO. which succeeds in thwarting the intentions of Government, and in keeping out the Mahomedan interloper. What may be the present state of things in the Madras Presidency I cannot pretend absolutely to know ; but from the enormous influence of the Hindoos, especially of the " Mahratta Brahmins," I should infer that very few crumbs of official patronage come as yet to the share of the Mahomedans. A statement, published by the Madras Government in 1887, shows that of Government employes 19.2 per cent, are Brahmins, 55.4 other Hindoos, 16.8 Mahomedans, 4.1 native Christians, and 4.5 Europeans. Sir Lepel Griffin, in his essay, in 1886, upon Native India, says : " It is not possible to discuss here the reason for the animosity, which seems to be increasing, between the Hindoos and Mahomedans, and which con- stitutes the chief danger to public tranquillity. No subject deserves more careful consideration and inquiry, or more patient effort of th Government to avert or minimise the danger. I have already said that in India Islam is ordinarily seen in its least aggressive and fanati- cal form ; but it still is an active proselytising creed, and shows no signs of decreasing vitality. ... In India Mahomedanism has gained largely, and its rate of pro- gression tends continually to increase ; for, in the slow disintegration and decomposition of Brahminism, due to contact with Western ideas and science, when Hindoos, seeing their ancient deities tottering on their shrines, cast about for some new creed to replace that which is passing away, Mahomedanism has found its opportunity." THE SHERVAROY MOUNTAINS. 117 If this be true the Hindoos have indeed reason to tremble, and we to watch and to prepare for trouble; but I do not myself share in either prophecy or appre- hension : it would be long ere the balance could fall on the side of Islam ! Before quitting Salem for the "blue mountains," I must give a few lines to the beautiful Shervaroy moun- tains also, to the game to be got, and to the all but English perhaps Italian is the better word climate to be there enjoyed. In 1854 there was a straight road from Salem ; five miles of plain, and five of ascent of the mountains, ten in all. Now, in 1888, there is a railway station at the foot of the hills, called the " Sher- varoy station," which has superseded the old route. In 1852 I ascended the ghaut on the Salem side, and enjoyed the last three miles exceedingly. The relief from the heat of the plains below, the beauty of the mountain gorges, the sounds (no songs in India) of strange birds, and the complete change from the tropical flora to that of a temperate zone, were to one fresh from the flickering mirage of the plains most delightful. The bamboos and blackwood, the evil-smelling sterculia, and the hundred other tropical trees, shrubs, and grasses had given place to the wild rose, the raspberry, many species of ilex on which pale orchids cling, and acacias, &c. Little moun- tain streams, falling from rocky summits into shady ravines filled with every variety of fern, and collecting at every obstacle into shallow pools, afford welcome refreshment to the thirsty traveller, and are none the Ii8 AN INDIAN OLIO. worse for a rather strong taste of iron which pervades their clear waters. Towards the top of the ghaut the landscape opens, and forest clearings thickly planted with formal rows of coffee bushes bright with coral berries, show that the hand of man is busy on the once solitary mountains. On the summits, over which roll constant clouds and mists, are large plantations clothing the hills and valleys with dark foliage, and amid pretty clumps of trees which the woodman's axe has spared, are scattered cottages very English in appearance, with tile or zinc-covered roofs, and walls overgrown with beautiful many-coloured creepers and blushing fuchsias. In the home-like hedgerows are masses of crimson and white roses and yellow raspberries, and in the trim gardens are flowers to which our hearts warm daisies, pinks, wall-flowers, dahlias, geraniums, and pansies, and most other flowers which grow in temperate climes. English vegetables also succeed fairly well, and apple, pear, and plum trees please the eye, but not so the taste ; for they do not bear good fruit in this climate, temperate though it seems to be. Houses here have fireplaces and chimneys, and are not kept open as they are in the plains, for, as I have already said, masses of vapour continually sweep over the tops of the mountains ; and at open doors not dogs, but clouds come in, yet the climate is not over damp. There is a pleasant fresh moisture, and every breath of air strikes with grateful coolness on the old Indian's cheek. COFFEE PLANTING. 119 On these mountains game is scarce. There are jungle fowl, but they keep to heavy patches of forest, and though pursued with beaters and badly trained dogs, are more frequently heard than seen. In the fall of the year woodcock are sparsely met with, and are hunted with the wonted perseverance of English sportsmen ; but it is not usual to flush more than two or three in a long morning's beat, and happy is the man who secures so many in one day's quest. Jungle sheep are sometimes seen, and once or so in a season a stray bison's tracks will be found in a coffee plantation, and will occasion a turn out of sturdy planters for a hard day's hunt over the mountains. Yercaud is the name of the main settlement on the Shervaroys, which are in the vernacular " Sherwar mullay ; " but as "mullay" signifies a mountain only, we Anglo-Indians have clipped the name in our usual style. The only object of cultivation is the coffee plant, which, when I knew these hills, was very flourishing and cropped well ; though, as the few planters were men of small means, some of them indeed of broken fortunes, they made but a poor livelihood. Most of them were in debt to natives at Salem, who lent them money at heavy interest, and moreover stipulated to receive the crop of berries when harvested at a fixed low price from their unhappy debtors. ( 120 ) CHAPTER VI. The Blue Mountains Sunkerrydroog Coolies The Colonel and his barracks Approach to the Neilgherries The Coonoor Ghaut The new road to Coonoor Tommy Atkins as a naturalist Coonoor Ootacamund Living on "the hills" Want of sanita- tion and conservancy Game on the Neilgherries A tiger story Wolves and snipe shooting Tigers on trees Spring of a tigress up a rock Ferocity of panthers and leopards Leopard's larder Climate of the Neilgherries Amusements at Ootacamund Neil- gherry hotels Native servants on "the hills" Aboriginal in- habitants The " Todas " Discovery of the Neilgherry plateau Probable extinction, of the Todas The "Burghers" The " Koorumbahs." THE Blue Mountains ! How grand they show from the Coimbatore plain, whether approached as in old times by slow process of stage by stage journey, or as now by the swift train thundering over the Cauvery and Bhowany bridges. Visible, as they are in clear weather, from a distance of sixty or seventy miles on the Salem road, they seem to shut in the horizon with a wall of purple gloom, cloud-canopied at top, and melting at its base into the hazy dimness of the plain. From Salem to Bhowany the road passes over a dry stony country with more low jungle than cultivation, and in which many high hills and great rock masses rise like SUNKERRYDROOG. 121 castles on tlie plain. Specially fine is the vast rock fort of Sunkerrydroog, many hundred feet in height, crowned and girt with great towers and bastions, and with long connecting walls of solid granite. In Daniell's " Illustrations of Oriental Scenery " there is a fine picture of this great rock fortress, and in the letter- press it is stated that night is made terrible by the howling and roaring of beasts of prey. This was, I doubt not, true of the time written of ; but in the seventy years or so which have elapsed times have changed, and the jungle is no longer haunted by such fierce tenants, and the goat boy tends his charge in safety where the tiger and leopard were once wont to prowl. Some years ago, when riding between Sunkerrydroog and Bhowany, two wolves crossed leisurely in front of me, and disappeared in the low jungle before I could get rifle in hand for them. I heard that there were bears, though not many, in the neighbouring hills, and now and then a panther or leopard on the droog itself; but there are no tigers now in the vicinity, and the herdsmen and culti- vators said that no depredations were ever committed by any wild beasts. The occasional presence of a leopard was known only by its carrying off a dog, or possibly a goat or sheep from the villages in the neigbourhood of the fort. The mention of Sunkerrydroog reminds me of a story told us by my old colonel when I was a subaltern in the 1 3th Eegiment Native Infantry. The old gentleman entered the army towards the end of the last century, and 122 AN INDIAN OLIO. was when I knew him over forty years' service. In his young days things were very different from what they now are, and money might be made without the least idea of wrongdoing in ways which would now be de- nounced. My colonel, then a subaltern, was sent with two companies of Sepoys to Sunkerrydroog, and was ordered to build temporary barracks, for a wing of his regiment. He had an European sergeant who had some knowledge of engineering, and with this man's help he set to work to build the barracks at a cost of not more than five thousand rupees, for which sum he had a credit upon the civil treasury. On arriving at Sunkerrydroog his sergeant came and saluted, and said : " Sir, you are to build them barracks for five thousand rupees. Let me have the job, and I will build them for four thousand, and you can keep the other thousand." Here the colonel always ended his story, and of course we subs could not urge him to go any further ; but we always understood that the colonel got his thousand, and that the sergeant undoubtedly got a very good slice out of the remaining four thousand for which he was willing to build the barracks ; besides, the colonel always wound up with saying, " My dear boys, those were very different days," and looked very much as if he wished that those " good old times " could come over again. It is needless to tell of the road journey the whole way to Coonoor and Ootacamund. The rail is now at Kullar, the actual foot of the great mountains. A " Eighi " rail- APPROACH TO THE NEILGHEKRIES. 123 road is in contemplation, but is as yet in nulibus y as it will be, at least the upper part of it, if ever it is brought to completion. At present, however, after passing over the. fertile fields of Coimbatore, and through the heavy Bhowany and Mettapolliam jungle, and upon the vibrating tressel- bridge beneath which the Bhowany river glances in foam and rapids, the terminus is reached at Kullar, whence it- is at the option of the traveller to drive up the new zigzag ghaut, or to ride and walk up the comparatively straight old road. The lower spurs of the mountains are but thinly covered with forest. Soon, however, after a few hundred feet of ascent, the scenery becomes beautifully varied and romantic. Whether by the old road, which can be traversed only on foot or on pony back, or by the long carriage road which crosses the old track more than once, and which clings to the mountain sides, and climbs by long twists and zigzags to the summit of the ghaut in either way the scenery is equally beautiful. About one- third up the ascent, Burliar is reached. Here is a garden established many years ago, for cultivation of shrubs and trees, both fruit and forest, which love a climate cooler than the plains, and warmer than that of the Neilgherry plateau. Here a swift mountain torrent of ice-cold water is crossed by a light and airily constructed bridge, and its rocky margin, shaded by luxuriant trees, is a delightful rest on either the upward or the downward journey. 124 AN INDIAN OLIO. Often I have sat and watched the swarms of insects, bees, wasps, and painted butterflies, which collect on the moist stones half-washed by the rippling water, and drink in safety, flying from stone to stone on the rocky margin. The easiest mode of climbing the mountains is in a " chair," a canopied seat open at the sides and front, and carried on bamboo poles by four men, who pace solemnly along at a very slow step, entirely different from the quick shuffle of palanquin-bearers in the plains. The moaning chant, to which they keep time, is a muffled melancholy sound, and altogether there is a very funereal aspect about the procession. As to pony back, that plan is anything but pleasant ; for most of the way up, the rider's chief object must be to avoid slipping over the pony's tail, and most of the way down to save himself from tumbling over its neck and shoulders. I have more than once had a pony at my service, but have usually abdicated the saddle for more than three-fourths of the way, and trusted to my own legs, as far more comfortable and reliable than those of the pony. For thorough enjoyment of a first visit to the Neil- gherries, it should be in the very height and fervour of the "hot season." The difference of climate, probably nearly 40, is almost beyond belief. After leaving Burliar, the cool mountain air, the entire change from tropical vegetation to that of a temperate clime, the rolling mists which fill the gorges and pass in white wreaths along the green hill sides, the very fact of being THE COONOOR GHAUT. 125 obliged to don an overcoat over the light clothing worn at the start in the morning, all these are so enjoyable and exhilarating, that they seem to give one new life, and it is difficult to realise that only two or three hours pre- viously one was suffering from the enervating heat of the low country, which at each turn of the road is seen lying overspread with a glowing haze at one's feet. After each halt for breath, when the traveller again addresses himself to the steep ascent, new beauties pre- sent themselves at each turn of the road. On one side the rough grey rocks striped green and yellow with lichens, and slippery with little rills and trickles of water, and from which the narrow road has been labori^ ously hewn and blasted, with overhanging trees clothing the steeps above. On the other side deep ravines and valleys filled with strange shrubs and masses of feathery ferns among the rocks, and glimpses of torrents foaming and chafing on their way to join the Bhowany and Moyaur, rivers of the plains, and yet further the high peaked sombre mountains which crown the distant sides of the valleys. The road sides and the low stone walls which safe- guard the traveller, in case of accident, from falling to the depths below, are overgrown with roses and rasp- berries, and with delicate creepers bearing flowers of brightest hues. There is nothing to remind of India, nothing tropical to break the charm, until now and again he overtakes a train of swarthy coolies plodding along with bamboo "Alpenstocks" in hand, carrying 126 AN INDIAN OLIO. their heavy loads to the Coonoor market, or droves of the mild-eyed Indian oxen, also heavy laden, filing up the ghaut. Of animal life, four-footed or feathered, there is little. Once in a way a sudden leap and crash among the branches, and glimpse of a black or brown body darting from tree to tree, proclaims the presence of a troop of startled monkeys, or a few wild pigeons will rise with clashing wings and dart like rockets down a precipitous ravine. The cries of unseen and to the visitor unknown small birds, are likewise sometimes heard, but there are few of these, and the silence of the forest is but rarely broken. Farther on where the hitherto distant sides of the great gorge begin to close in, and to cast the shadows of the beetling crags and peaks into the deep, dank valleys, small patches of cleared ground appear bearing stiff rows of tea and coffee shrubs on the ruddy soil, each holding provided with its planter's modest zinc-roofed cottage and subsidiary buildings for coolies, cattle, &c., and covered sheds for cure and storage of the precious leaves and berries. At two or three places along the road are small ham- lets of three or four huts each, only too many of them displaying bottles of arrack on their low verandahs ; also shops, sheds for weary bullocks, places of refuge to tired and shivering coolies when overtaken by the not unfre- quent storms. When the monsoon bursts over the hills, or when, as now and then occurs, a storm of unusual DANGERS OF THE GHAUT. 127 severity sweeps on with driving rain and hail, it is not uncommon for several wretched natives to be found on the ghaut, not exactly frozen, but chilled to death, and lying stiff and stark under the vain shelter of some crevice or overhanging piece of the rock from which the road is hollowed. For travellers upon the new road, which has been carried, on easy gradients, on the sides of the mountains, carriages, yclept "tongas," to carry two passengers with modicum of luggage are provided. Drawn by two lean ponies, these vehicles make tolerable play up the ghaut ; and much better when it is the descent, not the ascent, which is to be accomplished. Sometimes by misbehaviour of jibbing ponies, the tonga will be carried wholly or partly over the low parapet which fences the road on the valley side ; and many bad accidents have thus happened. It is not uncommon to come suddenly upon a dead or dying bullock at a sharp turn of the road, and the almost certain consequence is a violent shy of the ponies either into the rock-cutting or on to the precipice side, as the case may be ; and, as a rule, the most dangerous side is chosen by the perverse animals. Another frequent danger is the presence of huge stones and pieces of rock in the middle of the road, where they have been left by the lazy cartmen, who have used them to block their wheels when struggling up steep places, and who, after having thus used them, never take the trouble to move them again out of the road, much 128 AN INDIAN OLIO. less to replace them on the parapet from which they brought them. On nearing Coonoor, the road winds along the banks of. a rushing stream, and through a tangled shrubbery, where bits of colour, dear to a painter's eye, are often seen, and which, on near approach, resolve themselves into the scarlet or blue tunics of various cc Tommies," of all branches of the service, hailing from Wellington barracks, three miles further on towards Ootacamund, who are seeking both profit and amusement in the capture of gorgeous butterflies, and sober-coated moths, and beetles shining in metallic hues, which they pin down in glass- covered wooden cases, with, usually, an immense scorpion in the middle place of the display. Thes'e they offer to passing travellers, or boarders at the Coonoor hotels, at high prices, usually from twenty to twenty-five rupees, for a case containing perhaps a hundred specimens be- sides the inevitable curled up scorpion in the place of honour ! The native bazaar at Coonoor occupies the worst position which could have been chosen for it. In the very lowest part of a valley, astride of what ought to be a pure moun- tain stream, but which is now polluted in all possible ways, Coonoor is a dirty and insanitary place. In spite of its beautifully cool climate, and its six thousand feet of height, it is often subjected to attacks of cholera, and of such fevers as are brought on by dirt and over- crowding. The houses of the English residents are perched on COONOOR AND OOTACAMUND. 129 hills and knolls, well above the bazaar. All have the usual villa names, such as " Sunnyside," " Bosebank," " Fairlawns," &c., but three houses which stand at some distance from the rest, and overlook a fine deep valley bordered by stately mountains, received from the old General who built them the warlike appellations, " Alma," " Inkerman," and " Balaclava." Passing through Coonoor, and skirting the brick and mortar crowned site of Wellington, known as Jackatalla before it became a military convalescent station, a gradual rise of about twelve hundred feet in twelve miles of good road takes the traveller to the hill -girt entrance of Oota- camund, of which the numerous houses, mostly shaded by fine trees and shrubs, among which Australian gum trees, and rhododendrons blazing in pink and scarlet, pre- dominate, peep out, relieving the verdure with their neat white walls. Ootacamund differs from the hill-stations of Upper India in that good driveable roads extend all over the hills, and consequently carriages, drawn not by men but by horses and ponies (ponies preferably), are everywhere met with, and may be hired by visitors from the two or three mews in the station. Living is by no means cheap, nor is it suited to the pockets of subalterns, &c., who have not resources beyond their pay. No one can live in any comfort, on these mountains, under four hundred rupees monthly expenditure. The worst point about Ootacamund, which it shares with most of the hill-stations of India, is the want of i 1 3 o AX INDIAN OLIO. forethought and disregard of ordinary sanitary rules, in permitting native bazaars and squatteries to be placed just where they should not be. Every sholah and every stream within the precincts of what may be called the station, is defiled and made filthy by the evil habits of the natives. Some, I may say most of the roads, are from this cause offensive to both sight and smell. There appears to be no proper control in such matters, and both residents and visitors are careless to take trouble to re- form what is wrong. The evil of the native huts being placed as they are, is, especially as regards the main bazaars, beyond remedy, but surely some system of sanitary control might be instituted and enforced. The provision of proper accommodation for natives, and repression of their dirty habits by employment of properly supervised peons, would, it is particularly within my own experience to aver, produce much amendment, and would put an end to those (really in this case) enteric fevers to which so many residents and visitors also have lately succumbed. In writing of the sport to be enjoyed on the Neil- gherries, I fear that I shall be describing, very much, things of the past rather than of the present. The grand sport so vividly portrayed fifty years ago and more by the " Old Forest Banger " is no longer to be hoped for, the glories of the " Orange Valley," the abundance of large game, of the elephants and bison on the " Koondahs," the bears, the herds of hog, to seek which was to surely find ; most of these have been destroyed or driven away to the GAME OX THE XEILGHERRIES. 131 deepest recesses of the forests. An occasional wandering tiger still prowls round the settlements, or is roused in the larger sholahs by sportsmen, who, with beaters and dogs, are seeking for less noble game. Leopards are still a terror to those who keep dogs to aid them in their sport, but their skulking and crafty habits save them from being often brought to bag. Nevertheless, to those who will undergo a real good fag, or a canip out on the Koondahs (twenty odd miles from Ootacamund), or in other remote corners of "the hills," there are still some bison to be stalked, ibex to be followed on the precipices, and sambur to be beaten out .ited for in the early mornings and evenings when they come from the heavy cover to feed on the grassy slopes which are so great a feature on the Blue Mountains. Xor is it needful to go even so far for sambur and jungle-sheep, they yet hang to the skirts of civilisation within walking distance of Coonoor and Ootacamund, and not un frequently when a sholah is beaten for wood- cock, which are tolerably plentiful at the fall of the year, a lusty sambur will crash through the fern and under- wood to fall to the rifle, which, be it remembered, should always be at hand even though small game only be the object of the day's work. A brother officer of mine experienced the truth of this in a remarkable manner. He was encamped at Kaisseia, near Secunderabad, a very tigerish place in those days, to which I have to look back, alas ! through the vista of more than forty long years. He was with two or three 132 AN INDIAN OLIO. beaters moving about the low jungle which runs into open glades and rice-fields, and his gun was loaded with small shot in both barrels in readiness for pea- fowl, spur-fowl, or any small game he might happen to see. Emerging from a thick patch of jungle shrubbery which encircled some dry rice-fields, he stood and sur- veyed the open space. He had no thought of large game, he had no rifle with him. The shadows were lengthening, and it was time for pea-fowl, &c., to come out into the open ground. Suddenly a thundering sound broke the silence, and a huge tiger came out on the opposite side of the clearing, looked steadfastly at him, passed slowly to another corner of the clearing, and dis- appeared. My friend had hardly recovered from his surprise when another loud moaning call from the same quarter assailed his ears, and another big tiger came out in the track of the first one, stopped, stared, and in like manner entered the jungle at the corner, and disappeared. Whether my friend would, or ought to, have used his rifle if he had had one with him is a matter about which there may be two opinions, but he always when telling the story said : " If I had only had my rifle." Once, at Puttuncheroo, near Secunderabad, I lost a chance by not having my rifle with me when snipe- shooting. I was walking round the sedgy margin of a tank, and had fired several shots at snipe, and nothing was less in my thoughts than large game, when just as I was entering a thick bed of reeds I heard a rustling noise TIGERS ON TREES. 133 at the farther side, about thirty yards from where I was standing, and a pair of fine grey wolves walked out and leisurely lobbed away to the adjacent thin scrub jungle. Snipe shot would be of no use in such a case, so I let them alone. Tigers on the Neilgherry mountains seem sometimes to acquire peculiar habits. In 1870 a tigress was found in a sholah during a beat for small game. There were rifles with the shooting party, and when the tigress burst out of the cover, scattering dogs and coolies in wild con- fusion, two or three ineffectual shots were fired at her, and after one or two attempts to sneak away, which were frustrated by the yelling beaters, she actually climbed a tree and sat among the branches full thirty feet from the ground. Two shots were fired at her while in this position, and she tumbled apparently dead to the ground, but when the dogs got round her she began to snarl and fight, and again climbed the tree to the same height as before. This time poor puss stood on a fork of the tree exposing her chest to the aim of the rifles, and was again knocked off, this time to rise no more. The tree measured over twenty-five feet in height to where the animal stood, and it was so perpendicular that two active lads who tried to climb it could not do so. This story was fully authenticated in the newspapers by those engaged in the affair. The party who shot this tigress were beating for woodcock when puss was put up, and it is a curious circumstance that she put up a wood- cock, which, when the scrimmage was over, was beaten I 34 AN INDIAN OLIO. up again and shot ; so that the sport of that day was wanting neither in excitement nor variety. I have never myself seen a tiger take to a tree, -nor have any native shikarry or jungle-man ever spoken to me of such a thing, but I have heard of two or three well authenticated instances similar to that which I have just related. The late Colonel Nightingale, one of the best sportsmen who ever took spear or rifle in hand, roused up a large tiger, which, being bullied by the dogs, of which the Colonel always kept a number, sprang ten feet off the ground into a large tree, and lay stretched out along the branches. He was, of course, quickly dis- posed of. Two other instances are recorded in the Indian Sporting Review of 1856. A writer, whose nom de plume was " Teutonius," relates two occasions in Chota Nagpore when tigers, roused out and terrified, sought safety in large trees. I will give the two stories in an abbreviated form. "News came that villagers were blockading a tiger which had climbed a tree, and was sitting on the branches. A crowd of villagers was seen surrounding the tree a peepul ^some distance from the village. On the party of impromptu sportsmen approaching, there appeared standing high aloft on a stout branch the tiger, erect, calm, and fearless, his bright colours looking beautiful in high relief. He was twenty-five feet from the ground, as afterwards measured. This peepul tree had low spreading branches, and was not difficult to climb. Tom was, of course, shot dead where he stood." FEROCITY" OF PANTHERS AND LEOPARDS. 135 " On the second instance of a tiger being ' up a tree/ in more senses than one, it was also on a large peepul, but which had a trunk which was straight up to fourteen feet, and then branched out into a wilderness of shade of both great and small branches. This tiger was also shot, after some protests in the way of teeth-grinding, snapping, and snarling." So much for tigers up trees. The only wonder is that they do not more affect tree-climbing than they do, for a spring of twelve or fourteen feet high is nothing to a tiger. I know an instance where a lithe tigress sprang eighteen feet, as afterwards measured, up to the top of a perpendicular rock, where a native who had no business there (he was a washerman) was squatting, looking at the sport from what he vainly thought to be a safe height. A few days afterwards I saw the claw marks, clear and white, scored on the mossy top of the rock. As a rule, however, it is quite safe to perch oneself on a tree branch or top of a rock from ten to twelve feet from the ground. Very few tigers will attempt to pull down a man from such a height, still it has been and can be done. With the agile panther, or especially the leopard, things are very different. They run up trees like cats (as they are), and no height is a protection from them if once they take it into their heads to storm a tree. I have known two instances of officers being killed in this way by enraged leopards, that is, pulled down and so bitten .and clawed as to die from blood-poisoning. I need scarcely 136 AN INDIAN OLIO. say that there is virulent poison on the claws of animals that are constantly tearing flesh, often none of the sweetest, and this is sure to infect the wounds of a man who is so unfortunate as to be clawed. In one of the cases I am now mentioning the leopard ran twice up the tree. At its first charge it pulled down a native shikarry, who was sitting on a branch at the officer's feet. At its second attack it pulled the sportsman down from a height, it was said, of twenty feet. The unfortunate gunner (he was an artilleryman) was a remarkably fine, handsome young man. He died 8f few days after the occurrence. The panther and leopard, especially the latter, are much more savage and spiteful (if it is fair to say so) when wounded than the tiger; and, except that they cannot kill with a blow of the paw or a crunch with the teeth, are more dangerous by far. People who know but little of them think them to be cowardly as well as cunning, but this is a mistake. Cunning they are, and it is their nature to take advantage of ground, and to keep themselves under cover when they can ; but when wounded and provoked to charge their enemy their courage and ferocity are beyond question. The great yellow panther will kill a bullock, but the small dark leopard confines its attention to sheep, goats, dogs, and little calves and ponies. The leopard has a curious custom of hanging its game up in the fork of a tree. I have more than once seen the carcase of a goat hung up in a leopard's larder ! 1 1,. "I CLIMATE OF THE NEILGHEREIES. 137 Both panthers and leopards are very noisy at night, calling with a loud grating cry, as if an exaggerated saw were being used. Often when awake at night in my tent, I have heard this rasping cry echoing through the jungle, sometimes quite close to my camp ; it is very different from the call of the tiger, which is a tremendous roaring mew, like that of a thousand hoarse tom-cats rolled into one. There is an idea that the spotted cats are uncommonly hard to kill, but I have not often found them so ; they are exceedingly difficult to find, but I have killed several of them with one shot apiece. The same with tigers, though now and then both tigers and leopards will take a great many shots before they give in, but this is generally the effect of coarse shooting ; a well-placed shot will find a vital part easily enough. Ootacamund is pleasant in the season, i.e., from March to the end of September, except when the heavy rains are falling, which is not seldom. By reason of desiring a drier climate, many people prefer Coonoor at such times, though the temperature of the latter settlement is eight or ten degrees higher than that of the former, where the thermometer varies from about 56 to 66 in the warmest months, and where a fire is appreciated, in the evening at all events, all the year round. There is no want of amusement at Ootacamund. Balls, musical parties, and theatricals occupy the nights; and picnics, jackal hunting, lawn tennis, archery, and riding, driving, and walking over the pretty outlying roads, and raa AN INDIAN OLIO. among the romantic mountain scenery, fill up the days. There is also a reading-room and library ; and for bachelors, a club with bedrooms, and all appliances for a pleasant sojourn in its halls. Hotels and boarding-houses for families and for single people are numerous, and well filled in the season when visitors pour in from all stations of the Madras Presidency, and not a few from other parts of India ; indeed, ap- plicants are sometimes refused for want of room, and houses are often engaged many months beforehand. Under these circumstances it is easy to understand that rents and terms are high, and that, as all over the world, a harvest is reaped at expense of the crowding visitors. Nor are the hotels at Ootacamund so good and pleasant to live in as those of Coonoor ; prices are higher, and, as a rule, comfort, is less. One great drawback to comfort is that the native servants are of a very bad class ; dirty in person and habits, addicted to excessive drinking, thievish, and in- solent; in fact, no respectable native likes to take up his or her residence in a climate so utterly comfortless, in their view, as that of the chilly, shivery Blue Mountains. Eesidents of the plains who can induce their servants to accompany them to the hills, have to increase their pay, and to provide them with warm clothing, blankets, &c., which is fair enough ; but what is not so, is that such servants are, very commonly, almost useless, cowering all day over a fire in their "godowns," and living in a state of semi-torpor, highly inconvenient to their employers. ABORIGINAL INHABITANTS. 139 For them, moreover, under such inclement surroundings as the mists and chills of the mountains, strong drink has irresistible charms ; and I will end this paragraph as I began it, by saying that the native servants form the great drawback to the comfort of visitors to the ISTeilgherries. This chapter could not be at all complete without some reference to the rightful owners of the land, the nomadic tribes who still follow, more or less, their bar- barous customs, and keep themselves aloof, as far as they may, from the invaders who have filched from them their hills and valleys, and their rights of free range and pasturage, and destroyed the freedom and comfort of the segregated life which all barbarians so love and enjoy. It is not difficult to imagine how distasteful the colonisation by foreigners, white and black, must be to that singular people, the "Todas," who, until about seventy years ago, were " monarchs of all they surveyed," who massacred their buffaloes, and lived comfortably in the practice of polyandry, without interference or holding up of hands against them by the outer world ; without, indeed, seeing any strangers among them, except occasional parties of smugglers of cardamums and other spices, who made a transit from one coast to the other, over the swampy and forest-clad valleys and the rugged and difficult passes of the mountains ; until some officials in pursuit of these smugglers, struggled up to the great plateau, and discovered that there was an English climate 140 AN INDIAN OLIO. and an English-seeming charm of trees and flowers on these cloud-capped heights. Thenceforward the hill-men had no peace. Roads were made where not even paths had been, swamps were drained, houses built, woods cut down, fields en- closed, and strange cattle brought up to graze upon the pastures. All this increased year by year, and the ab- original Todas are slowly but surely dying out ; improved, in fact, from off the face of the earth. These Todas have been so often described that I will not say much more about them. The men are tall, fine- featured, have enormous mops of black hair covering and straying over their heads, and wrap themselves in home- woven black or brown blankets, disposed in such folds as, together with their handsome features, go far to justify their likeness, so often noted, to ancient Romans. Here, however, the comparison must end. They are utter barbarians ; have neither manners, education, nor ambition ; and are as fearfully dirty in their persons as any savages that crawl the earth. The Toda women are equally handsome, with a grave beauty which much strikes the eye, and they are as dirty as the men. (The men, it is said, are not jealous !) The Todas live in small collections of hovels, called " munds," into which they creep through low door- ways. They court companions with no one, and are seldom seen in Ootacamund, except on rare visits to the markets, and rarer attendance at the Government Office on business connected with their rights to their remaining fields and EXTINCTION OF THE TODAS. 141 holdings. So much for the Todas : it will soon be with them as with the Dodo and the Great Auk, and ethno- logists should hasten to secure some 'atomies, before the race are gone and are no more seen. The other inhabitants are not interesting, and may be dismissed in very few words. The " Burghers " (not " fat and greasy citizens," but cultivators of the soil) are a rather numerous community of Hindoos, evidently emigrants from the low country, who have become accli- matised to the mountains, and who cultivate land belong- ing to the Todos, and pay a rent in kind to that curious people. The " Koorumbahs " are a tribe of squalid savages, closely allied to " Pulleers," " Mulchas," and other abori- ginal people who are thinly scattered over the Peninsula, and who live by hunting, collecting honey, jungle fruits, and fibres, &c. By the way, Mulcha signifying, in the vernacular, an unclean man. The name is frequently used by Hindoos, among themselves, when speaking of their lords and masters, the British ! ( 142 ) CHAPTER VII. Mysore and Bangalore Climate of Bangalore The Maharajah Brahminical influence Hill forts Gold-mining in Mysore Lhol Bagh Flowers, fruit, and vegetables Snakes and snake-charmers Jugglers Poisonous snakes Dr. Shortt and his cobra Deatli of an officer by snake-bite Shooting in Mysore Mr. Sanderson, "the Elephant man" Restrictions upon sport in Mysore and Hyderabad Food of the soldier in India Cooking and cooks 111 effects of native cooks in barracks British soldiers should cook for themselves Health of Bangalore Enteric, properly jungle, fever Bad water supply Population of Bangalore Eurasian farm colony Bad class of Mahomedans at Bangalore. FROM the Neilgherries to the cool and pleasant tableland of Mysore is an easy transition. By rail from Kullar, md "Coimbatore and Salem and Jollarpett junction, Ban- galore is reached in about twelve hours' journey. The country round the station is not grateful to the eye, being arid and sterile ; but, on close approach, the most luxu- riant vegetation is seen to environ and occupy the whole cantonment. There is no station in India so English- looking, and so beautifully laid out, as Bangalore, and none so favoured in climate. Except for about two months, viz., in April and May, the temperature is delightful ; not so cold as Ootacamund, yet cold enough for warm clothing and wraps, and for THE MAHARAJAH OF MYSORE. 143 careful shutting of doors and windows in the mornings and evenings. Fires are not quite needed, and few houses have fire-places ; but they would often be accept- able rather than otherwise, and it may be averred that residents at Bangalore feel little of the inconveniences of a tropical climate. Being a large military station, also the headquarters of the Civil Government (now the Kajah's own except as regards the British limits of the cantonment), having moreover the advantage of the Maharajah's presence, and encouragement of its gaieties, balls, and garden and tennis parties, theatricals, races, &c., Bangalore has no lack of amusement during nine or ten months in the year. The Maharajah has received a thoroughly English education, and has not been neglected in manly sports, in which, as in riding, driving, &c., he is a proficient ; and there is every reason to hope that the experiment, often of such doubtful success in the East, of giving over a country to independent native sway, will prove a success. But the government of Mysore is no light task, and will tax all the energies and intellect of the young ruler ; and it is well that he will always have an adviser in the presence of a British resident, whose selection for so important a post should be a sure guarantee that his, not perhaps control, but assistance, will always be given in the interests of sound policy and good government. Mysore is not a rich country except perhaps in the precious metals, of which more hereafter. The crops are 144 AN INDIAN OLIO. precarious, for the rainfall is seldom more than sufficient, often much less so, and famine, when with unfortunate recurrence it oppresses the south of India, is sure to fall heavily upon the tableland of this province. Brahminical influence has always been very powerful, but it is to be hoped that the young Prince will have the wisdom to keep out of the hands of this intriguing race, and hold his power with an even balance. In many ways his lot as the ruler of a people is to be envied. He is absolutely secure under the segis of the British govern- ment from any form of war, foreign or civil, even intrigue will be powerless in the face of the British resident, and he has only to be just, prudent, and frugal with the in- come of his state, to enjoy an untroubled and successful reign. Except at Bangalore, which is kept in the hands of government as a strictly British cantonment, under civil and military control of the paramount power, there are no British troops or native regular troops in the Mysore territory. The Maharajah has a small irregular force of his own, sufficient for purposes of state, and also for aid to his police in preserving public tranquillity. On the tableland of Mysore, in height from two to three thousand feet above the sea (Bangalore is three thousand), there are numerous bare granite hills standing above the plains, four of which at least are of great height, and are crowned with fortifications which must have been impregnable except to famine, in the days when cannon were not, and when " Sipahees " also were true GOLD MINING IN MYSORE. 145 to the origin of their name, and were armed like the " Children of the mist," chiefly with bows and arrows ! Of these great hill-forts or droogs, Nundydroog is the chief, and stands fifteen hundred feet above the plain, thirty miles from Bangalore, whence its triple masses of granite, one of which is strongly fortified with rows of embattled walls on the only accessible side, are seen looming blue and misty on the horizon. No strength, however, of wall or bastion can stand against British valour, and this great citadel, though amazingly strengthened by Hyder Ally and Tippoo Sultan, was taken by storm in 1791. There are one or two modern built dwellings on this droog, one now used as a hotel, built by General Cubbon, sometime British resi- dent; but the rock has a bad reputation for malaria, and except in the very dry months is shunned by visitors, in spite of its, to the senses, delightful climate. Commencing with 1878 or thereabouts, there has been much excitement in Mysore, and also in other parts of Southern India, in connection with gold mines long ago known to exist, and to have been worked by the "old men," as the Cornish " captains" call them in their quaintly worded reports, but until of late not supposed to yield gold in paying quantities. However, an idea got about that the precious metal might be worked with advantage, and, first in the Wynaad country on the Western coast, afterwards in Mysore, a mania arose of speculation in various gold-seeking companies, which were got up in many instances by people who fully intended to acquire K 1 46 AN INDIAN OLIO. gold but not by the hard work of digging for it. Many fortunate possessors of jungle lands who found, or said they found, veins and strata of gold-bearing stone on their "estates" (note that on high lands in India every pos- session as big as a cabbage-garden is dubbed an estate ! ) many such possessors of land, I say, sold their ground to mushroom companies for a thousand times its value, the only gold cleared off it being that which the lucky vendors, got out of the unlucky purchasers and share- holders. Nevertheless there was some ground in some places to justify the gold craze, for a few mines, especially in Mysore, have proved successful, showing, as again the Cornish captains say, " healthy looking," and " good-look- ing" lodes. It seems quite possible that paying diggings may be hit upon, but also not only possible but very certain that a great many people have lost money, are losing money, and will lose money over these modern Indian Ophirs ! To pass to another subject, there are many well laid out places of public resort at Bangalore. In the station are the " Cubbon gardens," where bands play and tennis is conducted with the wonted enthusiasm of its votaries. There is the " Jimkhana," a peculiarly Indian term, signify- ing a place where pony-races, foot-races, sports, in fact, of all kinds are pursued. Then the library and reading- room, and at some distance from the station the lovely grounds of the " Lhol Bagh," a perfectly kept garden and pleasure-ground, as large as some parks, full of rare trees GARDEN PRODUCE. 147 and shrubs, and provided with another attraction in the shape of a menagerie, though not a good one, for when I saw it in 1880 the animals were badly housed, badly fed (judging by their appearance), and badly attended to, if the dirt and smell of the place be any criterion. The climate of Bangalore is so well suited to fruit, flowers, and vegetables of the temperate zone, that Eng- lish garden produce thrives nearly as well as in England itself. Potatoes are largely and successfully cultivated, and have become exceedingly popular with the natives of India as an addition to their usual fare. Peas, beans of all kinds, all the cabbage tribe, cauliflower, brocoll, &c., in fact, every vegetable that flourishes in a temperate cli- mate, grows to good size and flavour. Of fruits, straw- berries succeed well ; so also peaches, figs, and grapes ; and apples and pears also, though the two last named are apt to be hard and insipid. Among flowers, the rose is the chief ; and, in all its lovely varieties, vies with the best of those which adorn an English garden. Geraniums, fuchsias, camellias, all grow with a luxuriance and beauty to be seen nowhere else on the plains of India. And while these strangers take so kindly to the con- genial climate and soil of the Mysore plateau, no less do so the fruits and vegetables which are indigenous to the tropics. The markets are filled with mangoes, guavas, oranges, pomegranates, plantains, &c., and are heaped with the finest tomatoes, knol-cole, spinach, and a hundred other esculent plants and roots, all of a price J4 8 AN INDIAN OLIO. within the reach of the humblest native purchaser. In this respect Bangalore is superior to the Neilgherries, though there also the market supply of what may be called European produce is very good. Bangalore is terribly infested by snakes, especially cobras, and though large sums are expended in rewards for snake-killing, their number does not seem to suffer diminution. Snake-charmers roam over the cantonment, professing, for a consideration, to catch all the cobras on one's premises; but it is generally believed that their snake- charming is nothing but an adroit jugglery, and that " those who hide know where to find ! " Clever jugglers are numerous, as in most large Indian towns, and I have seen extraordinary sleight-of-hand performed by them. On one occasion, at a garden party, some of these people were brought for amusement of the guests. After conjuring for some time, one of the men said that he would find a cobra on anybody present who would like him to do so. The fellow had nothing on but a small waist- cloth and a skull-cap. A horse- keeper belonging to the master of the house expressed his readiness to be experimented upon, so the juggler began to perform various antics, walking round him, and blowing on the shrill pipe which is used by snake- charmers. The horsekeeper was clothed in a pair of cotton trousers only, with a coloured handkerchief, thrown, in usual native style, over one naked shoulder. At this kerchief the juggler presently made a dead point, and began to approach on tiptoe, with every JUGGLERS. 149 expression of cautious alarm in his countenance. He then, with finger and thumb, and at arm's-length, lifted one corner or fold of the handkerchief, and immediately let it drop again, sprang back in alarm, blew furiously on his pipe, and summoned up courage to twitch the kerchief off the man's shoulder. As he did so a small cobra fell from the handkerchief to the ground, and raised its head, with extended hood, close to the horse- keeper, who jumped back in evident very sincere con- sternation. The trick was very cleverly done. Of course the juggler had the snake, which was about two feet long, somehow concealed in the palm of his hand. I don't know any other way in which he could have managed it. I don't for a moment think that there was any collusion ; the horsekeeper's fright, and change from a grinning face to one of horror, was too genuine for any such suspicion. It is not certain that poisonous snakes kept by snake- charmers are harmless. Indeed, though the fangs may have been removed, there is, for the following reasons, considerable doubt on the point. A brief statement of the anatomy of the poison apparatus possessed by deadly snakes will show the danger of handling them even when deprived of their large poison fangs. I may perhaps be allowed to borrow from the researches of such eminent authorities as Doctors Shortt, M'Donald, and others. In the poison apparatus are three important parts : the gland which secretes the venom; the duct which 150 AN INDIAN OLIO. carries it from the gland to the hollow fang ; and the fang, hollow for a great part of its length, and with a minute opening near the point for discharge of the poison into the wound made by the fang. The compression which the reptile can exert upon the gland is so power- ful that the poison is very forcibly ejected, and, even when the snake is merely irritated and the fang has met with nothing to wound, is often squirted to some distance. A remarkable instance is given by Dr. Shortt, who, at Madras, dug out from a hole in a nullah an immense cobra (which he afterwards delivered, alive and well, to the Zoological Society). On the snake rushing out the doctor, with a courage which many may admire but few imitate, ran after and caught it. He says : " It was the most vicious cobra I remember ever to have handled ; for it not only struggled fiercely in my hands, but was so enraged that it ejected its poison over my hands and face ! " This story shows the snake's power of ejecting poison ; and it is very clear that, when the fangs are drawn out, unless the duct which is the outlet of the poison be com- pletely removed and obliterated, the snake's mouth will be saturated with the venom, which will be deadly in its effects if it comes in contact with any fresh wound, or even an abrasion of skin, however inflicted. The means of inflicting such a wound are not wanting, when it is known that the duct (I now quote Dr. M'Donald) has usually " several very small fangs in POISONOUS SNAKES. 151 reserve, lying loose in the surrounding flesh and in a loose capsule. Each of these 'reserves/ one after the other, moves forward to take the place of the perfect fang when that becomes broken or injured, and becomes formally united to the maxillary bone. Some months are required for the full development of these supplementary teeth ; but whenever one of these moves forward to take the place of an injured or extracted fang, it is capable of in- flicting a wound as poisonous as that inflicted by the full-grown fang, for the gland which secretes the poison is as active as ever." In illustration, Dr. M'Donald gives the case of a man, a " stuffer " in a museum, who handled a cobra of which the fangs, and even a portion of the poison duct, had been cut out six weeks previously. One of the new little fangs got into a fold of the skin of his forefinger. The man was poisoned; and though the severe symptoms which set up were overcome by immediate treatment in hospital, he died, on the fifth day, of fever and inflamma- tion of the lungs, no doubt caused by the action of the venom. The doctor goes on to say : " Nothing save the com- plete removal of the glands which secrete the poison can render a poisonous snake harmless. It is true that the perforated tooth is not there ; but, as the poison is still secreted, and as it must make its way through the duct or fistula into the mouth, a bite with even the ordinary teeth may be dangerous. I believe that such a bite has resulted in death, and there are cases on record in which 152 AN INDIAN OLIO. death has taken place after such a bite." The moral is : Keep clear of venomous snakes, whether with or without their poison fangs ! I know of a sad case which occurred, some years ago, in Central India. A young officer rashly handled a living cobra which was in possession of its fangs. Un- fortunately, he did not hold its neck tightly enough to prevent it from turning its head round, and it bit him on the thumb. Nothing could be done to save him, and he died of the bite. For " Europeans " to suffer from snake-bite is not common. I have known of one or two instances only, and of two officers who were bitten, but recovered one from the bite of a cobra, the other of a daboeia. In both cases, the reptiles were young ones. The officer who was bitten by the daboeia brought the mis- chief upon himself. He saw the snake coiled up among some rocks at Secunderabad, and put his foot upon it. The snake managed to extricate its head, and bit him above hiu boot a narrow escape from death ! however, he recovered after a dangerous wrestle with the poisonous effect of the bite. Of the other case, where the bite was that of a young cobra, I do not know the particulars suf- ficiently to do more than mention it as a fact of snake- bite and recovery. For a monogram of the venomous snakes of India, the beautifully illustrated volume of Sir Joseph Fayrer, pub- lished perhaps fifteen years ago, should be consulted. The ilustrations are life-size, and perfect in drawing and SHOOTING IN MYSORE. 153 colour. It is a magnificent work, and was largely sub- scribed to by the Government of India, which placed copies in all the head offices of each Province. There is not much shooting immediately round Banga- lore. A fair bag of snipe may be made by riding out ten or twelve miles for them, and floriken are found on the grass lands and borders of nullahs in the grain fields, but for large game sportsmen must go far afield to the jurtgles and mountain ranges west and south of Bangalore, to the banks of the Cauvery, and the mountains of Baba- booden and the Billirungums, where every kind of wild animals- known in Southern India are met with. The glorious sport of Morlay and its vicinity has been detailed in Sanderson's delightful pages, and bold would be the writer who would trespass on the ground of that excellent sportsman and naturalist. Those who have the chance of following large game to the south and west of Mysore should take his book, " Thirteen Years among the Wild Beasts of India," as an unerring guide. I made the acquaintance of its author in 1884, on board the P. & 0. ship CJmsan. Soon after the com- mencement of the voyage I fell in conversation with a smart-looking, keen-eyed fellow-passenger, who, after we had exchanged a few remarks showing that each of us was fond of Indian sport, mentioned that he was well acquainted with Mysore, its game, &c. Thereupon I said, " By the by, did you ever meet Sanderson, the elephant- man, you know." To my surprise and amusement he answered, " I am Sanderson ; I am the elephant-man ! " 154 AN INDIAN OLIO. and then we forthwith fraternised as fellow-sportsmen, and exchanged many experiences on shikar matters. I am glad to see that his book has run to a second edition. It well deserves such success. As is often the case under a native government, at- tempts have lately been made to hem in sportsmen in Mysore with restrictions in their operations. In 1886 shooting and fishing were forbidden, by the Eajah's orders, in five subdivisions of the Bangalore district : and monkeys, wild cow (bison), and Brahminee kites are declared to be sacred animals. In the Colar district shooting and fishing are prohibited in two villages, and " deer and Brahminee kites " are sacred. In the Toomkoor district all sport is tabooed in the hill tracks of one subdivision, and " mon- keys, Hunimaun monkeys, deer, parrots, pea-fowl, Brah- minee kites, goorada (?) and swans ! and nightingales " are held sacred. The whole Mysore district (i.e. the division belonging to the city of Mysore) is proclaimed, and in it two birds with names which are quite unknown to science are declared sacred. The order is a little shaky and hard to understand; and as there are no wild swans in India, it seems as if the Maharajah has been turning his geese into swans for the nonce ! When in 1882 I was for a short time in command of the Hyderabad subsidiary force, a very sweeping order was promulgated by the Government of the young Nizam, who was beginning to get very fond of sport, forbidding any shooting for many miles round the city of Hydera- bad, not only on the right bank of the river Moosy, where FOOD OF THE SOLDIER IN INDIA. 155 are the antelope preserves or " royal rumnahs," but on the left or cantonment side also, thereby practically putting a stop to the officers of the force getting any shooting at all within a morning's ride. I, however, made a forcible representation and remonstrance to the British resident, and the order was very considerably modified in extent, especially on the Secunderabad side of the river. This Hyderabad order was given merely in the interests of the young ruler, who wanted all the shooting to him- self; but the Mysore edict was evidently a thorough Hindoo religious one, smelling strongly of the Mysore Brahmins, and much of a piece with attempts which at various times and in various places have been made to stop the slaughter of horned cattle for the food of even British soldiers. The soldier, as far as supplies go, lives well in India. He has a very sufficient ration of beef or mutton (in Burmah beef is the staple, mutton quite the exception) of fair quality. He has two pet vegetables round potatoes, otherwise "spuds," and onions. These two enter into every dish which is served up to " Tommy ; " and in cooking hours the strong savour of beefsteaks and onions pervades the precincts of the barracks, and would notify the near approach of the dinner hour, even if the wheeling squadrons of kites and crows overhead, and on barrack roofs also, did not tell the hour of noon as clearly as any dial. It is a thousand pities that the dirty and wasteful 156 AN INDIAN OLIO. method of cooking the soldiers' meals by natives is not done away with. There is no reason why it should not be abandoned, and many reasons why it should. To dispose at once of the idea that Europeans cannot be employed in cooking their own food in India, I may mention that the marine battalion of Frenchmen at Pon- dicherry (vide an excellent article in All the Year Round, 5th December 1863) cook everything for .themselves, bake their own bread, and serve up their own meals in capital clean kitchens and bakehouses, at a great saving of expense as compared with our slovenly English system. I have no desire to raise the hackneyed cry, " They do these things better in Erance," but in this particular respect the French service certainly has the pull over us ; but it is useless to hit this blot in our military economy unless we can find some means of remedying it. First of all, let us sum up an indictment against native cooks in native pattern cookhouses. The cook-rooms (we cannot dignify them with the name " kitchens ") are sheds enclosed on three sides, and sometimes partly on the fourth, or else enclosed on the fourth likewise, with a door or two in the front wall. There are no ovens, no boilers, no ranges nothing, in fact, to secure decent cooking. All is done in native style. The kitchen range is nothing but a long, low platform of brickwork, mud-plastered the whole length of the cook-room, and with sunk holes at intervals for the fires. On this the stewpans, kettles, saucepans, &c., COOKS AND COOKING. 157 are manipulated by the greasy " cook-boys/' whose filth, both of body and of garments, is indescribable. Naked to the waist, and with nothing on below but a pair of drawers or a cloth tucked in usual native fashion between the thighs, and covered with grease and smear from off the cooking vessels, it is surprising that even the soldiers' strong stomachs can relish food cooked amid such dis- gusting surroundings. The maintenance in barracks of this horde of natives is also a great evil. Of the very lowest class of hangers on thievish, drunken, and always ready to encourage the vices of the soldiers in drunkenness, and other de- baucheries likewise half the crime in a regiment may be said to be carried on with help of this disreputable class. The arguments used in favour of their employment are, first, that cook-houses are, in so hot a climate, unfit for soldiers to cook their meals in ; this is quite true, but why not, in the name of common sense, build proper kitchens, airy, well-lighted, well- furnished, and thoroughly ventilated one for each company barrack. The first expense would be large, but the object to be gained is well worth the money. Second, that the soldiers know not how to cook ; granted again, but why not teach them ? There are always some men in a regiment who know more or less about cooking in a plain way ; and why should there not be in India a trained master-cook or " sergeant-cook," as designated in the Queen's Eegulations, as well as a 158 AN INDIAN OLIO. master-tailor, a master-armourer, or to take a higher flight, a schoolmaster. A fair numher of men in each company should be drilled into a certain amount of knowledge of plain cookery. Much science is not needed. To stew, fry, boil, and bake is about all that is required. I submit that the remedy is found in my above re- marks to build proper kitchens and to teach the soldier to cook. It is simple enough ; the only difficulty to be got over is the custom or habit, so long accepted, that the British soldier in India is to be waited upon instead of being helpful for himself. No one who knows any- thing of the condition of the soldier in India will deny that idleness, or to put it more correctly, want of employ- ment, which is an enforced idleness, is the bane of the infantry man. The artillery and cavalry soldier has a great deal more work with horse, saddlery, and hare ess, and is a great deal the better for it. The infantry man has, as a rule, nothing whatever to employ him during the long hours between morning and evening, and is much the worse for it. Eegimental workshops, if established to a really use- ful extent, will do much to remedy the evil ; but even in corps which profess to have good workshops, there are seldom 'more than perhaps a dozen men employed in them. Here also the native element commonly creeps in, and native shoemakers, &c. ; are seen working under supervision of the soldier workman, and doing the greater part of the work which is turned out. In these remarks upon cooking and workshops, it HEALTH OF BANGALORE. 159 must be understood that they refer solely to regiments in India. There are excellent regulations for the proper management of all such matters in England. It is possible that within the last few years there has been an amendment in these respects in India also ; but when I last inspected a British regiment, i.e., in 1882, what I then saw fully bore out all that I have now advanced. Bangalore is by no means so healthy a station, especially for British troops, as its fine climate should make it. Perhaps, for one thing, the low temperature causes the soldier to expose himself more to the influence of sun and damp than he does at hotter stations ; and it is well known that at Bangalore and also on the Neil- gherries, the sun has much greater power than it seems to one's feelings to possess ; and violent exercise, such as cricket or racquets, in the sun, followed by a chill in the shade, is very injurious to health. Also there seems to be a great deal of malaria lurking at Bangalore ; the water supply is uncertain and bad, and the station, con- taining over a hundred thousand inhabitants, is over- crowded, and ill-drained, and ill-kept. The ravages of cholera have at times been very great, and dysentery is very common and fatal. It seems now to be generally acknowledged that what of late years has been dubbed enteric fever, and, as such, a disease formerly unknown in India, is nothing more than the aggravated form of malarial disease known as " jungle fever." The Sanitary Commissioner for Bombay in his report for 1886, says : "It was clearly shown in 160 AN INDIAN OLIO. the report for 1884, that the disease returned as enteric fever is no new disease, but the only change has been a change in diagnosis, and that, in proportion as the cases diagnosed as ' enteric ' increased, the ratio of deaths to cases treated diminished." This fever was called "jungle fever" because its worst form was usually contracted in uncleared and jungly districts, where malaria in its most concentrated and dangerous form was known to exist, as, for instance, the deadly jungle of Tippecadoo at the east base of the Neilgherry mountains and many other like places ; but it also exists in a commonly less fatal type over the whole of India. Some districts, without apparent special cause, are notorious for it, and it may be said that two out of every three cases of illness throughout India are " fever." At Bellary, in 1880 and 1 88 I, fever of a toler- ably mild form pervaded the whole station. The British troops suffered equally with the native, if not more so, but there were few deaths. The cause of the fever was obscure ; it was probably a " wave " of epidemic fever such as has been known to afflict other parts of India in certain years, sometimes with most fatal effects, as at Ganjam, and Dindigul also, in the beginning of this century, carrying off nearly a third of the population of those districts. Unless the water supply of Bangalore has been im- proved within the last seven or eight, years, it is very faulty. In 1880 the chief reservoir was the Ulsoor tank, a fine sheet of water in years of sufficient rainfall, POPULATION OF BANGALORE. 161 on which the Bangaloreaus keep many pleasure boats ; but in seasons of drought the tank sinks very low, and being the receptacle for the greater part of the drainage from the native town and bazaars, the water becomes very unwholesome. As Bangalore depends for its water supply very mainly upon this tank, there are works for raising and filtering the water, which, however, cannot but be of very doubtful purity, for to divest it entirely of the abominations of such an influx of drainage must be an almost impossible task, be the filtering apparatus what it may. The population of the station is very mixed. Exclud- ing the civil and military paid servants of Government in active employment, there are a very large number of people of pure European descent living there. Eetired officers and their families, missionaries, railway officials, speculators and adventurers of all sorts, and persons engaged in trade, help to swell the list. Then come the Eurasian population, perhaps even more numerous, and whose occupations are principally connected with the use of the pen, for they are wonderfully unanimous in disliking labour in any other manual shape. There are of course exceptions, but as a rule the Eurasian looks to his pen as his means of livelihood. The inferior classes of these people also enlist as farriers, drummers, &c., but are not found in the rifle- bearing ranks. There is & host of pensioners, civil and military. Army apothecaries are largely recruited from this class, and of late years the commissioned rank of the medical L 162 AN INDIAN OLIO. service is also practically open to them. A few years ago there was a movement to establish a kind of farming colony for Eurasians, but it seems very doubtful whether it will succeed. There is no use in shirking the fact that the material is not good for such a project, which of necessity requires colonists of thews and sinews, of self-denying and frugal habits, and of a practical and determined cast of mind advantages and qualities which nature has but sparingly bestowed upon these people. There is a large native population also in Bangalore, mainly Hindoos of various castes and tribes, among whom the lower description are very numerous. The Mahomedans also muster strong, and many of them are of a worse and more troublesome and " rowdy " class than are met with in other parts of South India. Con- stant quarrels and rows take place between them and the Eurasians, and between them and the British soldiers likewise. Altogether the native community of Bangalore are not of the most respectable description, and require a very tight hand over them to secure peace and qniet in the cantonments. CHAPTER VIII. Cuddapah The climate Scenery Jungle fires A disgusted native officer The cataracts of the " Bo.ogga " Camp at Peddagadee Vicious flies in jungle Winged pests Mosquitoes Sand-flies Eye-flies House-flies Bugs and beetles Mason bees Ichneu- mons Winged ants Creeping pests Tarantula Harvest spiders The white ant Red ant Little red ant Great black ant Processionist ant Scorpions Centipedes The Shikarry Porcupine dog Pea-fowl Malabar squirrel Loris Manis Nullamullah mountains Diamond digging Town of Cuddapah Murder of a civilian Punishment of murderers Unhealthi- ness of Cuddapah. WE will now pass from Bangalore the coolest to Cud- dapah the hottest station in South India. The heat is not confined to the "hot season/' it lasts with more or less force all the year round, and while Cuddapah was a military as well as a civil station, it was regarded by officers of native regiments as a kind of inferno / It lies in a narrow valley, surrounded on three sides by high hills, hence it is popularly described as a " punch- bowl ! " In dry hot weather, i.e., during the greater part of the year, the sky is hot and smoky, the horizon is obscured by a dull yellow haze, the parched brown ground is hot, all the more so by contrast with patches of vivid green vegetation nourished by " pot well " water. 1 64 AN INDIAN OLIO. These wells stud the surface of the plain, and being undefended by wall or fence, form sad traps for unwary travellers. I remember when a horse ridden by an officer of the regiment at Cuddapah came over on one of these wells. I say on, because fortunately the well mouth was too narrow to admit of his bodily disappear- ance below ; but the horse was badly cut and bruised, and the rider shaken, besides being greatly exercised in temper by the occurrence. The brown mountains which in flat-topped array hem in Cuddapah to the eastward are the Nullamullahs, stretching from the Kistnah river north to Tripetty south. There are various breaks in these mountains through which small rivers take their course by Nellore to the sea. The appearance of the Nullanmllahs on the west or Cuddapah side is sterile in the extreme. Nothing is seen on their stony sides but scattered trees and thorn bushes, and long spear grass, yellow and parched, except in the short rainy season, when it grows with extraordi- nary rapidity, and covers the hills for a few weeks with a pleasant tint of green. At the Hoolee festival, which comes in February or March, the people set fire to the dry grass, and the fire creeps along the hillsides, making the atmosphere more thick and stifling than ever. The smell of fire and smoke is wafted over the valley, and at night every ravine and ridge and mountain top is marked out with lines of bright red light, as the fire spreads and leaps from one grass tussock to another, and ever and anon JUNGLE FIRES. 165 mounts into bright sparkles and tongues of flame as it catches some dry shrub or dead and blackened tree trunk. At such times I have often crossed the fire easily enough, choosing a place where it had little to feed on in its slow advance, which was generally in a line not more than a foot or two wide in such places. In front of the advancing fire was always a hovering troop of kites and hawks, making their harvest of the numberless small snakes, lizards, and insects, such as grasshoppers and locusts, which were driven out scorched and helpless by the ruthless fire into the beaks and talons of their still more ruthless winged foes. We often watched wild animals, deer and hog, in their manoeuvres to circumvent the flames, which they found no difficulty in doing. A sambur would walk quietly in front of the fire, choose a narrow place, and hop over, and resume his march on the blackened smoky ground where the fire had just burnt out. The hog would do the same, but always indulged in a sidling caper and hoist of his tail with a merry grunt at having got the better of the invader. To return to Cuddapah itself, the hills on the west of the " punch-bowl " are not so high as those on the east, and the highroad to Vellore and Trichinopoly lies over one of their steep passes. The old road is a mere slide or avalanche of stones, straight up and down the sides of the hill ; but there is also a good modern road, carried scientifically in zig-zags on easy gradients. 1 66 AN INDIAN OLIO. But these zig-zags do not please the natives. When we left Cuddapah for Trichinopoly, a subadar pushed his pony up to me, and said, "What sort of a road is this ? We shall never get up ! Our heads are always coming where our tails should be, and our tails where our heads ought to be." The worthy native officer's face was perfectly screwed up with disgust as he spoke. To the south, again, the hills circle round, broken by many valleys, through one of which the small river Boogga issues, and runs between the civil and (what were) the military lines, joining the wide bed of the Panar under the outlying spurs of the Nullamullahs. The Boogga is usually a narrow stream of shallow water, flowing in a sandy bed ; but when swollen by heavy rain, it rushes in a swift torrent, full from bank to bank, and sometimes flooding the plain, and cuts off communicati n between the town and the cantonment. On one such occasion several officers of my regiment were dining with a friend in the civil lines, when a fresh came down the Boogga, and we had to stay, on impro- vised beds, sofas, &c., and wait the greater part of the next day also before we could recross the turbid river. The sources of the Boogga are high up in the hills ; and two streams, which fall over the dark slate rocks in cataracts, named " Peddagadee," and " Chinnagadee," i.e., the greater and the lesser cataracts, unite shortly after thus reaching the valley. We often went to the greater cataract, and pitched our tents at the margin of the rush- ing water, and angled for carp and many other Indian WINGED PESTS. 167 fish in the troubled waters of the pool below the fall. It is a very pretty place for a camp, well shaded by wild mango and other stately forest trees. One drawback to our pleasure in this pretty spot was that, in the hot season, when only, the jungle is free from malaria, swarms of large grey flies, in shape like horse- flies, came out an hour or so before sunset, and viciously attacked our hands and faces. When the sun dipped there was an immediate cessation of their assaults, and we were left at peace, but speckled with many bleeding evidences of their venomous bites. The insect nuisances of an Indian jungle are innumer- able. Of winged pests, the mosquito must claim the first and chiefest place. The ordinary mosquito is, in size and colour, very like the English gnat, with which, in my young days, I had very intimate acquaintance in Eomney marsh. The species peculiar to jungles, where it makes a lurking-place of heaps of dry leaves which collect in nullahs and hollows of the ground, is a much smaller, and, if possible, more spiteful and persevering a tormentor than the larger one which frequents dwelling- houses and such like preserves of its human game. Its colour is black, powdered with grey ; its long black legs are also covered with grey speckles. Its bite is most venomous, and occasions intolerable itching for an hour or so after it has been inflicted. Next in order and in aggressiveness is .the sand-fly, which happily is less common than the mosquito. It is a very minute insect, scarcely noticed by the eye; but 168 AN INDIAN OLIO. when once it has made good its attack, the pain and swelling occasioned by its bite or sting leave no doubt of its tiny presence, The third, a most irritating insect, though it can neither bite nor sting, is the eye-fly a little black dot, with gauzy, buzzing wings. Its body is about as large as a pin's head. In some localities it is almost unknown ; in others it swarms in every house ; and, what is more to our present purpose, in every tent that is pitched in the jungle. Its great object is, as indicated by its popular name, to attack people's eyes, which it does in most per- severing fashion, hovering, with a shrill buzz, over its victim, settling the moment it finds opportunity, and crawling into the eye itself with the utmost composure. When these most annoying insects are in full force there is a perfect halo of them round the head of the occupant of the tent, and the whizzing, buzzing, and settling on him is perfectly distracting. Eye-flies have a habit which often ends in their whole- sale destruction. They settle, especially in the evening, after their day's work, but many of them in the day- time also, on any loose cords or strings which may be hanging from the walls of the tent, and there cling in masses of hundreds and thousands, swelling out the cord to many times its real thickness. Then does the re- vengeful tenant of the tent get a tall tumbler, or better still, an empty coffee tin, full of boiling water, which he places under the black mass of eye-flies, and with a swift upward motion encloses them and the cord to which EYE-FLIES AND HOUSE-FLIES. 169 they cling in the scalding liquid. A hideous and evil- smelling mass of insects floats on the water ; if properly done, none will have escaped. Should hot water not be at hand, another expedient is to twist up a cone of paper, just like the thing which was sacred to lollipops in our youth, place it carefully under the mass of eye-flies, and then, with a sudden thrust upwards, and a dexterous twist together of the whole concern, withdraw it scrap- ingly from the hanging rope, and smash it up with its contents of buzzing misery. Fourth, and last, comes the common house-fly in the East, and at certain times of the year a veritable plague of Egypt. " Busy, curious, thirsty," and with a hundred other disagreeable qualities besides, it settles on your nose, walks over your plate, struggles in your stews, drowns in your gravy, swims in your beer and wine, and, worse than all, precipitates itself down your throat, thereby exciting fits of coughing and nausea enough to spoil the appetite of a Dando ! Really, on further con- sideration, I think the house-fly should occupy the first, not the fourth, place among the winged plagues of India. Besides the four chief nuisances which have been dis- posed of, there are some minor ones which, especially after the close of day, fly into the tent, and would be far better away. The " green bug," so called from its verdi- gris-coloured coat, is a queer-looking insect about the size of a ladybird, emitting, particularly if interfered with, a most nauseous odour, which, if bestowed upon one's hands, or down one's neck, necessitates immediate and vigorous i;o AN INDIAN OLIO. scrubbing with soap and water. These odious insects are greatly attracted by light, and are thus often found, and instantly appreciated, in stews, curries, &c., which have been incautiously uncovered in a lamp-lighted tent ; or they fly into a cup of hot coffee, and show their discom- posure by immediately flavouring it with their peculiar odour. A cup of tea or coffee flavoured with green bug is a terrible experience ! The rhinoceros beetle, varying in size from that of a small cockchafer to the dimensions of a half-grown mouse, is not particularly offensive, except that it also is very fond of light, and will in the evening dash into a tent, fly round the lamp with a sound like a humming-top, and finally subside, and spin round on its back upon the table, where, if a fine specimen, it is usually righted and imprisoned under a wine-glass for the satisfaction of seeing the glass walk all over the table. However, it is a harmless insect, and has its use as an indefatigable scavenger of all sorts of nasty things. There is a bee, shining in bright emerald-green armour from top to toe, and possessing a formidable sting, which delights to explore a tent, with the purpose of finding something hollow, for instance, a keyhole in a trunk or the barrel of a revolver, in which to deposit a quantity of finely-tempered clay serving as a nest for its young, an attention which is not very agreeable to the owner of the trunk or pistol, &c. Several kinds of ichneumon fly have the same practice, and all these workers in clay catch smooth green cater- CREEPING PESTS. 171 pillars, or small soft spiders, also green in hue, arid wall them up for use of the young when hatched and hungry. Some of these ichneumons are of large size, remind- ing one of a Maltese caleche, the forepart or drawing power being connected with the rearward body by a waist pedicle of great length, answering to the shafts of the caleche. The other winged insects which infest the tent are, at certain seasons, especially after the rains come on, the winged ants, of which I have already made sufficient mention in Chapter I. At such times they are legion, and dinner must be eaten by daylight, or, an unpleasant alternative, in darkness or nearly so, for if there be a light they pour in at door and window, shed their wings all over the table, frizzle in the lamp, and make themselves generally disagreeable. Now for a brief notice of creeping things, which do their best to make camp life uncomfortable. The place of honour, or dishonour, must be given to the tarantula, which is very fond of lurking in a tent, and of coming out and sprawling on the inside of the tent walls in the evening when lamps are lighted. It is to all appear- ance a spider, but without that rotundity of body which all respectable spiders are endowed with. It is lean and hungry in shape, the very Cassius of the spider family. Its cephalo-thorax and abdomen, together fully an inch long, are, as well as its immensely long legs, covered with stiff black hairs. Its horny mandibles, fitted with sharp black points, are very powerful and probably poisonous 172 AN INDIAN OLIO. though I have never known of any one being bitten. It is wonderfully swift, and if hit at and missed (a slipper is the usual weapon employed) it scours over the tent wall and hides its brown body in some dark place among the hangings with inconceivable rapidity. Now and then my tent has been invaded by an army of small-bodied, long-legged spiders, perfectly harmless, and which have a curious habit of massing themselves in a corner of the tent, several hundreds of them clinging to each other, and completely filling up the upper corners of the tent walls. The body of this spider is grey-black, and about the size and shape of a lentil, but the legs are over an inch in length, and when disturbed the whole colony disperse helter skelter to all quarters of the tent. Of insects that do not fly, the greatest pests in camp are ants. The " white ant " (though it is not really an ant) needs little notice. The only precaution required against its destructive action is to place large stones beneath every box, trunk, or other article softer than iron, which it is necessary to keep on the ground either within or without the tent ; and also, if the camp re- mains more than a day or two in one place, to move and examine the luggage, and shift the stones every two days. By carefully attending to this, there will be no fear of damage. There is a very fierce and irascible " red ant " of large size, which frequents trees, mango especially, and which, being a tree ant, forms its purse-like nests by glueing the leaves together in large bunches. The bite of this ant RED ANTS. 173 is very poisonous, but it need seldom be felt, for if not interfered with, it generally "minds its own business/' and is harmless enough. It does not often come into a tent, unless the camp be pitched under mango trees, when if the tent ropes touch the trees, or the boughs hang over and touch the top of the tent, the ants are almost sure to enter, and to make themselves very un- pleasant. Though called "red," they are really yellow, a clear amber yellow. The little red ant, the size of a very small carraway seed, is a much greater nuisance. If the tent be pitched on a spot frequented by it, it immediately makes itself at home, and forages for eatables, especially sugar and other sweets, all over the tent day and night. Nut only so, but it is very fond of exploring both cot and bed-clothes, and the recesses of clothes, &c. ; and to make matters worse, it makes its home in such furni- ture, and the unlucky traveller has to carry the party, probably many hundreds, along with him. I was once encamped on the bank of the Suggleaur, in the Cummum valley, near Dindigul, and had the misfortune to pitch upon a spot infested by these little ants. I had a wooden cot or bedstead, and in its crevices, and in the holes bored for the cane-work, a flourishing colony estab- lished themselves. They drove me nearly mad. Their bite is very like a " touch up " with a red-hot needle. The head and thorax of these little insects is of a clear amber colour, and the abdomen is black. The great black ant, with a very big head, so common 174 AN INDIAN OLIO. in India, does not often come into a tent, though in cantonments it infests bath-rooms and other damp places in incredible numbers. A species somewhat like it, but lighter in form and much quicker in movement, fre- quents the jungle. It is a tree climber, but does not often come inside a tent; and its bite is not venomous any more than the nip of its larger brother, whose man- dibles look very formidable, and will even draw blood, but are in no wise poisonous. It is, however, not nice to bathe amidst an incensed and scurrying crowd of the half-inch long insects, and many a kettle of boiling water have I sluiced down a bath-room floor before ven- turing upon occupation of it. There is a terrible ant, mostly in Central India, a slow-moving processionist, which wends its way in long columns of many hundreds or thousands two or three abreast. It is grey-black in colour, is about the size of a grain of wheat, and inflicts the most painful bite of any of the ant tribe. The bitten place immediately swells, and the pain lasts for hours ; nor does the swell- ing go down, nor the soreness cease, for two or three days after the bite. Whoever incautiously steps upon the track of the ant army is sure to be attacked, and is fortunate indeed if he escapes with a few bites only. I fancy that the " fire-ant " of Africa must be nearly allied to this most venomous insect. To complete the account of poisonous insects which infest a camp, I will mention scorpions, yellow and black, and centipedes in many varieties, all of which are pretty THE SHIKAREY. 175 sure to be found in a tent which has been standing over a day or two, especially in rainy weather. The great black scorpion does not often come inside, though I have seen an immense fellow, as big as a crawfish, walk in at the door, as if the tent belonged to him an idea which a sharp stroke of my shikar knife quickly put an end to. The small yellowish white scorpion is often found high up on the tent walls, and I have seen as many as a dozen turned out when a tent has been taken down after a few days' stay in one place. The centipede, a hideous creature, with sharp venomous mandibles, is generally of a fiery brown colour, and varies from one to six inches in length though there is one in the jungles, striped black and orange, and growing to eleven inches ! This keeps outside, but the smaller insect is found under boxes, &c., and comes out at night only, if at all. When cut in two with a knife, as often happens when it comes where it is not wanted, the manner in which the head and tail pieces rush off in different directions is truly horrible ! My long-legged shikarry, nicknamed "the Paddy- bird" from his extraordinary length of limb, found out Peddagadee for us, and came back with a glowing account of its sporting charms, and also with a sharp attack of jungle fever, which seized upon him a week after his return, and very nearly killed him. Though he recovered, yet for his whole remaining service with me (thirty-three years) he was never entirely free from its effects. Since that Peddagadee fever, almost every expedition into at all 1 76 AN INDIAN OLIO. doubtful jungles has brought on another attack, to be combated with great doses of quinine, and several times I have thought that the Paddy-bird's days were num- bered ; but somehow he always sprang up again like a Jack-in-the-box, as ready as ever for a run in the jungles, or a stalk after wild fowl up to his neck in a tank. This shikarry, whose proper name is Venketasawmy, is somewhat of a character. He is a born sportsman (and poacher !) and, by his own account, was an enthu- siast in shikar almost as soon as he could walk. His first exploits were of a purely poaching nature. He set snares for quail on the pebbly hills, overgrown with cactus bushes and straggling grass stems, near Wallajahbad, where he lived in his youth. He clubbed hares by torch- light in the open glades of the thin jungle ; and he kept a pariah dog which was a great porcupine hunter, and with whose assistance he managed to knock on the head several of the " porcupigs " in moonlight nights, when they roam over the cultivated fields and gardens, com- mitting great ravages among sweet potatoes, pumpkins, and other vegetables. In one of these expeditions the dog, so the Paddy-bird averred, got an eye put out by a stroke from a porcupine's quill, and no sooner had the wound healed and the zealous dog again flown at the heels of a porcupine than the re- maining eye was quenched in the same manner; and after this the intrepid animal again pursued the game with his admiring master, and, though completely blinded, hunted FIRST SIGHT OF THE " PADDY-BIRD." 177 by scent, and brought his porcupines to bag with as much success as ever ! The first sight I had of Venketasawmy was in a camp near Cuddapah, when a friend in cantonments sent me out a packet of letters by a coolie. This coolie was the Paddy-bird himself; and he drew my wrath upon him by swinging up to my tent with a battered old flint musket over his shoulder, a bunch of water-fowl in one hand, the missive of which he had charge in the other, and a friendly grin on his countenance as he delivered the packet, and proffered the proceeds of his sport as a present. This was an outrage upon my idea of what a coolie should be ; and every now and then in the many years which he has passed in my service he has referred to that terrible morning, when, as he said " Sir, you made at me as if you would eat me ! My tongue dried up with fright ! I thought I should have fallen down, gun and all ! " He was uncommonly glad to get away with his receipt for the letters, and I saw no more of him until I met with him in the service of a brother officer at Cuddapah, when he had taken upon himself the honours of a regular shikarry, and, as I have already related, discovered Ped- dagadee. At Peddagadee there were innumerable pea-fowl, which came morning and evening to drink at the little river, and to disport themselves in grain fields which lay on the outskirts of the jungle ; and we often got two or three in an evening sometimes an old peacock with his azure train gleaming in the setting sun, sometimes a peahen or M 178 AN INDIAN OLIO. a young chick (best of all for the table) in their quiet brown garb, looking as if they belonged to an entirely different species. The Malabar squirrel was common in the Boogga jungle. It is about the size of a wild rabbit, but with a tail nearly twice as long as its body. Its fur is fine, and long ; its general colour a handsome warm chestnut, growing lighter, and blending into yellow and white on the lower part of its body. We also, once only, met with the small loris in Hindustani " shermind.ee billee," or " the shame-faced cat " a perfect sloth in habits, living in trees, and moving in the slowest possible manner, one foot and hand after the other, scarcely gaining a yard in a minute. It is a pretty little animal, with soft brown fur, a round head, with sharp little jaws and nose, and exceedingly large owl-like eyes. It lived chiefly on insects, and we kept it for a time, and it got very tame, and lived on plantains and other fruit We also had a curious animal brought to us by some villagers the short-tailed manis the old world type of the ant-eater, which it resembles in many ways, rolling itself up like a hedgehog when molested. This does not always protect it against the assaults of enemies, for I once found its remains, principally scales as large as a crown piece, and almost as hard, strewn about in the jungle. It had been killed and eaten by some beast of prey, probably a leopard ; but it was not a fresh kill, and we could not see the tracks of the animal which had de- NULLAMULLAH MOUNTAINS. 179 stroyed it. We kept our manis for a few days ; but we could not be at the trouble of providing ants for its food, so let it loose again. The Nullamullah mountains, which I have already mentioned, are a pleasant resort in the hot weather. Standing high above the plains, not less certainly than two thousand feet, the plateau is very cool and pleasant, and we had many a shooting party there. The mountains were well stocked with sambur, and it was not difficult to get at them, for the trees on the hill slopes and on the tableland were thinly scattered, and it was easy to beat out the deer from the thick jungle which bordered the nullahs and the valleys lying between the hillocks and spurs which hemmed in the tableland and little plains on the summits of the mountains. Many ravines, some with pools of water even in the dry hot season, cleft the tableland, and by them heavy freshes found their way into the Budvail plain on the east side of the mountains, most of them discharging themselves by a narrow gorge terminating in a cliff, over which the torrent leaped, falling into a deep pool full of all kinds of fish. Our camp was pitched on a pleasant meadow sur- rounded by small hills, and being well watered, was always green and cool, and had a belt of evergreen shrubbery round it; also a well of good water in a nullah which wound its way along one side of the meadow. There was little shade, but the climate was so cool that we did not feel the want of it. i8o AN INDIAN OLIO. At the foot of the Nullanmllahs ran the Panar river, wide in the plain, but narrow as it approached the moun- tains, where a long low range of stony hills lay between it and Cuddapah. Under the east side of these hills was a fine shady grove of mango and tamarind trees; and here we sometimes had our camp, close to the edge of the river, where we could sit outside the tent and look over the steep bank, below which were shoals of fish, mostly carp of various species, swimming round and round in the rocky pools. We caught them in great numbers with both worms and paste, and in size from half a pound to six pounds in weight. On the west slope of these low hills are the well- known diamond mines. The whole surface of the hill, and portions of the plain immediately adjoining, are studded with heaps of the slaty soil thrown up from pits in which the searchers for diamonds have worked ; but we did not hear of any digging going on while we were at Cuddapah, and we heard that the mines had been neglected for many years past. There is a story of a coolie who was employed a great many years ago under a lessee of the mines. This coolie disappeared, and for a long time nothing was known of him, until suddenly one of his acquaintances came upon him at Hyderabad in the Deccan, and re- cognised an old friend in the " heavy swell " who was riding about the city in gorgeous array, with a swash- buckler retinue of armed ruffians behind him. The inference was, of course, that the glorified digger had TOWN OF CUDDAPAH. 181 found an enormous diamond, had forthwith levanted from the mines, and made himself respectable and happy for life with the sale-proceeds of the gem. It seems to me, on looking over the preceding pages, that my hobbies, i.e., sport and natural history, have again run away with me, and that Cuddapah has served merely as a peg upon which to hang a vast quantity of dissertation upon the two subjects. I will therefore wind up Cuddapah itself very briefly in this chapter, and will denote another to Cuinbum (which place deserves some notice), and to other matters which may take my fancy. There is nothing noteworthy in the town of Cuddapah. It is an ordinary native town, populated chiefly by Hindoos, but having also a fairly large number of Mahomedan in- habitants of low position. The old Pathan families, of whom there were formerly many in and around Cudda- pah, and who enjoyed consideration for their wealth and lineage, gradually abandoned the district after the brutal murder of a young civilian by a fanatical Mahomedan mob in 1832 ; for which murder six of the perpetrators were hanged, and five others transported for life. The five complained bitterly that they were not hanged, much preferring death to transportation. This feeling is not at all uncommon with native criminals. They have an excessive horror of the "kala panee" (black water), meaning the sea over which convicts sentenced to trans- portation are carried ; and will, if not very carefully guarded, commit suicide to avoid it. Most natives of 1 82 AN INDIAN OLIO. India are exceedingly averse to leave even their own district or province ; what then must be the despair of a convict who knows that he will never see his own village and hills and jungles again ! When my regiment left Cuddapah, all the Canarese servants, of whom we had several with us, refused to leave with their masters. In the same way it is almost impossible to induce natives of the western coast (that is, such as are Hindoos) to leave that coast even for a short time; they certainly have the excuse of their native climate being entirely different from that of any other part of India. Cuddapah, however, possesses so little to admire in the way of climate, that it seems extraordinary to find its people so unwilling to move from it. Nor did we find it healthy. Out of about fifteen officers who marched in with the corps in 1849, every one except myself had several attacks of malarious fever before we quitted the station in the autumn of 1851. The Sepoys and their families likewise suffered much from the same cause, and we were not sorry when the route came for Trichinopoly. CHAPTEE IX. Cum bum Lake and tanks Wild-fowl and snipe Sugar-cane fields Wild cuts and jackals Pardees Cumbum fish Perrun M urrel Comb-fish Carp Coturna Eels Rookchal Breach in lake outlet Buffalo sacrifice Travellers' tales Condition of people of India Simple wants of ryots Dress of women Authorities on condition of Indian people Sir W. Denison Mr. Macpherson Self-denial of a Hindoo villager Sir Richard Temple on content of the people of India Native officials Opinion of native judge Opinion of Mr. Prinsep Indebtedness of ryots Bombay Commission on agrarian riots Hindoo law of debt Report of Commission Sir R. Temple on condition of the ryots Cholera at Cumbum. CUMBUM, a large town, which is situated about eighty miles north of Cuddapah, in a valley formed by the Nullamullahs on the west, and a smaller range of mountains on the east, is a pleasant residence for one fond of sport. Not only is the wild-fowl and snipe shoot- ing exceptionally good, but within easy reach there are jungles and hills holding large game in great variety. For wild-fowl there is the great Cumbum lake, formed by damming up a river, the Goondalacumma, which in former times debouched freely between two low ranges of hills into the Cumbum plain ; also the Cockerella tank, a fine piece of water, about five miles in circuit ; 1 84 AN INDIAN OLIO. and many other smaller tanks lying under the hills, all of which abound with every kind of water-fowl. For snipe, the best ground is the sugar-cane cultivation, of which there is a great quantity on the borders of the river bed, which is full of water in pools and reaches, fed by the overflow from the lake, and which swarm with fish of all sorts and sizes. There are always fields of sugar- cane in its various stages of growth ; some fresh planted, where the cuttings are stuck slantingly into the well- watered and manured ground ; others with the cane full grown, the height of a man, and impenetrably thick ; others again, where the cuttings have sprouted, and have furnished good cover for the snipe amid the broad fast- growing leaves. In these irrigated patches the snipe collect in vast numbers ; and the cover being so good, they lie close, and afford delightful sport. So enamoured are they of their fine quarters that after flushing all the snipe in a field we usually sat under the shade of a tree hard by and watched for perhaps ten minutes, by which time the greater number returned, and were marked down again to be once more beaten up, and to have some more of their number added to our bag. In these cane-fields were many wild cats, and troops of jackals. We often shot two or three great brown cats in the half-grown cane, for we never spared them, knowing that they were very fond of our snipe. We did not consider whether they had not as good a right to the snipe as ourselves. Anyhow, we dubbed them rank PARDEES. 185 poachers, and shot them down whenever we found them. We did not interfere with the jackals ; but a wan- dering tribe, the Pardees, half gipsy, half shikarries, and whole thieves and rascals, are not indifferent to " Kalila and Dumna," but catch, kill, and who would believe it eat the foul-feeding animals. I saw their mode of capture, .which is very curious. Two of these men pitched a small net, supported on thin bamboos, a short distance from a tall sugar-cane field. This net had cords, by which they could let it drop in a second. They then lay down very close among some long grass only a few yards from the net, and commenced to flourish some ragged bits of sheepskin, so as to give the appearance of an animal struggling on the ground; and at the same time they uttered loud cries, wonderfully imitating those of jackals in a state of alarm or excitement. In a very few minutes we, who were behind some bushes about a hundred yards from where the Pardees were concealed, saw three jackals come out of the cane and rush up to the nets, which were immediately dropped, and the unlucky captives seized and thrust into bags almost before they knew what had happened The Pardees said that the jackals supposed that a sheep was being killed and fought over by other jackals; and that this idea put them into such a state of excitement that they cast all prudence to the winds, and rushed upon their fate in this reckless wav. 1 86 AN INDIAN OLIO. The kites and hawks were very bold, and often attended upon us when we were shooting in the rice- fields, carrying off wounded birds which flew to a dis- tance and dropped where the marauders could pick them up. More than once I managed to get a fair shot at the robbers after they had lifted wounded snipe, and reclaimed my game at their expense. The river bed was very deep in places, and there were crocodiles which no doubt made a good living of the fish with which it was stocked. The fish, which we angled for with frogs, small fry, or worms on our hooks, were the perrun (a kind of cat-fish, with a smooth body devoid of visible scales), a most voracious creature, growing to twenty and thirty pounds' weight. Some were said to have been caught much larger, over four feet long, and weighing eighty pounds and upwards. Next, the murrel, a handsome fish, in colour dark brown striped with yellow bars, and from one to three feet in length, and often weighing twenty pounds. The best bait for the murrel is a live frog, and for it, as for the perrun also, the strongest tackle was required. Then the comb-fish (I translate literally from the Hindustani name), which took worms greedily, and seldom exceeded a foot in length. It is a peculiarly shaped fish, narrow across the back, and very deep in proportion to its length, silvery grey in colour, and only to be caught in the evening, when it bites very freely. Many varieties of carp, from half a pound to ten pounds in weight, also lived in these waters ; handsome CUMBUM FISH. 187 fish, with large scales, and brightly coloured in blue, pink, and silver, with brown backs and rosy fins like roach. Sometimes they would take a worm ; but the best bait for them is paste worked up with crab or prawn's meat in cotton wool to give it cohesion on the hook. Now and then, likewise, they will take a fly. Native fishermen have many receipts (which they carefully keep to them- selves) for killing pastes. Another common fish is the coturna, dangerous to handle on account of the sharp serrated spines in its pec- toral fins, but which does not grow to a large size except in big rivers, such as the Godavery and Kistnah, also in the rivers of Burmah, where I have seen them of ten pounds' weight. The coturna is of a steel grey colour, and has long feelers (as also has the perrun) projecting from its snout. Of eels there are two species the baum, a sharp-nosed fellow, growing to two or three pounds in weight, brown yellow in colour, and a dainty dish at table ; and the tumboo, a much larger and heavier eel, sometimes weigh- ing ten or twelve pounds, dark in colour, snub-nosed, and as a viand far too rich in most people's estimation. Both these eels may be caught with worms, and with small live fish also. Though carp will sometimes take the fly, the only fish which does so readily is the "rookchal" called, I be- lieve, in Bengal " chilvah" a little bright silvery fish of graceful form, very like a bleak. Morning and evening, when the rosy flush of sunrise or sunset lies warm on 1 83 AN INDIAN OLIO. the rippling water, these little creatures rise, leaping madly from the surface of the stream. . Then is the time to throw a fine line and tiny flies dressed on the smallest of hooks, and the rookchal may be pulled out two at a time in quick succession for about half an hour, when the rise ceases, and tackle may be put up till the next morning or evening as the case may be. The only exception to this is a soft rainy day, when these little fish will often rise all the time that rain is falling. The proper way to treat the rookchal in the kitchen is to skewer two or three dozen on a thin sliver of bamboo, and grill them lightly over the fire. It is not my intention to advert more than can be helped to my book on "Sport in India;" but I must mention that in it, when treating of the Cumbum fish, I noted that they are often infested with pale pink worms, which cause them to be very generally avoided as food except by natives. When I was at Cumbum with a brother officer we never eat the fish, but when caught gave them to our servants, who received them joyfully, and devoured them, worms and all, in curry ! We kept a fisherman in pay solely to provide us with prawns, which he netted for our table. A prawn curry, whether of fresh water or of salt water crustaceans, is one of the very best of Indian dishes. To mention it is renovare dolorem, knowing that I shall never see it again. Cumbum is a prosperous town, and the fertility of the valley, irrigated from the great lake, and from the numer- ous tanks which I have mentioned, is wonderful. Famine BUFFALO SACRIFICE. 189 has small terrors for Cumbum: the great lake holds several years' supply of water, and the crops never fail. Once, however, one of the two great sluices by which water is drawn off for the needs of cultivation became out of order. The masonry fell in, and the water rushed to waste at a tremendous rate, threatening to half empty the lake. The district engineer came, and all means were tried to stop the leak, but in vain. I left the place while these efforts were being made, and afterwards heard that it was found necessary to let the water flow off until the mouth of the sluice showed itself, when a wall was built like a coffer-dam round it, and the ruined masonry re- paired. There is no weir for flood water to run off at the great dam, but there is a second dam about two miles to the northward, in a narrow gap between two hills, with an apron for the waste water to run over. When the floods are on, and the water pours several feet deep over this apron, a great ceremony takes place, headed by Brahmins, and accompanied with terrific tom-toniiDg and horn-blow- ing ; and two or three buffaloes are forced into the lake just above the rush of water, and are carried over and drowned as a sacrifice to ensure the safety of the dam and good crops for the ensuing season ; and as good crops never fail, so the deity of the lake is always in the best of odour with his or her votaries. It is much the fashion, especially with "T. G.'s," &c., who make hurried tours in India, and make their capital also by finding fault with the British administration and 190 AN INDIAN OLIO. its fruits, to declare that the cultivators (ryots) are an oppressed and overtaxed race, living miserably, without a sufficiency of even the bare necessaries of life ; but except when districts are visited with drought and con- sequent famine, a calamity which has been far better grappled with of late years than it ever was in former times, the mass of the people are certainly not badly off. There wants are few : a sufficiency of simple food, a black blanket (cumbley), a couple of cotton wrappers, and a turband cloth are really all that the ordinary ryot cares for. I must not forget tobacco, which is equally a necessary of life to him. Firewood in rural districts he has no occasion to buy : it comes to his hand in the neighbouring jungle. Every village has waste grazing land for its cattle, and plots of garden ground attached to most huts, in which vegetables, plantains, &c., are grown. Each hut has its roof covered with gourd and bean vines, with the inevitable spotted white chatty at top to keep off the evil eye ! The huts, for it would be far-fetched to call the ordi- nary ryots' dwellings " houses," are such as their fathers were satisfied with, and with which their own selves are therefore satisfied. In the close neighbourhood of forests, where, except in Government reserves, large timber may be had for asking, or rather without asking, they build nothing better, nothing more substantial. The roofs are of the same rude flimsy structure ; the thatch is grass, or where palm-trees grow, palmyra or cocoa leaves. The walls, instead of kneaded clay, are in jungle districts of SIMPLE WANTS OF RYOTS. 191 wattles clay daubed an easier and less laborious style of building where trees and shrubs abound. As to furniture, they need none, and have none, except perhaps a low cot or two, laced with cord which they twist from the bark and roots of certain trees ; mats on which to lie they plait themselves, or may buy for three halfpence. Their plates and dishes are broad green leaves ; their forks are their fingers. A wooden spoon or two made by themselves, two smooth stones with which to grind curry condiments, three or four earthen pots for water and cooking, bought from the village potter at about a penny a piece, are their kitchen requisites ; a wooden pestle and mortar, made in the village jungle, used for husking rice, is commonly in possession of the poorest ryot. Any great number of brazen vessels are a sign of wealth ; but most have two or three such, which, poised on the heads of the vil- lage girls, and kept clean and bright, flash in the sun in the morning and evening journeys to the village well. All this sounds very poor and indigent, but it is not really so. The women are better clothed than the men, and mostly have decent coloured clothes wrappers for shoulder and body, and little tight jackets of red or blue cotton ; and no woman or girl is without some feminine adornment in the shape of metal and glass bangles and anklets. I am of course writing of the poorest class of villagers : those who are better off have both gold and silver ornaments in abundance. 192 AN INDIAN OLIO. Assertion goes no way in argument. I will now adduce authorities in support of what I have written. Si-r W. Denison, Governor of Madras in 1862, says in his " Varieties of Viceregal Life : " " Every woman has rings in her ears and her nose, necklaces in the plural number, armlets, bangles, &c. The commonest labourer spends his money in this unproductive way, and his superiors set him the example. The quantity of money thus locked up is incredible, and the loss to the country from this unproductive way of dealing with earnings is immense. The artisan or labourer hoards his wages and buys a ring or a silver girdle ; the rajah hoards his revenue, probably cheats his creditors, and buys all sorts of useless baubles." In Mr. David Macpherson's "History of European Commerce with India," published in 1812, the following passage occurs : " The Hindoo, whose food is rice, whose drink is water or milk, to whom wine or strong drink is an object of abomination ; and who, if he strictly acts up to his religious principles, would sooner lay down his own life than put any living creature to death, or permit a morsel of animal food to enter his mouth ; whose warm climate renders any clothing, beyond what decency re- quires, intolerable, and whose light clothing is made by himself and his family from the cotton produced in his own fertile fields; whose customs and religion, to which he adheres with the most inflexible constancy, render utterly inadmissible many articles of enjoyment and com- fort which our habits have rendered almost necessary SELF-DENIAL OF A HINDOO VILLAGER. 193 to our existence, can never have any desire to acquire the manufactures or produce of Europe." We need not subscribe entirely to these opinions, for Mr. Macpherson lived a long time ago, and Hindoos are now less arcadian than he describes; also it is well known that many manufactures of Europe are fast super- seding Indian fabrics ; but he is very right in the main in his description of the few and simple wants of the Indian peasant, though it is not every caste which ab- jures either strong drink or animal food ; but such food is rarely indulged in, and when it is used, it is so on great occasions only. I can give an instance which shows the temperate and self-denying feeling of a Hindoo villager. I had shot a sambur ; it was being cut up near my tent, and my servants and the beaters were dividing the meat among themselves. There was enough and to spare ; and seeing a fine old grey-beard from the adjacent village looking on, I said, " Give this old man a good piece of meat to take home with him." But the old fellow smiled and said, " I will not take any ; it is very good ; but if I once get the taste of meat in my mouth I shall always be longing for it when I cannot get any ; " and away he went, shaking his wise old head. There is no doubt that the people of India, putting aside the discontented demagogues of large cities, are well content with British rule, recognising as they do that they enjoy more security and are more fairly treated under it than their ancestors could ever have dreamed of. N 194 AN INDIAN OLIO. On this head I cannot quote a more weighty authority than Sir Bichard Temple. In his work, "India in 1880," the following passage occurs : " The mass of the teeming Indian population desire nothing so much as that sort of repose which they enjoy under the strong, mild, and just rule of England ; when every man gathers in quiet the fruits of his toil ; is not forced to render up his goods against his will ; sleeps without fear of violence ; has redress for every wrong done to him by his neighbours ; performs his religious rites and follows his caste observances undisturbed ; and lifts his eyes towards the State as to a father." In the many conversations which, during long years of service in India, I have had with country people in their own fields and villages, this appreciation of British rule has always been manifested. They have always acknow- ledged the fair dealing of Government, and have stated their preference for British officers over Sheristadars, Tahsildars, Moonsiffs, and the whole tribe of native officials, of whom, with very rare exceptions, they have expressed great distrust and dislike. There is no doubt that with native revenue and police officials corruption and venality are but too often the rule, and integrity the exception, and that this is so is the opinion of the mass of the country people. Whether in- crease of pay, which is often advocated by those who favour freer employment of native agency, will result in greater honesty on part of native employees is very doubtful. Natives themselves have little belief in any such results. NATIVE OFFICIALS. 195 A very eminent officer, Colonel Sleeman, who enjoyed the confidence of all classes of natives more perfectly than most officials under Government, relates, in his " Eambles of an Indian Official," an opinion given to him hy the Native Chief Judge of Meerut on the point whether it might be possible to improve the character of the native police by increasing their salaries. " Never, sir," said the old gentleman. " The man who now gets twenty- five rupees a month is content to make perhaps fifty or seventy-five rupees more, and the people subject to his authority pay him accordingly. Give him a hun- dred, sir, and he will put a shawl over his shoulders, and the poor people will be obliged to pay him at a rate which will make up his income to four hundred rupees ! " I have myself heard many natives express opinions identical with those given by the Meerut Judge to Colonel Sleeman. A particularly competent witness, Mr. Prinsep, Judge of the Calcutta High Court, giving evidence in 1887 before the Civil Service Commission, said that he " be- lieved the people of India did not desire any exten- sive increase of native officers, or that large powers should be conferred on them. The pressure came rather from those who hoped to enter the Government service; but the real question was how far such appointments could be conferred with proper regard to the efficiency of the public service and the stability of Government. He had always been impressed by the want of confidence in native officials shown by their own countrymen, and he 196 AN INDIAN OLIO. believed that the vast majority would always prefer to have their cases tried by Europeans." Mr. Prinsep was speaking specially of the judicial department, but the statement made by him will apply with equal force to the revenue. The cultivators suffer terribly from one cause which, though brought about very much by their own fault, and by reason of their foolish improvidence, calls loudly for intervention and remedy on the part of Government. This cause of suffering is their almost universal indebted- ness to the native money-lenders, a grasping, unscru- pulous class, who are, so to speak, sucking the life-blood of the ryots, and who exact so enormous an interest that no farmer who once falls into their hands can have any reasonable hope of extrication. From 1874 to 1878 I always saw the Central Pro- vinces Gazette, in which notices of suits by money-lenders against the farmers and landholders were published. The number of these suits, and of decrees confiscating the farms and holdings of the debtors, was remarkable, and attracted my attention in every Gazette. It was evident that the land throughout the provinces was falling into the hands of the usurers ; and whenever I was travelling in the Nagpore district, and conversed with the villagers, the same bitter cry was raised that the ryots were in these people's power. As they said, " The soucars have drowned us all ! " In 1875, riots directed against the money-lenders broke out in many parts of the Bombay Presidency, and INDEBTEDNESS OF RYOTS. 197 a commission was appointed for the purpose of inquiring into the cause of the outbreaks. The commission recorded that the great bulk of the cultivators had running accounts with the money-lenders ; that once in debt extrication was impossible ; and that in effect the ryot cultivated the ground for the benefit of the creditor, receiving only the barest subsistence for himself ; that bonds running on at ruinous interest never were redeemed never could, indeed, be redeemed but were continually renewed, the debt growing heavier at each renewal. At length the soucar would bring a suit, obtain a decree, and sell up the property, cattle and all, or would sell the land (the ryot debtor having a pro- prietary right), and buy it in for a mere trifle, perhaps retaining the unfortunate debtor as tenant-at-will at an exorbitant rent upon the fields which were once his own. To give one extract from the books of the soucars themselves. In the books of one soucar the total of a few ryots' accounts showed a sum lent of 49 1 2 rupees ; of sums repaid, 5918 ; of balance still due, 5906 ! Is it not clear that this means ruin to the ryot ? By the Hindoo law, prior to the British rule, not more than double the original amount of a debt could be re- covered at law ; and in giving a decree the judge had to certify that this was not exceeded. The whole history, therefore, of the debt, the sums borrowed, payments made, and interest charged, was gone into, and this was a great check upon extortion. In 1827 a regulation of Govern- ment made simple interest only at twelve per cent, re- 198 AN INDIAN OLIO. coverable by civil suit; but this was repealed in 1859, and thenceforward money-lenders could charge any inte- rest they pleased to stipulate for. Before 1859, twelve years was the limitation, and bonds were not renewed within that time. Now the limitation is three years, and the debtor has to execute a fresh bond within that period, inclusive of outstanding interest ; so the debt rolls on like a snowball, and the debtor is ruined. The remedies proposed by the commission were aboli- tion of imprisonment for debt, exemption of agricultural stock and implements from execution, and certain rules as to finality and limitation of decrees. The most im- portant remedy of all, and one which would strike at the root of the evil, i.e., that land should not be subject to sale in satisfaction of a decree, does not appear to have been mooted by the commission. Such a law would at a blow put an end to the ruinous system of credit which enables the landowner to borrow money for extravagant expenditure on marriages, &c., and would lead him into a habit of calculating his means, and of saving up money for great occasions, instead of hanging a weight of debt round his neck which he can never hope to get rid of. For such moderate loans as he might require to meet a run of bad seasons or bad luck, the security of the coming crop and of property not agricultural would suffice. The soucars would, of course, draw in their business, and it is to be hoped find better employment for their capital than in acting the part of vampires to the ignorant and thoughtless landowners and ryots. SIR R TEMPLE ON CONDITION OF THE EYOTS. 199 To complete this attempt to show what is the condi- tion of the class of cultivators, and with special reference to that portion who are too poor to require protection from usurers, I will quote an eloquent passage from "India in 1880," page 101, in which the author depicts the condition of the labouring ryots under British rule. It runs as follows : " Apart from famines, which occur periodically, the poor in India do not dread absolute hunger in ordinary times, nor do they suffer from rigour of climate, though many of them are fed scantily. There is no hard winter before their eyes, no poor-law, no poor- rate, no call for the community being legally compelled to maintain the disabled and the destitute, nor any con- siderable pauperism. There is little of the slow- wasting penury, the cankering care, the sense of pinching and insufficiency which, irrespective of absolute destitution, are so often mentioned in the most advanced and civilised countries. A mouthful is somehow found for all." Although the bulk of the inhabitants of Cumbum are agriculturists, there are one or two industries which employ a fair number of people. The cotton carpets of Cumbum are well made, and command a good sale throughout the South of India. Native regiments send large orders for " settringees," small carpets woven from Indian cotton, coloured red, white, and blue in broad stripes, and six or seven feet long by two and a half and three feet wide, which form part of the kit of a native soldier. Very large carpets of the same material and colours are also made for tent flooring, and are both cheap 2oo AN INDIAN OLIO. and good. There is also a trade in brass and copper vessels used by natives, and for these also there is a great demand by native regiments, as well as by the general population. Cumbum is not a healthy place. It is surrounded by water, and is damp even in the dry season, for the lake keeps up a constant supply for the wet cultivation, and it stagnates in every field. Hence malarial fevers are prevalent, and terrible visitations of cholera not rare. In one such inroad of the pestilence over five hundred people died out of a population of perhaps five or six thousand, and half the survivors fled in dismay, and returned not until the plague had ceased. Just after it had passed away I marched a detachment of my regiment from Cuddapah to Cumbum ; and when we arrived the fugitives were just beginning to return. Cart-loads of women and children, and pony-loads also, and whole families of haggard, travel-worn people on foot, were converging upon the town from many a jungle road ; and house doors which had been padlocked when the inmates fled from their homes were again opened, and the streets again showed signs of life and traffic ; but many a house remained silent and deserted, and closed and padlocked doors looked blindly on the street, and doubtless the missing families had died in some distant village or some lonely jungle of the terrible disease which they had carried with them in their flight, and would never return to open the deserted doors. Strange to say, the detachment which I relieved, and CHOLERA AT CUMBUM. 201 which had remained in tlie fort the whole time that the disease was raging in the town, did not suffer at all, nor did their families that were with them. Of course certain precautions had been taken or attempted to keep the Sepoys and their families from going more than could he helped into the town ; but with natives such precautions are of little use : they have no belief in their efficacy : with them fate, is everything, and human care and endeavour are nothing. If they are to catch a disease they are to catch it, and nobody can do anything to fend off the arrows of fate ! However, no case of cholera occurred in the crowded little fort. Cholera is, in Professor Burdon Sanderson's opinion, " the unknown entity ; " and so it seems likely to remain. There pro- bably is, as the Professor also says, a "material and tangible cause," if it could only be discovered ; but at present it is not understood. ( 202 ) CHAPTER X. Bellary The rock fort Leopards and hyrenas Profile of the Duke of Wellington on craggy hill Railway Dry climate of Bellary district Prevalence of fever Sport, past and present Darojee and its tank Wild-fowl and snipe Shooting on road to Gooty Camp life The "Paddy-bird" and strong drink Drunkenness in India The Government duty on liquor a great check to drink- ing "Tulsi the grasscutter " Ill-treatment of native women in India The Hindoo child-widow Hindoos should themselves agitate for abolition of " child-marriage " An engineer's dis- covery in geology ! A hysena attempts to carry off a baby Pro- ject for irrigation of Bellary Plain Water the life of India. BELLARY is not a pleasant - looking place, nor is it situated in a pleasant-looking country ; but it improves on acquaintance, as do many other stations in India. The cantonment is built on a wide plain of black " cotton soil," at the foot of a vast granite hill about four hundred feet high and two miles in circuit, on the summit of which is a fortress of the usual style of hill forts, containing magazines, guard rooms, &c., all now deserted, to which access is gained by a steep path, half staircase, half smooth slippery rock, which leads through gateways in battlemented walls to the small level space at top on which the citadel stands. The lower sides and base of the rock are covered THE KOCK FORT. 203 with granite boulders, broken off unnumbered years ago from the bare humpbacked mass of primitive rock which rises above them. On the top of the hill are wonderful natural water -holes, holding an in- exhaustible supply of good water. Walls of hewn granite, with towers and bastions at intervals, sur- round the fort in double and in places even triple line. Another craggy hill, covered with great pieces of rock, split and thrown together in wild confusion, rises close to the east side of the fort hill, and appears to be somewhat the higher of the two ; and between them is a well-made road running completely round the fort, and leading to both the civil and military stations. This hill, or rather heap of rocks, is full of caves and dens ; very often holds leopards, and hysenas always. One evening, just as it was becoming dark, we were driving along this road, and saw a hysena standing within five yards of our carriage. We pulled up, and the beast stood looking at us for nearly a minute, and then slowly slouched away into the growing darkness. Several leo- pards have been trapped upon the skirts of this hill, but such animals are now not often heard of. On the top of the craggy hill are a group of three or four stone slabs, visible from the road, which, viewed from a certain point, present a profile greatly resembling that of the great Duke of Wellington upturned to the sky. The resemblance is really striking, and every stranger arriving at Bellary is taken to see it. 204 AN INDIAN OLIO. From the citadel a fine view is obtained. Looking towards the cantonment, which lies at the foot of the rock, in a map-like, formal arrangement of white and blue-washed houses, all with flat terrace roofs, the eye is carried over a dreary plain, for several miles broken only by ridges and clumps of black granite rocks, until bounded at a distance of ten or twelve miles by ranges of hills, among which the Copper mountain rises above the rest to the height of sixteen hundred feet above the plain. Very few trees are to be seen, except in the cantonment, which is sparsely planted with thorn- trees, and a few lines of stunted banians lining the prin- cipal roads. The native town presents no features of interest. The population, over forty thousand, is chiefly of Cana- rese and Teloogoo Hindoos, of whom the former pre- dominate. A considerable number of Mahomedans like- wise inhabit the main streets and bazaars. At the base of the rock, in the direction of the railway station, is the lower fort, containing many military buildings, barracks, &c., now mostly diverted to other uses. West of the railway station are the civil lines, with some good houses, but not much better wooded than the military cantonment. A new line of rail stretch- ing northward, and about joining hands with a rail- way fast advancing from Portuguese Goa, has most unfortunately been driven straight through the military station, instead of being carried, as it should have been, to the eastward of the ereat rock. DRY CLIMATE OF BELLARY. 205 The district of Bellary, lying on a tableland nearly two thousand feet above sea-level, is remarkably dry, and the great fault of its climate is the want of rain, which is often severely felt. There are large tanks, one of them of comparatively recent construction, near the town and station ; but for them to be fairly filled is not the rule, but the exception. Drought is the almost normal state of the district. The clouds rush- ing from the western coast in the south-west monsoon do not " drop their fatness," but pass away inland to fer- tilise the soil of more favoured districts. Nevertheless the climate of Bellary is for the greater part of the year cooler and more pleasant than would be imagined from the parched and burnt- up aspect of its hills and plains. When the south-west monsoon sets in on the west coast of India, the strong cool wind which immediately blows up from the Ghauts puts an end to the hot season, and whether rain falls or not Bellary gets the advantage of a pleasant temperature both by night and by day. It is not, however, a healthy place. Cholera often marks the district for its own; and a low malarial fever is very common, especially among the troops, European as well as native, and their families. In some years this fever becomes almost universal, and very few escape its annoying attacks. It seldom causes death as an immediate consequence, but it cannot but render those who have suffered from it less fit to encounter the risks of a tropical climate. Many years ago there was good shooting around 206 AN INDIAN OLIO. Bellary. Panthers and leopards haunted the rocky hills, and even tigers were not unfrequently met with a few miles from the station. I was told by a well- known sportsman, with whom I have often ranged the jungles, that he received news one morning of two tigers having been marked down in some fields at the foot of a hill only ten or twelve miles north of Bellary. Though tigers do not often lie up in culti- vation, the villager who brought the news was so positive that my friend rode out, and found a number of people watching a tobacco-field, in which they de- clared that the tigers were lying. A beat with tom- toms, &c., was organised, and scarcely had it com- menced when the pussies emerged from the tall plants and galloped to the hill, which, being full of dens, afforded a safe refuge, and by bad luck or bad man- agement they got up the rocks without coming under the range of my friend's rifle. I have often looked at this hill, and wished that I had known Bellary in those days. Now there is probably no tiger within forty miles, if so near. Antelope and ravine antelope were then very nume- rous. Now, with exception of an occasional ravine deer, and a few partridge and rock pigeon at the base of the Copper mountain, and thinly scattered over the plain, there is, literally, no shooting at all except in the cold season, when, if there has been enough rain to fill the tanks, duck and snipe collect on suitable ground, and afford very fair sport. DAROJEE. 207 In the arid black plain, the small town of Darojee is a veritable oasis. In its situation under the em- bankment of a fine tank, almost a Like, on the east side of the Sundoor hills, and embowered in beautiful groves of trees, encircled also with vast stretches of rice-fields and other irrigated crops, it has always re- minded me of Cumbum. There is, as at Cumbum, a small " bungalow " on the bund (embankment), and a swampy river-bed, which once flowed freely between two hills, but is now blocked by the embankment. In its occasional deep pools and reaches duck and teal abound, and snipe also are not scarce. I have seen diggings of bears on the bund ; and leopards were known to prowl nightly, and to carry off dogs and goats from the purlieus of the town. Darojee is about twenty-four miles north of Bellary, on the road to Bamundroog sanatorium. On the railway which spans the peninsula from Bombay to Madras, about forty miles from Bellary, are several fine tanks, all in one line, and with swamps all along the channels communicating from one tank to another. The first of these tanks, by name Pautekacherroo (" Cherroo " is Teloogoo for a tank), is about seven miles from Goondacal junction, in the Madras direction ; and the railway runs through the tank, cutting off a small shallow portion ; but with two or three waterways spanned by girder bridges on the high embankment. On the wide bund of this tank are a line of fine 2o8 AN INDIAN OLIO. sh'ade- giving trees, and ample room for small tents ; and many a pleasant trip did we have, sometimes two of us, sometimes more, shooting duck and snipe, and greatly enjoying the change from the monotony of can- tonment life. Usually one or two of the party were owners of canoes ; and they would launch them and beat up the duck among the reeds and rushes which covered the shallow portions of the tank. Those of us who re- mained on dry land ensconced ourselves behind some tall bushes which grew on the embankment, and there waited for the duck to be put up by the canoes. No sooner was a shot fired than there arose a great com- motion among the fowl, and several flights were sure to come over the railway line, and generally left two or three of their number, which, riddled with shot, dropped into the tank, raising a shower of spray in their heavy fall. This sport would be continued for an hour or two, by which time the scared water-fowl, flying at each fresh disturbance higher and higher, would seek a safe refuge in a yet larger tank, Etimarajoocherroo (a good mouthful of a name!), six miles further south, on the road to Gooty. Then we collected the spoil, and returned to our tents to enjoy a well-earned breakfast. The middle of the day was usually devoted to snipe shooting under the bund, where the snipe lay in thick beds of tall reeds, toilsome ground for shooting, and in rice-fields, and on the borders of a large nullah, by which WILD-FOWL AND SNIPE. 209 the waste water flowed to further replenish, the othe'r fine tank with the long name. Also there were vast stretches of fallow ground, ankle deep in water, and knee deep in grass and flowering plants, where unclad urchins watched the grazing buffaloes, and where the thick skins of the said buffaloes sometimes received a portion of the shot discharged at snipe, and lumbered off with horns laid back and noses straight protruded, and with in- dignant routings at the insult they had received at our hands. Thus would the day wear on ; and our sport was pleasantly broken at intervals by a lounge and a smoke under one of the few thorn-trees which afforded an im- perfect shade, until the lengthening shadows warned us to return to our white tents, which gleamed among the distant trees, in time for a joyous 'plunge into our tank close by, preparatory to dinner and divine bitter ale ! We never committed the worse than fault, the blunder of drinking beer either before or during our day's sport. Nothing can be worse for either health or sport than to bemuse one's brains with anything stronger than water during a hot day's sport. Pleasant times were these, alas ! never to return, though some of my then com- panions are still enjoying their sport in India, and doubtless saying or thinking at times how much I should like to be there with them once more. My long-legged shikarry was very much to the front on these expeditions. He was a fanatical duck shooter, and often when we had finished our sport he would ask o 210 AN INDIAN OLIO. leave to take a gun and employ the time we took for our breakfast in stalking a plump of duck or teal which had come back to the tank, as they often did when we had left the coast clear for them. He seldom made a stalk in vain mud or water, it was all the same to him ; and as he never fired unless certain to kill, the report of his gun was a sure sign that something had been added to the larder. Sad to say, the Paddy-bird was far too fond of strong drink, and no advice or threats of punishment were effectual to keep him sober. Drink he would, and most unblushingly. Moreover, he was quarrelsome in his cups ; and if a row took place in the evening at the tent assigned to our native followers, we always knew for a certainty that the Paddy-bird was a prin- cipal actor in it. Natives of low caste (and my shikarry was not very high in the social scale) are very commonly addicted to drinking; that is, they drink at times, and when they do drink they never stop short of getting very drunk. Except, however, among these low castes, par- ticularly Gonds and other wild tribes, there is not so much drunkenness by far as in England. The tax which the Government imposes on the sale of spirits, which has been animadverted upon by Archdeacon Farrar and others, is really a great check upon drunken- ness ; and it stands to reason that it is so, for it cannot be denied that where liquor is cheap more will be drunk than where it is dear. DRUNKENNESS IN INDIA. 211 The Archdeacon makes an epigrammatic statement, apparently for effect, but a most unfounded one, that "England found India sober, and made it drunk for sake of revenue." An absolute denial of this attack upon the reputation of the British rule in India has been given, and with perfect truth, by the supreme Government. The tribes least accessible to British in- fluence are the most drunken, i.e., the Bheels, Gonds, Khonds, Sonthals, &c. It is absurd to say that Govern- ment, or any action of Government, encourages, or (as some do not scruple to say) drives the natives to drink. What Government does is to prevent liquor being sold so cheap as to cause the consumption to be double what it now is. As to India having been "found sober," there is good ground to deny this statement also. Eead what Lord Valentia says in 1803, in his "Travels in India, &c.," vol. ii. page 172. "One of the greatest evils in India is the cheapness of spirituous liquors, which leads to a dreadful mortality among the European soldiers," and "an execrable liquor is sold at a low rate in every village." What Government have done in the eighty-five years which have elapsed since Lord Valentia wrote has been, I repeat, to repress as far as possible the sale of cheap spirits in India, by imposing duties and restrictions on their sale, without which there would undoubtedly be much more drunken- ness among the natives than now exists. I have said that when natives of India drink, they always do so until they become intoxicated. I may add 213 AN INDIAN OLIO. that, as in the case of my shikarry, they are usually very quarrelsome in their drink ; and one of the greatest nuisances attendant upon the presence of a host of low caste servants and their families is the frequent drunken rows and consequent wife-beating which follow. I can- not resist inserting, in an abbreviated form, an extract from the Madras Mail, and will not apologise to the unknown writer of it for so doing. It is a perfect idyll, and should not be lost in the ephemeral columns of a newspaper. " Tulsi was born to sorrow as the sparks fly upwards. In the expressive words of Scripture, ' for want and famine she was . solitary. She cut up mallows by the bushes, and juniper roots for her meats. The days of affliction took hold upon her ; her bones were pierced in the night season, and her sinews took no rest. Her skin was black upon her, and her bones were burned with heat/ The child and the grandchild of grasscutters, Tulsi entered upon the business of life at the early age of five. The charge of a heavy infant was at once assigned to her ; in her leisure hours she stole grass and firewood, and the hard berries which only sharp Indian teeth can masticate. Her activity marked her ou,t as a prey to her indolent relatives, and her taskmasters proved as hard as the men who ruled over the Israelites in bondage. The rod was not spared in her case ; blows fell freely on Tulsi's .shoulders, and roused her to fierce and shrill retorts. TULSI THE GRASSCUTTER. 213 There are certain occupations which embellish a woman ; there are others which steal away her youth and fresh- ness, and render her unlovely to the eye. Tulsi soon bore the marks of her life. Her rounded limbs (for she was a well-formed child) soon lost their form, her hair grew thin and rusty, and her skin was burnt black from hourly exposure to a fierce sun. The girl was from her childhood insufficiently fed, and the coarse grains on which she lived supplied her with scanty nourishment. As she grew older more active work was exacted from her. She rose, not with the lark, but with the first dis- mal notes of the king-crow, and her communings with nature were sorrowful indeed. The dry season is the grasscutter's day of trial. The master insists at that time, above all other times, on receiving excellent grass. The native groom is freely fined, and he takes it all with the cool indifference peculiar to his kind and sex. In the evenings the outcries from the stables are loud and shrill, and the weary master, home from a dusty office, sends a message to the effect that the shrieking offender must be fined again. Then there is a dead stillness. " The Indian moon, which, thank God, looks into the home of the wretched and the friendless, as- well as into verandahs and ball-rooms, alone knows what that still- ness means. Its brilliant light falls tenderly on a worn-out woman, with her baby vainly seeking for nourishment at her tired breast. The master's fine has told upon her. Her grass was five pounds short of the 214 AN INDIAN OLIO. necessary weight, and she had been sent like a naughty child beaten and supperless to bed, ' and so her bones ached in the night-time and her flesh had no peace/ Tulsi was an active and able walker. The early morn- ings found her on the road, the feverish days came and went and beheld her hard at work. At sixteen she was a wife and mother, and had changed from a drudge into a slave. Her husband was a good groom and a confirmed drunkard ; he wandered from place to place, and changed one master for another without fear or regret. Tulsi became a true ' grasscutter woman,' abusive, shrill of voice, and lavish of gesture. But she brought good grass, and was a faithful servant according to her dim lights. Of nature she knew nothing, but her hour of rest out in the open country under a banyan tree was the only peaceful moment of her day. Her child lay at her feet ; it was a pause in the ceaseless drudgery. The light striking like flames between the branches amused the child, and roused it to baby laughter. Black ants ran ceaselessly over the great roots ; one of those snaky creepers peculiar to the tropics ran riot among the lighter branches. Tulsi, rest- ing her head on her bundle of grass, smoked a blackened pipe and ruminated. he was not a silent reticent sufferer like the finer type of Indian women, but she was brave and long-suffering, and a hard worker. Be- tween her and nature there was not much communion. The child was on better terms with the kindly mother- earth which provided so many amusements for it. There TULSI THE GRASSCUTTER. 215 was the sarcastic ' Who are you ? ' bird shrieking on a casuarina tree, which flung its feathery branches about, and in whose leaves a passing wind sounded like the patter of a summer shower. The maina dancing side- ways and chuckling with derision, the very incarnation of a joyous mirth-maker, seemed to be specially showing off its various tricks for the benefit of the infant gazer. And the crow pheasant, the hot weather bird, with its dull significant thud on the trunks of the trees, the kite with its whir and screech, and last but not least the squirrel, one and all played their part in the charming game. Something like the gleam of a kindly feeling shown in Tulsi's dull eyes as she watched the child's delight. On showery days Tulsi .and her child took shelter under the trees, or leafy hovels, or perchance under an awning of bamboo, erected by a dealer in fruits and native sweets. But the hardest part of the day was the trudge home, and the endless bickerings over the grass. Tulsi was expected by her husband to collect two bundles one for the master's horse, and one to be sold in the Mount Road. Her step-sister helped her to carry the latter home, and severe was the penalty exacted when the supply fell short. Evil words stung her to fierce retorts, and retorts were followed by blows. And in the night-time the mother and child wept sorely until sleep fell upon them. " The end of it all came in May. A dry May in Madras is a foretaste of the inferno. The earth is scorched up far and wide, the hardiest grasses dry, the 216 AN INDIAN OLIO. tanks are scorched and thirsty. No vegetation but that which is watered at serious expense can resist the anger of the sun. He rises in his wrath and drinks up any lingering moisture; he absorbs the dew in the foliage, and smites the young shoots as with a sword. With him comes the land wind, raging with heat, and scatter- ing fiery particles of red dust in the eyes of men and beasts alike. There is no escape from the scourge. The heated air is like passing fire ; the dry earth scorches the bare feet of the walkers, and raises blisters upon them. On May i8th, Tulsi's trials came to an end. There was no good grass to be had, and the husband, what with fines and drink, grew mad with drunken violence. Be- tween ten and eleven one night fearful cries proceeding from the stables drew the master and the entire house- hold to the spot. But the evil was done ; a well-planted blow had placed Tulsi beyond the reach of all human help. She lay there in that kindly moon which had shone so often upon all her troubles, bleeding a little from a wound in her head. The child lay crying beside her with a chubby hand clasped round the mother's arm. After all it was only a 'grasscutter woman' who had passed away from a scene of strife. At the inquest and trial very few details were elicited. Only two of the upper servants bore truthful witness about Tulsi's life. The others all swore that the murderer was { good man only. Bad woman, trouble giving, and therefore little beating getting.' In death, as in life, there was no one to do the woman justice." ILL-TREATMENT OF NATIVE WOMEN IN INDIA. 217 Ill-treatment of women by their husbands in the way of kicking and beating is not unknown among the lower classes in England, especially, it would seem, in towns ; but the difference in this respect is that in England brutality towards women is universally con- demned, but with the Hindoos it is thought little or nothing of. " What ! " my shikarry used to say " a man not to beat his wife when she has not got his dinner ready for him. Is she not his wife ! " Not only have I been told this by the Paddy-bird, but I have had Sepoys say very much the same thing in my orderly room, when they have been charged for making a dis- turbance in the lines, in which wife-beating has been found to have been one element in the row. For the treatment of women in the higher classes of Hindoo society, I will quote the Indian Nation, a Cal- cutta native newspaper. " The cruel treatment of women is not sanctioned by Hindooism ; but if the English-knowing Hindoo of to- day has any conception of Hindooism, it is identical with high-handedness over women. A man may lead an impure life ; he may not maintain his poor relations ; he may not perform any of the sacraments of Hindooism except marriage; he may be uncharitable, inhospitable, harsh, atheistic, and unscrupulous : modern society re- gards him as a Hindoo if only he maintains the institution of the Zenana, and treats the ladies of his household as servants. The worst abuse which a Hindoo thinks he can flins at another Hindoo is that the latter treats his 218 AN INDIAN OLIO. wife with kindness and courtesy, and listens to her advice in matters domestic. A Hindoo gentleman is ridiculed as 'a Sahib* if he treats his wife with that consideration which the Hindoo ' Shastras ' enjoin ; and a modern Lilivati would be ridiculed as a ' Beebee ' if she did not systematically conduct such operations as cooking, sweeping, making the bed, removing filth, &c." The condition of widows, especially child-widows, is most miserable, as may be seen in the following extract from another native newspaper, the Paridarshak, of apparently more liberal views of the rights of the weaker sex than the great body of Hindoos. " THE HINDOO CHILD- WIDOW. The friends and rela- tions of child-widows treat them most brutally. The widow daughter does not even receive kind treatment from the mother. But on the death of the mother she is treated as a menial servant in the house of her brother or father-in-law. Every Hindoo is well aware of this fact. Under English rule this hard lot of the widow has not been mitigated by law. In these days of civilisation, the Indian women have not been able to secure exemption from harsh treatment through the legislation of a nation under whose administration the oppression of the weak by the strong has disappeared. Legislature, we do not know how to curse you ! Lan- guage does not furnish us with adequate expressions ! " Frothy ! but bearing to the right direction ; but as to the desire expressed by the editor that the well- becursed Government should interfere and put an end CHILD-MARRIAGE AND CHILD-WIDOWS. 219 to the ill-treatment of Hindoo child-widows, it surely would be more fitting if the Hindoos themselves were to get up an agitation and submit to the " legislature " their opinions, fortified with which, Government might perhaps take the case in hand. In default of such support by the native community, it would be very impolitic for the British Government to interfere autho- ritatively with the question of child-marriage, which if meddled with without the initial desire of the Hindoo people, might, and probably would, convulse all India. Every one knows, none better than the Hindoos, that the British Government, which has extinguished Suttee; which has endeavoured, though with but partial success, to suppress infanticide ; which has scotched, if not entirely killed, Thuggee; which treats human sacrifice as murder ; which, in fine, is the firm opponent of every kind of cruelty and oppression, would be only too glad to find a fitting opportunity to abolish " child-marriage " and the enforced celibacy of " child- widows ; " but it would be most unwise to do so except at the instance of Hindooism itself. The result would otherwise be an universal movement of the Hindoos against their foreign rulers for seeking to interfere with their religious observances and customs. An engineer officer of the Bellary district made a queer mistake many years ago, in reporting to Govern- ment that he had discovered at the village of Ooda- mulpaud a rock from which petroleum exuded. The source from which it flowed was not very plain, but was 220 AN INDIAN OLIO. supposed to be from cracks in the rock : it was also stated to have an animal odour ! No wonder, for after a great fuss and despatch of specimens to proper geo- logical experts, it turned out to be the effect of a great colony of bats which inhabited the rocks ! The story reminds one of Lever's Irish professor of archaeological proclivities, who was taken by a party of mischievous students to inspect an " ancient passage " which had been discovered in the college, and who, on arriving at the spot, quickly retreated with the exclamation, " May the devil admire me, but it is a rat-hole ! " There are wolves on Bellary plain, sometimes very bold and fierce. A cavalry officer was riding, and had with him two or three greyhounds, not far from the cantonment. Suddenly two wolves emerged from a nullah, and when he rode at them, and the dogs also pursued, they not only stood at bay, but when he called the dogs off and rode away they in their turn pursued him, and he had great difficulty in beating them off with hallooing and whip-cracking. Jackals were also very numerous at Bellary, and their eldritch screech was heard most nights on the skirts and even in the streets of the station. Both these animals and hyaenas do excellent duty as night scavengers. A bad character was, however, given to the hyaenas by a curious circumstance which happened a long time ago. An officer's family were living in tents on the race- PROJECT FOR IRRIGATION OF BELLARY PLAIN. 221 course one hot season, and the children's tent, in which was a small baby in charge of an ayah, was at a little distance from the others. One moonlight night, when the family, except the infant, were in the large tents, the woman left her charge and went off to the servants' quarters to smoke or gossip. She was going back again, and had nearly reached the child's tent, when she saw a large animal come out with a white bundle in its mouth, which she immediately divined to be the infant. At the yell which the woman raised the lady rushed out and gave chase to what she saw was a hyaena, and the brute dropped the bundle and cantered off. It was the infant, and most providentially had been seized by the thick wrappers only, and was untouched by tooth or claw. And now I think I have little more to say of dry and desert Bellary. With a soil of great fertility, it yet suffers from scarcity ; at times, indeed, from the severest form of famine. There is a tradition that a great while ago the springs and well water were close to the surface, and that Bellary was full of gardens ; that the wilderness of the plain was well wooded, and the fields smiled with luxuriant crops ; and so it might again be if only water could be brought for irrigation of the soil. I remember that when I first knew the Ceded Districts in 1849 a project for bringing the water of the river Tumboodra was much spoken of. A dam or " anicut " across the river somewhere near Humpy, and a canal with irrigating channels to carry 222 AN INDIAN OLIO. the fertilising stream as far as Bellary itself, a distance of perhaps forty miles, would be required ; and though the cost of carrying out so great a project would be very large, there can be no doubt that, even in a money point of view, it would pay well. Not only so, but as a safeguard against the terrible famines with which the district has been so often visited, and against the frightful loss of life (and of revenue also) with which such famines are accompanied, it would be a lasting monument of both the liberality and the far-sightedness of the British Government. Doubtless the extension of railways (and the Bellary district is now supplied with one which runs through it from east to west) is very useful against famine so long as the people have the money wherewith to purchase grain poured in from more favoured provinces ; but when crops fail and cattle die for want of fodder, even the rail- way and the most strenuous exertions of Government cannot effectually grapple with the calamity. The people are ruined, and have no money for purchase of grain ; cultivation is at a standstill for want of water; and the labouring classes sit down idle and in despair. It is true that when rain fails and rivers shrink for two years in succession, even canal and channel irrigation will dwindle ; but not altogether not even perhaps very considerably until the drought has lasted a very unusual time. The peril and the scarcity will have been mini- mised, and the farmers, relieved from the losses of ordinary droughts, will be able to bear up and to keep their cattle WATER THE LIFE OF INDIA. 223 alive through what would otherwise have been a time of utter ruin. jAt the present time, four years out of five it may be said, the " season reports " of the Bellary district often contain such entries as, " Crops withering for want of rain/' "Insufficient rainfall," &c. With a canal and irrigating channels from the river such need not be so felt ; and it is not too much to say that were the project carried out Bellary would cease to suffer from such fatal famines. The money spent in "famine relief" in 1877 78 in Bellary would probably have sufficed to pay for a canal from the Tumboodra. The one great truth is that in India water is the life of the country, and want of water is death ! ( 22 4 ) CHAPTER XL Secunderabad Climate of the Deccan Spear-grass The subsidiary force A show parade The Mowlally races Secunderabad in 1845, then and now Kaissera Death of a panther Small game in the rains Rock pigeon Rain quail Insects Tortoise and elephant Old woman and a wild beast Wild beasts in villages Tiger and bears in railway station Folly of following wounded tigers and panthers "on foot" Instances of deaths by wounded tigers Strong vitality of savage animals The city of Hyderabad Dangerous population Fights in the city Improvement under Sir Salar Jung's government Street crowds Tame tigers Elephants in city Dangerous elephants in the streets. SECUNDERABAD is perhaps, taking it all in all, the finest military station in India. Situated on the Deccan plateau, nearly two thousand feet above sea- level, it enjoys a moderate climate, avoiding the extremes of heat and cold which characterise Northern India. The hot season lasts at the most three months, and though sufficiently fervid, is not unbearably hot. In most years the rainfall is ample, averaging in good seasons about thirty-two inches, most of which falls between May and September, when the south-west winds blow, though heavy bursts often occur in October, when the north- east monsoon has sway. Nothing is more enjoyable than a ramble with a gun THE SUBSIDIARY FORCE. 225 in the fall of the year in the Deccan. The pure cool air ; the vivid green trees, contrasted with the warm red and grey rocks, which rise in clustered masses on the plains ; the tanks, large and small, shining mirror-like in the genial sun, and dotted with shy water-fowl ; the turf, fine and short where pastured by village cattle, and where not so fed off waving with bright yellow rumnah grass, pleasant to ride over, but not pleasant for the pedestrian, for its tasselled heads bear a store of inch-long barbed darts which no clothing thinner than canvas can keep out, and which work their way through ordinary material in a most irritating manner. The force at Secunderabad, in which must be included the new cantonment for British troops of all arms at Trimulgherry and Bolarum, and the pretty little station for native cavalry at Bowenpilly, is the largest in India ; and a show parade, such as is formed on Her Majesty's birthday, when the contingent troops also come from Bolarum to swell the array, is a grand sight, as much from the varied and picturesque uniforms of the troops and the many-coloured clothing of the crowd of lookers- on as from the strength of the force assembled on the parade-ground. At the "march past," first come- the Royal Horse Artillery, in brilliant blue uniform laced with gold, and faultless turn-out in guns, horses, and harness. Next a Dragoon, sometimes a Lancer, regiment, also in blue. Then a regiment of native regular cavalry in French grey uniform, thin small men in comparison with the sturdy P 226 AN INDIAN OLIO. British horsemen, but wiry and workmanlike in figure and equipment. An irregular cavalry regiment come next, in green uniforms, armed with lances as well as sabres (or rather " tulwars "), with high jack-boots, and horses equipped with native trappings. Four or five British officers, dressed in semi-native costume, lead the squadrons, and look as though they had been pelted with gold lace, so lavishly adorned are their green tunics. After the cavalry brigade come two light field batteries of Eoyal Artillery, and the heavy battery (commonly called " Noah's Ark "), comprising four forty-pounder guns and two big howitzers, drawn by elephants harnessed in tandern fashion, and their limbers, waggons, &c., roped to wide-horned bullocks. This battery is an imposing affair, and it is inte- resting to observe the intelligence in movement which the elephants have acquired. In passing the flagstaff each ele- phant salutes by raising the tip of its trunk to its forehead. The heavy battery is followed by the contingent native artillery. Two British infantry regiments, solid and precise in movement, two or three companies of sappers, four Madras, and one contingent native infantry complete the force of about six thousand men, well able to cope with any body of undisciplined Indian warriors of ten times their number. The crowd of spectators which hems in the parade- ground, especially when, as sometimes happens, the Nizam or the Minister attend the show, is a wonderful sight. Every tribe of Oriental man and every variety of Oriental garb is there represented. SPECTATORS AT A SHOW PARADE. 227 There stand a group of Parsees, of whom there are many families in both Secunderabad and in " the city/' as is the -phrase generally used in speaking of Hyderabad. Light in complexion, and of strongly knit frame, though apt to grow obese as years roll on, the well-featured Parsees are always pleasant to look at, and in my experi- ence pleasant to deal with. They are, no doubt, sharp traders ; but their manliness of speech and bearing gives them a very superior standing as compared with most other natives of India. Their head-dress is the only ugly thing about them a brimless hat covered with shiny chintz of some dark pattern, and higher in front than in - rear. A neat white linen tunic and loose trousers, either of white linen also or of bright-coloured silk, complete their costume. Next to the Parsees may be seen a party of Mar- warries (bankers and money-lenders) in gay-coloured silk or broadcloth jackets, and with neatly twisted turbans of dove-coloured muslin on their heads. Sleek, well-looking men they are, as well they may be, living on the hard-earned wages of a thousand debtors. Next stand a knot of Afghan horse-dealers, tall and high-featured, and of fair but bronzed complexion, their hair hanging in long black ringlets down their necks. They have either high lambskin caps or large dirty turbans, which have once been white; and their long brown woollen cloaks are innocent of the wash- tub during their many years of wear. They elbow their way contemptuously through the crowd of coolies 228 AN INDIAN OLIO. and ordinary denizens of the bazaars, who are collected in thousands on the skirts of the parade-ground, and they gaze with professional eyes upon the long line of artillery and cavalry chargers drawn up before them. Interspersed among the multitude are many Arabs, mostly half-breeds, whose forefathers settled down and took Deccan wives to themselves. They are small and lean in figure, and there is little beauty in their brown bony faces and scanty moustache and beards, and dirty, ragged garments. Another tribe of mercenaries are sure to be largely represented the Eohillas, northern Mussulmans, "the free lances of the Deccan," so called by Sir Eichard Temple. Finer in feature, stouter in build, and far better furnished with hirsute honours on lip and chin, they are no better dressed than the Arabs. Small turbans, once white tunics, and light white linen trousers, well wrinkled down on ankles, and so tight over feet as to suggest wonder that they can have been got over the heels, they give the wearers an extremely " deboshed " appearance, much heightened by the nu- merous weapons swords, daggers, and pistols stuffed into the " Cummerbund," the waist- cloth, which is worn in thick folds, and makes the bravo's waist bigger round than his shoulders ! A round buckler of wood covered with black leather, or of the thick skin of a blue bull's (neilghaw's) neck, studded with white metal or brass knobs, completes the equipment of the Hydera- bad mercenary. His matchlock, not being admissible MOWLALLY RACES. 229 on a British parade-ground, is stowed away in some opium or " ganja " smoking-den, which serves as a re- freshment-room to all kinds of ruffians passing through Secunderabad. And now the troops are called to attention, and the general commanding appears, accompanied by a brilliant staff (" brilliant " is the regulation term when a general's staff are mentioned !), who occupy themselves in inter- viewing the fair ladies who, on horseback or in carriages, form a long line in rear of the flagstaff. Presently the first gun of a salute gives notice that the Nizam approaches, and the young potentate rides up, glittering with jewels and gold lace, and with the Star of India displayed on the breast of his velvet tunic. With him come a numerous suite of nobles and a well-appointed cavalry escort; and the ride down the line commences, to the music of each band in succession, as the cortege passes in front of the regiments they belong to ; then the march past, and the trot and gallop past of the mounted corps, amid clouds of dust; and the break-off from the parade, when every road to the various barracks and lines resounds with the hum of men, the clash and booming of bands, and the heavy roll and rumble and multitudinous hoof-strokes of artil- lery and cavalry. November is a gay month at Secunderabad. The Mowlally races are an attraction which brings visitors from all parts of India, and long lines of temporary stables are erected on the outskirts of the course, which 230 AN INDIAN OLIO. is laid out on the beautiful plain, east of the dome-like rock crowned with the shrine of the Mahomedan saint whose name it bears. Some days before the commencement of the races, which usually last about a fortnight, a large encamp- ment is laid out ; every regiment sends its mess-tents, and hundreds of other tents also are pitched for accom- modation of the residents of Secunderabad, Bolarum, Bowenpilly, and Chudderghat, the last-named place being headquarters of the British Eesident and his staff. The extensive grass plain, silent and deserted for eleven months of the year, now teems with life. Most of the officers of the force and their families camp out for the whole time of the races: the only restriction upon leave is, that one officer must be present in the lines of each regiment, and this is arranged among the officers themselves. The whole fortnight is given up to amusement: lotteries, ordinaries, and all the con- comitants of Indian race meetings fill up the round of pleasure. The Nizam and his nobles subscribe very largely to the meeting, and the late Sir Salar Jung was most liberal in this, as well as in all other matters where his support was needed. There are few days of the meeting but that some of the city great men attend; they seem to take the most lively interest in the proceed- ings, as do also the enormous gathering of humbler native spectators who crowd the outside of the course. Here I will end my mention of the Mowlally races, SECUNDERABAD IN 1845, THEN, AND NOW. 231 for I am no racing man, and should very soon be out of my depth were I to attempt to dip into the mysteries of betting and bookmaking, lotteries and " pari- mutuel," &c., all of which are apt to form a dangerous attraction for young subalterns, and, for the matter of that, for older people also, and to end in considerable trouble, recourse to usurious money-lenders, and general loss and difficulty to those who can ill afford to risk their money on the racecourse. In 1845, when first I saw Secunderabad, the great plain between the cantonment and the contingent station at Bolarum was void of buildings. Now it is occupied by piles of " palatial- barracks," erected at enormous cost for British troops artillery, cavalry, and infantry and all subsidiary buildings, including a church, an immensely large hospital, and a military prison, commonly called " Windsor Castle," from its castellated style of archi- tecture and high central tower. One of the infantry barracks is surrounded by a fortification, which has the inconvenience of being commanded at easy artillery range from the granite hill known as " Chota " (signify- ing small) Mowlally ; but one cannot have everything, and perhaps what Dugald Dalgetty termed a sconce might be erected, or run up in time of need, to ensure the safety of the fortification on the plain. In 1845, therefore, we knew the Trimulgherry plain only as a nice bit of galloping ground, across which we used to ride on the way to our pleasant shooting resort at Kaissera. From Secunderabad to Kaissera the 232 AN INDIAN OLIO. distance is about fourteen miles, and in a cold autumn morning the ride was very pleasant. We passed over a level country, grass land dotted with innumerable custard- apple trees, and picked the ripest of the fruit as we rode along. ' Clumps of high rocks and patches of low thorn jungle, and watercourses thickly fringed with date palms, afforded cover to numerous hares and coveys of grey partridge, and we seldom failed to make a good bag of this small game. Our tents were pitched in a noble grove of mangoes, on the margin of a small tank at the foot of the Kaissera hill, which, crowned with ancient temples and formed of a solid mass of slippery granite, rises to a height of three or four hundred feet above the plain. So steep and slippery are the sides of this great rock, that the only access to its summit is by a flight of shallow steps cut ages ago in the hard granite, and we always took off our boots and made the ascent in our stocking feet. On reaching the summit we were surprised to see one or two cultivated fields lying in a depression of the bare rock which encircled them. Farther on are the group of temples and rest-houses, roofed with flat stones stretching horizontally across the walls, for pilgrims and for visitors at the great "Jettra," an annual festival, when the shrines are crowded with Brahmins, and resound with the clangour and braying of trumpets, horns, and tom-toms, and " all kinds of music." Farther on, beyond the group of temples, is a great DEATH OF A PANTHER. 233 ravine, filled with broken-up rocks, and inaccessible except to bears and panthers, of which it always holds several fine specimens. Sometimes we took our bedding up the hill and slept, with loaded guns and rifles under our pillows, on the terrace-roof of "one of the rest-houses. Often, before sleep overcame us, we heard the gruff call of panthers, and more than once, on a moonlight night, did we see the spectral forms of the great cats flitting among the temples, and making stealthy approach to the natural water-holes which abound on the flat summit, and also on various parts of the side-slopes of the mass of granite. One of these water-holes was close under the terrace- roof on which we slept, and one moonlight night we were lying half-awake on our beds, when the clink of a loose stone roused our attention, and we crawled on hands and knees to the low parapet wall and looked over. There we saw a panther making his way very cautiously to the water-hole immediately below, not twenty yards from where my companion and myself were craning our necks over the wall, each of us with a gun ready for action. We cocked our guns noise- lessly (all sportsmen know how this is done), and having no time to arrange for first fire, we both let drive a barrel simultaneously at the dark form, and it fell over on the rocks, gasping and fighting the air with outstretched paws. No other shots were required; life quickly fled ; both bullets had taken effect, one in its 234 AN INDIAN OLIO. neck and the other in its shoulder. With help of the Paddy-bird, who came scrambling up from his lair below in great excitement, we carried the heavy beast to the vestibule of an adjacent temple, where we left it for the night. It was a handsome male, richly spotted, with a most lovely glossy coat. In the month of July, when the rains had come on, and had changed the brown and yellow hues of the old grass to the vivid green of the fresh-sprung herbage, and when every jungle tree had donned its livery of soft young leaves, we found Kaissera a delight- ful resort, and had frequent picnics under the shade of the far-spreading mango groves between the village and the hill. Large game was not then our object ; we roamed over the wide plain, beating every bush and every grass-lined watercourse, starting grey partridge and hares in great abundance. Every now and then we saw the round footmarks of panthers in sandy places, but these prowling pussies were, as we well knew, fast asleep in dens among the piled up rocks in the great Kaissera ravine, or other equally secure retreat. On bare and stony patches, amid the grass lands, and also on the fields which here and there had been turned up by the rude wooden ploughshares of the ryots, were large flocks of " sand-grouse," or " rock-pigeon," or " Na- maqua partridge," for their names are as varied as their colours. They all agree in a ground tint of buff, darker or lighter, over bodies and wings with handsome mark- SMALL GAME IN THE EAINS. 235- ings of brown and black, never absolutely alike in any two individuals. As they are much the colour of the stony ground on which they lie, it is not easy to see them until they rise, which they do with a peculiar chattering cry, usually in small parties, but sometimes in large flocks. They afford good sport, but are hard to bring down, and No. 4 or 5 shot is the proper size to use for them. The rain-quail, a beautiful little bird, alights upon the Deccan plains at this season (July) in hundreds of thousands, and the whole country is alive with its chirp- ing call. I have often made a bag of more than twenty couple of these pretty quail in a morning's shooting at Secunderabad. When the rains first come on a vast number of crimson velvet-coated insects appear, and are met with creeping on every path and open piece of ground in the jungles. They are in form and size very like large cattle ticks, but are not, like them, bloodthirsty, being quite harmless little creatures. Many other curious insects swarm out at such times locusts, brown and green, and lovely butterflies, and at dusk great sphinx and tussa moths with velvety wings, and rhinoceros beetles whirling about like hum- ming-tops. All nature, at all events all insect nature, comes to life and revels in the warm rainy atmosphere. Eeptiles now also come abroad; among others the geometrical tortoise, usually about the size of a saucer, crawls slowly along the jungle roads, and we often 236 AN INDIAN OLIO. pocketed one of these uninteresting creatures and let it loose in our gardens in the cantonment. More than once I have, when on an elephant, come across a tortoise lying on the path, and it was ludicrous to see the dismay of the great nervous creature when she saw the little reptile in front of her. She first of all swung round with the view of getting altogether out of the way of such a terrible object ; then, when properly admonished by the mahout and his goad, she banged her trunk on the ground, and blew and rumbled for intimidation of the redoubtable chelonian, and nothing could induce her to go on until the object of her dread was removed from her path. No animal is so cowardly as an elephant is in some ways. I have set a small dog at one, and the con- sternation of the great pachyderm was pitiful to behold. Also, most raw elephants are exceedingly afraid of horses, and do not like to be followed by them along a road. This fear, however, they soon lose on better acquaint- ance with the equine race ; and when in a tigerish place I always picketed my horse close to the elephant, and when I had two elephants in camp the horse was- picketed between them for greater safety. One night while we were at Kaissera a strange thing happened. An old woman was sleeping in a hut on the outskirts of the village, with either the door open or with no door at all to her poor dwelling, when she was sud- denly seized by one heel and dragged to the door ! The old woman made such an outcry and resisted so violently, WILD BEASTS IN VILLAGES. 237 that the animal, whatever it was, relinquished its grasp ; and when the neighbours, roused by the disturbance, came to her aid, they found her not very much the worse for the adventure, but with marks of the animal's big teeth on each side of her foot. The old woman declared that it was a tiger, but this we did not believe. A tiger would not have made two bites of even such a withered cherry; it was most likely a hysena or wolf, or it may possibly have been a leopard not over particular in his diet. Beasts of prey have not infrequently been found in villages. They probably have been overtaken by the dawn of day when on the prowl from some distant jungle, and finding themselves in a strange place, have taken the first refuge or place of concealment, rather than risk a long walk in broad daylight to their proper haunts. Sterndale, in his most interesting volume " Seonee," gives a remarkable instance of a tiger which thus established itself in a village, where, after a long chase from house to house, it was shot by a party of sportsmen who were summoned to the scene by the astonished villagers. This exciting incident was also related to me by one of those who were present on the occasion. It is one of many instances where tigers and leopards have made themselves very unwished-for guests in vil- lages, and even in railway stations. A native station- master once telegraphed from a small roadside station " Tiger trespassing in station, contrary to byelaws ; please give order." In the year 1887 the Deccan Times 238 AN INDIAN OLIO. reports similar misbehaviour on part of three bears which suddenly appeared on the company's premises at Kazee- pett station, causing immense excitement, in the midst of which the unwelcome visitors beat a hasty retreat before the railway officials could muster their guns (and their courage ?) for an attack upon the poor bruins. The inhabitants of a jungle village told me that, a few days before I arrived there, two bears had been found in an empty hut in the middle of the village, and made good their retreat after upsetting an old woman who had gone out early in the morning to gather sticks/ and as she passed the doorway of the hut was charged by the animals, which were probably under the impression that the old creature had evil designs against them. Few wild animals will attack people without provoca- tion unless " cornered," in which case they usually take the initiative, and charge any one who happens to come across the place of their concealment. It is very dif- ferent with a wounded animal, and nothing is more dan- gerous I may say foolhardy than to follow up on foot a wounded tiger or panther. Lieutenant Doig, an officer of the Hyderabad contingent, lost his life in this manner. He had lost his left arm by the bursting of a gun, but though thus maimed, he, being a very keen and courage- ous sportsman, pursued wild animals with as much zeal as ever. Having wounded a tiger, he rashly followed it up on foot, tracking its blood from bush to bush. The tiger had lain up in a clump of bushes, and burst out upon him when he approached the lair. The unfortunate DEATHS BY WOUNDED TIGERS. 239 sportsman, having but one arm, could not fire so quickly as was needful, was seized and terribly bitten, .and died of blood poisoning two or three days afterwards. He had native shikarries and gun-carriers with him ; they took him into the cantonment, but only to die. Many" similar fatal accidents have happened to sports- men who have indulged in the insane practice of following tigers on foot. I will mention a few recent cases only. In 1886 Mr. Eobinson, Madras Civil Service, was killed by a tiger in the Kistnah District. He had beaters with him, and they came upon a tiger, which, on being dis- turbed, severely mauled one of the men, and was itself wounded by a shikarry. Mr. Eobinson went after the beast, which was lying sore and savage in thick brushwood. The shikarries saw the tiger, and begged Mr. Kobinson not to go on, but he did. The tiger rose out of the bushes not ten paces from him, and he fired, but without effect. The fierce beast sprang upon him and bore him to the ground, crushing his head between its fearful jaws, and killing him on the spot. It was then shot by a native official. In 1887 Mr. Hughes, a Bombay civilian, accompanied by an officer of the Forest Department, went after a tiger in the Bhosawul District. The forest officer wounded the beast, but it got away. Next day the pursuit was resumed. Mr. Hughes climbed a tree, but when the beaters came upon the tiger he got down and went up to it on foot. Before he could fire the tiger seized him and bit him frightfully, inflicting thirty-three deep wounds. It was 240 AN INDIAN OLIO. then killed by the forest officer. Mr. Hughes died the next day. In the same year Major Lyons, a retired officer, tracked a tiger into a cave, and walked up to the en- trance and fired two shots at it, hitting it each time. The tiger charged out, seized him by the leg, and carried him about two .hundred yards, when, being knocked about the head by him with the rifle, it opened its jaws, but again seized him, on which he thrust the barrel of the rifle down its throat, and it made off with the weapon. Major Lyons died after lingering several weeks. The tiger was found dead the day after the encounter. Another death, also in 1887, is that of Mr. Gibson, Forest Department. He also followed up on foot a wounded tigress, which, moreover, had already killed a native boy. The animal charged him from a distance of forty yards. He fired and wounded her twice, the second time mortally, as she came on ; but she rolled over on him, and in her dying agony bit him severely in leg and arm. Mr. Gibson died, after lingering a few days, in the General Hospital at Bombay. I could cite a hundred cases where sportsmen and their attendants, beaters, &c., have met with fatal acci- dents owing to rash following up wounded beasts of prey ; but the above, all within twelve months, are sufficient to show the folly of pursuing tigers in such fashion. It is well known to sportsmen that tigers and panthers when mortally wounded often preserve their power, and will destroy their assailants to the very last STRONG VITALITY OF SAVAGE ANIMALS. 241 moment of life. The late Colonel Henry Shakspeare, in his book upon Indian sport, gives an instance of a tiger, when shot through the heart, preserving his power of body and continuing his charge for seventy yards, at the end of which he tumbled over suddenly "like a rabbit." No one who has seen the charge of a tiger can doubt that its fury and swiftness give it an advantage over a man which must be certainly fatal if not arrested by the instant death of the animal, or by its spontaneous quitting its attack, which fortunately often happens ; but it is my opinion that no man whose life is valuable to himself or to others has any right to follow up such creatures on foot. The proper way to shoot a tiger or panther is from the back of an elephant, or from a tree or the vantage of a high rock. It is a hard thing to leave a wounded animal to die or to recover, as may be its fate ; and this is the feeling which has led to the death of many a sportsman, but it should not be indulged. The way to avoid such mishaps is never .to fire from a tree or rock except with a certainty of inflicting a mortal wound. From the back of an elephant it is different. The wounded tiger can be followed up with safety, and even a slight wound generally ensures its being ultimately brought to bag. I will now end this long dissertation upon shikar, and proceed to give some account of " the city." The city of Hyderabad is perhaps the most thoroughly Oriental in all India. Not that it is remarkable for architectural Q 242 AN INDIAN OLIO. beauty ; indeed, with exception of the " Char Minar," half-gateway and half-mosque, and the " Jumma Musjid," or principal Mahomedan place of worship, the buildings are mean in outward appearance, though many of the palaces, notably those of Sir Salar Jung and of the Nizam himself, are extensive and splendid in their interior accom- modation and arrangements. But it is in the varied crowd which throngs the streets and in the strange sights which meet the eye at every turn that Hyderabad is so interesting. In former times, thirty or forty years ago, visits of British officers were discouraged by the Presidency authorities, owing to the fanatical and insolent feeling of the inhabitants, or rather of a portion of them, which vented itself very often in spitting at and cursing " the Feringhee." Even now, though, thanks to the late Sir Salar Jung's good government, the mob of Hyderabad and the mer- cenary soldiers are far more subdued, it may even be said more civilised, than they formerly were, no officer can enter without permission of the Eesident, who com- municates with the Nizam's Minister, and takes care that an escort shall be provided. The only proper way of visiting the city is on an elephant. In former years it would have been positively dangerous, if not impossible, to have gone in either on horseback or on foot, for a collision with some "budmash," i.e., city rough, or some fanatic would have been more than likely; and as a Briton's temper does not stand much insult, especially from men of another race and colour, murder would THE DANGEROUS CLASSES AT HYDERABAD. 243 very likely have been the result. And at this time, when, as I have said, the people are better behaved, it is very undesirable that a "Feringhee" should traverse the city except on elephant-back, for a jostle, accidental or designed, or an unsavoury epithet or gesture, might bring on a disturbance, and where every native in the streets carries arms the consequences could hardly fail to be unfortunate. It used to be an everyday occurrence that fierce fights took place in Hyderabad, often at small provo- cation, and the shedding of blood in such contests was lightly regarded; but the police arrangements are now in better order, and though fights are still not un- common, people who are concerned in them are now sometimes punished, and the result is, that less license in this particular way prevails. The throng of natives of all nationalities and of all castes and callings in the main streets is enormous. Arabs and Eohillas, Afghans, Kajpoots, most of them in the service of city nobles, all armed to the teeth, saunter along, swaggering with shields on back and swords ready to their hands, and girdles crammed with daggers and pistols, and turn up their ruffianly faces with most un- amiable expression at the occupant of the howdah, as the huge elephant picks its careful way through the multitude. The " chabootras" or open verandahs of the wayside shops and houses are lined with similar troops of mercenaries, and also with more peaceable and better-dressed people, who sit there smoking their 244 AN INDIAN OLIO. " hubble-bubbles" and talking in those loud harsh tones inseparable from Oriental converse. Among them are many fakeers and beggars mostly in rags, some with high conical caps, others with no head-gear but their unkempt greasy locks hanging down to their shoulders. With faces and bodies whitened with ashes and eyes bloodshot by indulgence in opium and "ganja" (Indian hemp), they stare wildly at the " Feringhees," and demand rather than solicit alms as the strangers pass by; and if gratified by a shower of coppers, roar out blessings, which, coupled with their evil expression of countenance, sound more like curses, upon the infidels who have complied with their call for charity. In the main street leading from the city gate to the Char Minar are usually two or three tame tigers, kept by a peculiar sect of fakeers, and which lie on the floors of the street-side verandahs. These tigers are perfectly quiet, unnoticed by the passing crowd, and themselves taking no notice. They do not regard the roar and rush of traffic in the street ; quiet and solitude- loving denizens of the jungles as they are in their nature, they have become acclimatised, so to speak, to the turmoil of the great city, and lie at lazy length, secured with ropes to leathern collars round their massive necks, and attended by their masters squatting at their sides. Besides innumerable foot-passengers, some of them gaily and fashionably (according to native ideas) dressed in bright colours, some shabby and dirty in white linen, ELEPHANTS IN CITY. 245 others scarcely dressed at all, caparisoned elephants, which may be almost considered the cabs of Hyderabad, are continually passing to and fro. The crowd avoid them easily enough, for the toll of the bell which each elephant carries at its throat is peculiar, and gives due notice of the otherwise noiseless approach of the great wise animal, which picks its steps most carefully, and is never, unless frightened or enraged, the cause of accident. Now and then a " must " elephant, i.e., one labouring under a temporary madness, or a male elephant of known bad temper, has, when brought into the streets (where it has no business to be brought), turned savage, and has trampled upon some unfortunate person ; but this ought never to happen. Mahouts know perfectly well the indications that an elephant is about to become " must," and it need not be said that an elephant of notorious bad temper should never be brought into the streets at all. Some male elephants are always unsafe. I have had such more than once in my camp, i.e., those lent to me by the Minister, and have been warned by the mahouts to keep out of their reach, except when they are sitting down to be mounted, when they are safe enough. Be- sides, in approaching an elephant with the intention of climbing into the howdah, there is no need of standing in front of him at all. CHAPTEE XII. The streets of Hyderabad Nobles and their equipages Marriage processions Nautch girls Funerals Meer Allum tank Minis- ter's picnic Golconda Sport in vicinity of Hyderabad Puttencherroo Kundy Sedasheepett Arnagoontah Mug- grumpilly Changalare The Boogga valley Warungul and the Percall Koolpac Brahmins Snipe and duck at Kooramul Godavery jungles Yellmullah jungle The Hoossain Saugor Hyderabad sanitation Secunderabad bazaars Mahorum and Dusserah Taboots The 4th Native Infantry Taboot at ex- hibitions at Madras and Meean-Mcer. I WILL in this chapter continue the street sights of Hyderabad, which, as I have already noted, presents the liveliest picture of Orientalism of all the towns and cities of India. Every now and then a " sowaree " or equipage passes along the street. If it be that of a very great man, it consists of several fine elephants handsomely adorned with scarlet housings and bearing gilded howdahs, on which the nobleman and his familiars sit. They are surrounded by a band of Arab or Bohilla soldiers carrying swords and matchlocks, and are preceded and followed by troops of heavily armed horsemen, who keep up with the fast walk of the elephants at the peculiar jigging pace, half-walk, half-amble, so much affected by Eastern THE STREETS OF HYDERABAD. 247 cavaliers. Very queer to Western notions is "the seat of an Indian horseman. His legs stick out like a pair of open compasses, his feet and toes point upwards, and he certainly rides by balance, for he keeps no grip of his wadded cloth saddle, and holds his hands much higher than his elbows. Anon comes a marriage procession, or rather, among Mahomedans, a procession in which are carried the presents which are given on such occasions, the bride's paraphernalia, &c., on brass dishes and trays covered with embroidered kerchiefs. The bearers are a long string of coolies, both men and women, with their loins tightly girded for fast walking, and are preceded by a party of musicians, making a most horrible discord (but to native ears sweet music) with horns and all kinds of tooting instruments, tom-toms, &c. Behind this straggling procession (for Indian file is the rule on such occasions) a plump of nautch girls are hurrying along, having been engaged for the delectation of the guests at the marriage. Their full plum- coloured or scarlet petticoats, heavily fringed with gold and silver embroidery, and their gay satin " cholees " (tight bodices), and a whole jeweller's shop of armlets and necklets which they wear, also the great gold plate which they wear upon the back of their well-oiled and well-poma- tumed heads, are all hidden in the jealous folds of the muslin garment (answering to our ladies' dust-cloaks) which wraps them round, and permits nothing of their charms to be seen but their bold black eyes and noses 248 AN INDIAN OLIO. ornamented with slender gold hoops strung with jewels, and their " twinkling feet " and ankles encrusted with strangely shaped silver rings and chains, and toe-rings also, to complete their equipment. Next, perchance, there comes a Moslem funeral. Hurrying along for Eastern and Western ideas of solemnity on such occasions are wide apart a group of white-robed 'men head the procession, loudly chanting the prescribed verses of the Kor&n in front of the bier on which the body, swathed in linen shroud, is borne along. A few hired mourning women follow, raising shrill cries of simulated grief, and the cortege is closed by a straggling party of friends and relatives, accompanying the " believer " to his shallow grave ; and so passes away for ever an unit of the swarming population of the great city. Many other noteworthy sights there are in the crowded streets of this Eastern metropolis, but we must pass on, and traversing the whole breadth (or length) of the city, visit the magnificent Meer Allum lake, a fine sheet of water retained by a masonry dam of many arches lying, as it were, on their sides, with the convexities of the arches next to the water. It is said that this great dam was built by a French engineer. On the water are many pleasure-boats, and even a small steamer, brought for the Minister from England, and put to- gether at this place. The shores of the lake are most picturesque ; strangely shaped rocks, both singly and clustered together in the form of craggy hills, rise up MINISTER'S PICNIC. 249 amid noble groves of tamarind and mango trees, carpeted with the smoothest green turf. Under these shady groves the late Sir Salar Jung gave his pleasant picnic parties, and the guests were conveyed to the well- arranged camp on the little steamer and in sailing- boats also. I was present at one of these parties in 1867, when Sir Eichard Temple was the Minister's guest; and a great number of ladies and officers were invited to meet him. We rode on elephants through the city, as usual, and were carried on the steamer to the farther shore, where the marquees were pitched and an excellent dtjeuner laid out ; and the time passed very pleasantly with band music, exhibitions of jugglers, &c., and the in- evitable nautch, until the afternoon, when we returned to Secunderabad. Sir Salar Jung was, as ever, a delightful host, careful to neglect no one, and making himself agree- able, as he so well knew how, to his numerous guests. Another favourite place for picnics is Golconda. The stony tract upon which stand the tombs of the ancient kings of the Deccan is domineered by the jealously guarded fortress, built upon a granite ridge rising abruptly from the plain. This fortress, seldom if ever entered by British officers, is of great extent and surrounded by long lines of wall, and contains within their circuit barracks and magazines, strong treasure-houses, and like- wise accommodation for State prisoners. These tombs are so well known by descriptions by other writers that I need no more than advert generally 250 AN INDIAN OLIO. to the beauty of their architecture, their vast and shapely domes, and the solidity of their construction. Each one of them is raised upon a broad granite-built terrace, in a vault beneath which lie the bones of the great one for whose last resting-place the grand mausoleum was constructed. Within the arcaded walls of this terrace, in one of the largest tombs, our tables were spread, and fast and furious was the fun of the living in this antechamber of death. The clatter of knives and forks, the popping of champagne corks, the loud laugh and jest, and the talking and flirting which went on would have been strange discord in the ears of the occupant of the grave below, could his angry spirit have visited the place of his burial; and I have often wondered, and still do so, that these jovial parties in the tombs of departed princes of Islam are not objected to by their guardians ; but no ! The fakeers and other men of religion who keep watch over the tombs, and who tend and water the beautiful fruit gardens at the burial-places of the kings, showed no discomposure, but bowed and smiled, and maintained a sharp look-out for the rupees which were sure to be given with a free hand when the party broke up from their day's pleasure. The country round Secunderabad and Hyderabad is exceedingly good in the way of sport, both in large and small game, and I will briefly notice some of the best places for a few days' leave, and also for a few weeks' leave, from Secunderabad. PUTTENCHERROO AND KUNDY. 251 The road to Sholapore is a capital direction to take. For a few days' sport, excellent snipe and duck shooting may be had at Allipoor, four miles from Secunderabad, likewise at Meanpoor and Gungaram, four miles farther on, where are extensive tanks and swamps full of snipe. Here I once put out two wolves, as mentioned in a previous chapter, which, having only snipe-shot in my gun, I did not molest. Ten miles farther on is Puttencherroo, a large place, which, in former years, was full of rowdy Arabs and Rohillas. I once went there for snipe-shooting, which is very good at some swampy tanks near the rest-house, and I found the old Sepoy in charge of the house in a state of great excitement, for there was a free fight going on in the town, between two rival factions of ruffians. The old man wrung his hands, and said, " Bundook array ! Golee chulaie arra-a-y!!" "Oh! the guns ! Oh ! the whizzing of bullets ! " However, I did not hear of any particular damage being done, though there was an amazing popping of blunderbusses and pistols. The next march onward is Kundy, where is the very best of snipe-shooting. The people of this place are very uncivil and troublesome ; and on one occasion, when a friend of mine was staying in the public bunga- low, they came down upon him and attacked him and his people, among whom were a native corporal and two men of my regiment (4th Pioneers), whom I had lent to him to help him in his shikar. The Naigue, 252 AN INDIAN OLIO. afterwards Subadar Syed Adam, and his two men be- haved exceedingly well, and though severely handled, drove the villagers off and saved my friend, who was also taking his own part in the row, from probably a savage beating. The villagers were heavily punished by Sir Salar Jung, and I promoted Syed Adam to the rank of Havildar. He was, and I doubt not still is, a good specimen of a Mahomedan native soldier, and well deserved the commission which he afterwards obtained. The next march towards Sholapore is Sedasheepett, a good place for snipe and also for antelope. Of late years its extensive plain has been made use of for the annual practice of the artillery, and it is probable that the antelope, not caring particularly for the thunder of the big guns, may have quitted Sedasheepett for some quieter locality. There is no further ground in the direction of Shola- pore particularly good for small game, but for one who can devote from a fortnight to a month in pursuit of large animals there is an excellent tract of jungle south of Burra Yekaillee, thirty-five miles west of Sedasheepett. From Burra Yekaillee, a pretty ride through jungle and dry cultivation leads south to Arnagoontah, six miles only, where I encamped under a spreading mango- tree on the border of a large, nearly dry nullah. This village is close to heavy jungle, especially in the direction of Pertapoor, and there are almost always tigers in the thick covers. Also panthers and leopards are numerous, CHANGALARE. 253 and bears and hog, which lie in the tangled shrubbery and ravines, and on the small hills which are found in every part of the country. The next good place is Muggrumpilly, about six miles west of Arnagoontah, a capital jungle for game of all kinds. Tigers are often met with. One heavily tim- bered ravine is known as " Poolleelodee " (the tiger's gorge). Also there are bears and hog, neilghye, spotted deer, and ravine deer. Almost every large corrie holds a panther or a leopard, but these cats are not easily beaten out of their strongholds. About nine miles farther west is Changalare, a beau- tiful spot, where a large grove of mango-trees, planted round a pagoda of some renown, affords a charming camping ground. Changalare is never without a tiger. I have, on several occasions, had good sport here, and have killed several tigers and panthers, especially in the Boogga valley, a lovely place fringed with evergreen jungle, and with a perennial stream of clear sparkling water running the whole length of the valley. In the dry season, when there is no other water within some miles of Changalare, this beautiful valley " stinks of tigers," to use a common sporting phrase, nor are panthers and bears wanting. In fact, it is one of the most delight- ful places I have ever seen for a week's sport in the hot weather. About half-way up the Boogga is a deep ravine, com- mencing with an abrupt fall from the tableland above, where the ground has been cut away by the heavy rush 254 AN INDIAN OLIO. of the monsoon water down a small nullah which empties itself over a shelf of honeycombed laterite into the gorge some twenty feet below. From the edge of this cliff a friend of mine, cautiously approaching and looking over, saw a tiger lying asleep on the margin of a small deep pool of water formed by the cascade which falls over the cliff in rainy weather. Except at noon this pool is always in the shade, and forms a pleasant retreat for puss at her siesta. This particular tiger was immediately shot. When I roamed the Changalare jungle I always kicked off my shoes and crept to the edge of the cliff and peered down in hopes of similar luck, but I never had the good fortune to come across a " sleeping beauty " there, though I have shot several in the Boogga valley itself. The Changalare jungle is full of hog and spotted deer, but being bent upon tigers, I seldom pulled trigger at other game, or at least upon any less attractive than a panther or leopard, of which I got several here, and at a deserted village, Akumpett, three or four miles from Changalare. There is no hog-hunting in the vicinity of Secundera- bad except at Beder, which lies north of Changalare, and not more than perhaps twenty miles from it. At Beder there is rideable ground, though neither extensive nor easy; but hog have been speared there, and may be so^again. An attempt was made in 1846 or 1847 to r ^ e some hog in the jungle near Secunderabad, but was an utter failure. Hog were found, but the jungle was impracti- WARUNGAL AND THE PERCALL. 255 cable, and the horses came back lame with the terrible thorns with which their legs were filled. For two months' leave one of the best directions is north-east to Warungul and the Percall lake. The road lies through Beebeenuggur, twenty miles from Secun- derabad, where is a large tank and good snipe and duck shooting ; then ten miles farther on to Bonegheer, a great hill fort surrounded by dense jungle, the haunt of savage beasts. Here are also sambur and spotted deer, but the ground is difficult, and it is better to push on sixty miles to Warungul, and thence to the Percall lake. Annamcondah (formerly a station of the contingent) and its suburb Mutwarra, famous for carpet-weaving, are about four miles from the old city Warungul, of which nothing now remains but some massive gateways and crumbling fragments of walls. What was the ancient capital of Telingana before the Mahomedan conquest of the country is now nothing but an expanse of ploughed fields and scrub jungle. There is good shooting all round Warungul, especially at the " Iron hills," where spotted deer and neilghye range over the plain and quietly repose under trees in the middle of the cultiva- tion. Beasts of prey are likewise very numerous, and the Warungul district is well worth the sojourn of a week or two. From Annamcondah to the Percall lake is thirty-six miles ; there is heavy jungle nearly the whole way, with occasional rice-fields under large tanks, almost lakes, 256 AN INDIAN OLIO. crowded with every kind of water-fowl, from the great blue-winged goose, better to look at than to eat, to the little brown teal, unrivalled both in plumage and in flavour. About four miles short of the Percall is a large expanse of rice-fields irrigated from the lake, the supply from which flows through a sluice into a wide channel known as the Cummumait nullah, the surplus water of which, combined with many other streams, flows eastward into the Kistnah river. In the dense jungles which surround the Percall lake are tigers, bears, spotted deer, in short, all kinds of wild animals which are found in Southern India ; but better sport is to be had in the more cultivated tracts which are near the few villages of this wild district. Heavy jungles do not hold so much game as more open spaces, where forest and cultivation are intermixed ; also, the Percall lake and its thick forests, which extend, in miles and miles of wilderness, as far as the Godavery, is to be approached with caution. A deadly miasma pervades that wild country for the greater part of the year; indeed, the only safe season is the dry hot weather from February to May or the beginning of June, when the jungles are comparatively healthy and free from malarious influences. For the return journey to Securiderabad another route may be taken with advantage, by Terragopla, Nagpore (a small jungle village), and Koolpac, and so by Eama- ram and Kaissera to the cantonments. All along this route good shooting may be had. At Terragopla there SNIPE AND DUCK AT KOOKAMUL. 257 is a great hill, almost mountain, covered with high grass and jungle, and full of dens, always the haunt of tigers and panthers. Koolpac is remarkable for a colony of Brahmins of exceedingly fair complexions and fine features ; whence they originally came no one seemed to know, but they, especially the girls and women, are far fairer and handsomer than any other inhabitants of that part of India. In the snipe season, i.e. 9 from middle of October to the middle of March, a very pleasant week may be passed on the left bank of the river Moosy, commencing at the village of Kooramul or Kooralum, for it is spoken of in both ways. Kooramul is about ten miles north- east of Secunderabad, and is about a mile from the river, and is a very good place for duck and snipe, also for rock pigeon, hares, quail, and partridge. The Moosy is full of fish, carp, shakeras, eels, coturnas, &c. There is a fine grove of mango-trees under which to encamp. At Kooramul are extensive rice-fields, also irrigated fallows and grass land, all well tenanted by snipe, as are also the banks of the Moosy in the latter part of the season. A fine tank only a few minutes' walk from camp is well frequented by duck and teal. In March and April, when the snipe are preparing for the move to colder climes, they are found in dry jungle, and in places where, at other times, no one ever thinks of looking for them. In these . months I shot a great many at Kooramul, in the same dry jungle which 'I used to beat up for hares and partridge; also ll 258 AN INDIAN OLIO. in the dry grassy bed of the river, and among the bushes and clumps of date-trees on its banks. At such times and in such places the snipe fly heavily and dodge from bush to bush ; also, they do not " scape " as they do in the earlier part of the season when flushed in swamps and rice-fields. Another and much appreciated pecu- liarity in these late snipe is, that they are remarkably fat and well-tasted. Their heaviness of flight is, no doubt, owing to the good case in which they are found to be at the end of their long grubbing in the rich marsh land. A month's leave may be very pleasantly and profitably spent in the jungles on the banks of the Godavery west of Nirmul. The best course is to travel as fast as possible to Dichoopillay, eighty-five miles north of Secun- derabad, and there to branch off to the left, to Mucinuda- pillay, a village in the heart of a hilly jungle, in which are all kinds of game, from the tiger to the mouse-deer. On one occasion, when encamped here, two bears came in broad daylight and entered the grove where my tent was pitched. Unfortunately I was not there to receive my visitors, for I had gone to look for a panther which had carried off a calf the day before, and which I saw on a small hill in the middle of the jungle, but did not get. Also, one afternoon I met a bear in a jungle path, and shot him after a great deal of expostulation on his part. Another officer encamped at this place had a dog carried off from his tent by a bold panther, which walked in for it in the middle of the night. GODAVERY JUNGLES. 259 Twelve miles farther on is lyalapoorum, not only good for large game, including tigers, but also for duck and snipe on some tanks two miles from the grove of mango- trees under which we encamped. Fourteen miles farther north we came to Loshur, across the Godavery, which is a grand place for bears, which swarm not only in caves on the many hills, but also in the open thorny jungle on the plain. Some years ago there were many tigers in this jungle, but the villagers have learned the rascally trick of poisoning " kills " with strychnine, and have thereby destroyed nearly all the tigers in this part of the Deccan. Shameful to say, this abominable practice was introduced in the south of India by a man who called himself a sportsman ! In the vicinity of Loshur are Jowlah, Peermoor, Kowtlah all good places, and full of neilghye, spotted deer, &c. ; but, alas ! tigers are now wanting (or were some years ago), for the reason given above, and I fear that matters are not at all likely to have improved as time has gone on. Turning east from Kowtlah, five miles through thick jungle brought us to Yelmullah, where I found many bears and panthers, on little rocky hills in the midst of tree jungle. I got several bears and one panther, and some neilghye and spotted deer. Twenty miles farther east, and crossing to the right bank of the Godavery, is the high hill of Yerragoontlah, full of caves, and always tenanted by tigers ; but, except by great good luck, they cannot be brought to bag, for if they kill anything in the plain, they invariably at day- 260 AN INDIAN OLIO. break go up the hill, which serves them as an impregnable fastness. From Yerragoontlah the return route to Secunderabad lies due south. The country is very hilly and jungly, pleasantly diversified with narrow valleys, plentifully irrigated from mountain streams, and bearing luxuriant crops of rice and sugar-cane, also of jowarree (sorghum) and many kinds of pulse and vetches. Among these beautiful valleys, which are bordered by craggy hills and interspersed with wide tracts of forest, are innumerable haunts of wild beasts, both of prey and also of harmless and peaceful natures. As my object in writing of some of the sporting localities of the Deccan is only to afford a guide to others who may wish to follow my routes, I will not make any extracts from my journals, but merely give names of places which are worth a visit. Busseerdbad, for bears, twelve miles south of Yerragoontlah ; Enajeepctt, twenty miles farther south, where are tigers and panthers on very impracticable hills ; Annaram, fifteen miles ; Sircilla, a sure find for tigers in the wide bed of a river filled with shrubbery, but requiring a line of several elephants to beat it properly ; Yenkatapoor, for panthers and bears ; Yamala, a sure find, again, for tigers, but a difficult jungle, where the animals lie in caves and dens on hills which are one mass of rocks and forest. For snipe-shooting there is no very good ground in the immediate vicinity of Secunderabad, except, as I have said, on the Sholapore road. A few can be shot on THE HOOSSAIN SAUGOR. 261 the left bank of the Moosy river, between Chudderghaut and Oopul, but they are not in plenty, and they come in very late November at the earliest. A few snipe may also be had on the swampy margin of the Hoossain Saugor, the great artificial lake on the embankment of which runs the highroad between Secunderabad and " the city." This embankment is solidly faced with stone, and is furnished at its north end with a wide " chuddar " or stone apron, for escape of the overflow when the lake brims over. The embankment is a very fine work, pierced with sluices, which afford water for irrigation of the extensive rice-fields and gardens forty feet or more below the roadway, which is wide enough and to spare for carriages to pass each other freely, and is con- stantly thronged by a streaming crowd of natives on foot or on horseback, and by every description of vehicle, except " country carts," which, drawn by toiling bullocks, are, as are also elephants, restricted to the use of a lower and very rough road at the foot of the embankment on the margin of the rice-fields. The population of Hyderabad is about two hundred thousand, chiefly Mahomedans; that of Secunderabad, including the troops and their followers, near fifty thousand people of all tribes and castes. The sanitary condition of the cantonment is fair, but that of "the city" is foul almost beyond description. It is possible that some improvement may now have been effected; but from 1845, when I first saw Hyderabad, to 1882, 262 AN INDIAN OLIO. when I saw it last, it was disgracefully neglected. Where the scourings and filth of this capital ultimately lodge it is impossible to say. The whole city must be one vast cesspool, and the effect of this neglect of ordinary clean- liness is that cholera is never absent. This is a great misfortune to the British cantonment hard by, which, though maintained, as I have said, in fair cleanliness, is ever and anon visited by disease, which is undoubtedly imported from its unclean neighbour. The Secunderabad cantonments and bazaars possess a very varied population. Parsees, who are mostly shop- keepers ; Eurasians, who, as usual with their class, live more by the pen than by handicrafts of more laborious nature ; Marwaries, employed in banking and money- lending ; shopkeepers, both Mahomedan and Hindoo ; hosts of coolies or day-labourers, a hard-working class, ready for any employment for their hand-to-mouth sub- sistence ; in fine, every description and tribe of natives who are busied in ministering to the wants of a great town and military station. All these turn out in their thousands upon every occasion of native feasts, processions, and, as has been already mentioned, military parades ; everything, in short, comprised in the word "tomasha," signifying in Arabic, according to Colonel Yule's " Hobson Jobsoii," a spectacle, going about to anything entertaining. A great procession, such as at the Mahomedan Mahorum or the Hindoo Dusserah, is the occasion on which the whole population turn out and crowd the roads with TABOOTS. 263 dense masses of joyous sight-seers. The native soldiery muster very strong at the "functions," escorting their taboots (models of Mahomedan mausolea), at the Ma- horum, or at the Dusserah gaudy models of the temple of the goddess Doorgah, accompanied by bands of mummers, mock fakeers, pylwans (wrestlers), and tra- vesties of tigers, rajahs, &c., and also with deafening roar of tom-toms, filling the whole town with noise and confusion. The taboots or tazeeahs (either name is correct) are flimsy, but when well made, pretty and tasteful ; they are very much in the shape of the Golconda tombs, and are constructed of bamboos firmly lashed together, in two or three stories, with bulbous domes, very like inverted onions, at the corners of each story, and at top of all a very large dome surmounted by the Moslem crescent. This bamboo frame is covered with white paper most beautifully pierced in patterns, like the finest lace, and is, besides, lavishly ornamented with thin sheets of talc, and with foils of various colours, among which the sacred green predominates. The effect, especially by torchlight, is very chaste and pretty. The 4th Eegiment Native Infantry, of which I had command in 1869, was specially noted for the beauty and elaboration of its taboots, and there being in that year a " Soldiers' Exhibition " at Madras, I induced the Mahomedans of the regiment to prepare a small one for exhibition, which they did, and it was sent to Madras, packed in several pieces in boxes, under charge of four of 264 AN INDIAN OLIO. the best workmen in that particular way of the regiment. The result at Madras is shown in the subjoined extract from a Madras newspaper : " MADRAS, November 30, 1869. "In the centre of the gallery, above the dais, was a wonderful, beautiful, and characteristic specimen of native workmanship. It is a 'taboot' worked in paper, silver, and talc by the men of the 4th Eegiment. It is about seven feet in height, and four in diameter at the bottom. It is a perfect marvel of delicate workmanship, and is also a marvel of land-carriage, for it was brought all the way from Hyderabad. " CLASS XV. " Miscellaneous articles : first prize, the taboot of the 4th Eegiment Native Infantry, forty rupees." So highly was this taboot or tazeeah thought of at Madras, that there being a similar exhibition the next year at Meean Meer, in the Punjaub, at which H.E.H. the Duke of Edinburgh would be present, I was directed to have it repacked and sent with its custodians by sea to Calcutta, and thence by rail to Meean Meer, which was done, and it was exhibited with great success, carrying off a prize of 100 rupees. The havildar in charge of the party was greatly delighted with the praise which was bestowed upon the work. He said, "The Shahzada Queen's son) examined it for a long time, and hot only TABOOT EXHIBITED BY 4TH NATIVE INFANTRY. 265 so, but came back again after he had made the round of the exhibition and examined it again." After exhibition the taboot was bestowed upon a fra- ternity of fakeers at Meean Meer, to be used by them, if they so pleased, at the next year's Mahorum. The two prizes were divided among the men (about a dozen) who had worked at it ; the expenses, which, though carriage had been paid by Government, were over 12, were paid regimentally. 266 CHAPTER XIII. Kamptee Description of cantonment gardens Fruit, flowers, and vegetables Melon culture Great flood in the river Rainfall Fever and cholera Advantages of conservancy at Kamptee Population Native poaching Dhoondee Potail and the hog- Sport at Kamptee Camp at Soorgaum Chandpa Boree Meejra Chankee Kopra Kotumba The Pencil jungles Chindwarra The Kolbeira river Boodwarra Snipe and duck shooting Chakee and Chakoda Munsur Chappagaree Kohie Paldee Great fish, and how to catch them The Paldee tiger Bravery of a shikarry Government elephants Ailments of elephants and remedies for them Tiger-shooting Hints on procedure in beating for tigers Decline of tiger-shooting in Nagpore Its causes Tigers should not be killed off too much Bears, wolves, and hyaenas Mad jackals The Tent Club Hog-hunting meets. ABOUT three hundred and thirty miles north of Secun- derabad, in the Nagpore province, lies Kamptee, a great military station, in which I have spent over seven years of my Indian life. Situated on an extensive plain of black cotton soil, on the right bank of the broad river Kanhan, and embowered in luxuriant trees, its white buildings peep out from what seems a forest extending four miles along the river-bank from the artillery can- tonment on the right to the cavalry cantonment on the extreme left. With wide and well-metalled roads, bordered on both KAMPTEE GARDENS. 267 sides by barracks and other public buildings, and also by officers' bungalows (a bungalow proper is a house without an upper story), it presents a regular and well-ordered appearance beyond that of most other military stations in India. Each bungalow is surrounded with a <{ compound " shaded by fine trees and shrubs. Many of these are flower- bearing, such as the tall and graceful cork-tree, the geranium-tree, and many varieties of acacia. The gardens also are very productive both in flowers and vegetables. Eoses flourish, and in the cold season many other English flowers blossom luxuriantly. In the spring of the year, so soon as the parching hot winds begin to blow, all garden produce withers away, and nought is left but sterile borders and sun-baked water-channels ; but in October, after the rains, everything grows apace ; cabbage and cauliflower, peas, celery, and beetroot, almost every English vegetable except broad beans (at which the climate draws the line), come to perfection. A garden at Kamptee is a real enjoyment. Indian vege- tables likewise grow freely, and nowhere are to be seen better knol-cole, sweet potatoes, yams, climbing beans, &c. Among tropical flowers, the long-pointed leaves of the pointsettia are most conspicuous for their bright scarlet hue. This lovely plant grows to the height of six or seven feet, and presents a glorious blaze of colour among the green shrubs in the garden borders. Nor is the hot season entirely without its flowers. It is the time when 268 AN INDIAN OLIO. the heat-loving portulacca, a veritable plant salamander, opens its petals, in all tints of purple, crimson, and yellow, to the scorching midday sun, and seems to enjoy the fierce hot winds which wither all other things exposed to their destructive influence. Water is all that is wanted to ensure good crops at Kamptee. Every garden has its well and leathern or iron bucket, drawn up by a pair of bullocks, to pour the water into narrow channels, through which it rushes and gurgles round the parterres and beds to be watered with the foot of the gardeners, who open the little banks of earth on either side of the channel as may be needed, shutting them up again when sufficient has been given, with a spadeful of mud dabbed down to stop the flow. Fruit-trees of the tropics only bear extremely well. Most delicious mangoes, both dark green and yellow, with only a light warm red on the sunny sides; great bunches of yellow plantains, in taste like ripe pears, but with a sweeter flavour ; " loose jacket " oranges of immense size, for which the Nagpore province is famous ; bear fruit (Zizyphus jujuba), not the acrid little berry which grows wild in every field and hedgerow, but a cultivated variety on a high willowy tree, sweet and pleasant in taste, but, raspberry-like, apt to hide a little maggot at its core ; to these add guavas, powerful in scent and flavour, pomegranates, good nowhere out of the " Arabian Nights," limes and citrons, and golden shaddocks as large as a child's head (say a child of a MELON CULTURE. 269 year old), and the catalogue of fruit at Kamptee is nearly complete. Stay ! I had forgotten the peach, which, well cultivated (a dead pariah dog occasionally under its roots is good for it), produces a small but well-flavoured fruit, different in shape from an English peach, being longer in proportion to its width, and having a point at one end and no down on its smooth skin. In my garden was one forlorn stranger, an apple-tree of puny growth, which produced one or two blossoms each year, but never attempted to show any fruit. It was clearly quite out of place in the Central Provinces, and one exceedingly hot season gave up the contest with the ungenial climate and died. There is a curious industry at Kamptee, viz., the culti- vation of melons, both sweet and also water melons, in the sandy bed of the Kanhan, in the beginning of the hot weather, when the river-bed is all but dry. A great portion of the bed is divided into small squares, banked up with sand on all sides, which are heavily manured with night soil. The seeds, being sown upon this admirable compost, quickly germinate, and their young roots being likewise nourished by the tepid water which, at the depth of a few inches, underlies the sand, the plantations soon become a mass of spreading verdure, and flowers and fruit succeed and ripen with amazing rapidity. In each of these gardens, not of cucumbers, but of melons, there is " a lodge " of bamboos and grass thatch, in which the owner keeps careful watch the livelong night. 2 ;o AN INDIAN OLIO. Thus the Kamptee bazaars are filled with the produce of the melon-beds, which, however, find little favour with any but the natives. At the end of the hot season the first onset of the monsoon brings down the river in flood and sweeps away all that remains of the cultiva- tion in its channel. A flood in the Kanhan is a grand sight. The banks are not less than thirty to forty feet high, and the flood runs swiftly between them in its course to the Wyne Gunga, whence the united streams, with others of less account, flow into the Godavery, and swell the volume of that noble river in its course to the Indian Ocean. Sometimes, perhaps once in thirty or forty years, the Kanhan becomes a cause of great damage and danger to Kamptee. On the 4th September 1876, after several days of tremendous rainfall, which prevailed over the whole province, the river rose to an immense height, overflowing its banks and rushing through the bazaars and the cantonment, doing terrible damage in its course. Nearly two thousand native huts were swept away, and thousands of people became homeless and destitute of all that they had possessed. Providentially the flood did not become dangerously high until daylight, and did not increase at nightfall, and but few lives were lost. In the night and during the next day (5th September) the river fell about twenty feet, and Kamptee was saved. Had the flood risen some three feet higher, the greater part of the canton- GREAT FLOOD IN RIVER. 271 ment, officers' houses included, would have been washed away. As it was, communication was completely cut off between the artillery and British infantry lines and the rest of the station, and the sick in hospital were removed with difficulty and danger on elephants to the barracks, which stood on higher ground. More than one-half of the station presented the appearance of a vast sea of turbid water, on which the debris of huts, bedsteads, boxes, and all kinds of household furniture gravitated to the main current of the river. The fine new bridge, but lately completed, at the east end of the station was in imminent danger ; the arches were filled to the keystones, and that it did stand so severe a test redounds to the credit of the engineers who built it. There was a great joke afterwards at the expense of the engineer department. Slips of board were, on the subsidence of the flood, seen to be nailed to many young trees in various parts of the cantonment, to show to all comers the height of this exceptional deluge, and to serve, it may be presumed, as a mark of it for years to come. The ingenious constructor of the water-marks seemed to have forgotten that trees, young trees especially, will grow, and that if the boards remain a few years longer where he placed them the great flood will have risen with them to a most incredible height ! The rainfall in the Central Provinces is not usually excessive, that is, in the average of years. In Nagpore 272 AN INDIAN OLIO. and Kamptee forty to forty-five inches is a fair season. On the mountains twice that amount will be registered ; but sometimes an excessive quantity will fall in the space of a few days or hours, causing destructive floods such as I have described. On the day of the flood I was at Seetabuldee, and, except on one occasion at Secunderabad, I never saw such a downpour. It was impossible to see anything trees, houses, &c. beyond the distance of a hundred yards. One straight, even sheet of water fell without intermission from midnight to noon. Near eight inches were registered for that twelve hours' rainfall. As Kamptee was completely cut off from communication with Nagpore, I saw nothing of the flood till the next day, when I rode in and beheld the cantonment and bazaars in the draggled condition already described; but the water had drained off into the river, and nothing unusual was to be seen except the ruined huts and a thin coat of slimy mud which covered all places from which the waters had retired. Also grass and weeds were hanging on the lower branches of shrubs and trees where the flood had prevailed. Kamptee, in common with the Central Provinces gene- rally, has no good reputation in point of healthiness. Fever of various types, but of one common malarial origin, sorely afflicts the population, and occasions more deaths than any other disease. Even cholera, though more terrifying in its attacks, sweeping off thousands of victims in one season, cannot compare with ever-present FEVER AND CHOLERA. 273 slowly moving fever in. destruction of life. Nothing avails to stop its ravages. However well drained and well managed in sanitary matters a town or cantonment may, be, fever will prevail. Doubtless, were cleanings and conservancy altogether wanting a greater and more fatal degree of disease would be the consequence at Kamptee ; but the malaria extends over the whole of the provinces, and pervades every town and village, clean or dirty, large or small. Cholera comes very often, and is very fatal, in the Central Provinces ; but it can be kept very much at arm's- length by due sanitary measures being constantly, not spasmodically, enforced. This seems to be established by the fact that, whereas the whole province of JSTagpore has been at times very heavily visited by cholera, especially its ill-kept and neglected rural towns and villages, the station of Kamptee, which is most carefully looked after in conservancy, and which has been for years past a model station in such matters, has never at such times suffered severely, though, of course, it has not altogether escaped. The disease, finding no fitting nidus, has been manageable, and has caused no great mortality as com- pared with its ravages in other places. The population of Kamptee is about equally composed of Mahomedans, Mahrattas, Gonds, and Southern Hindoos ; exclusive of the military and their followers, it is pro- bably not less than thirty thousand souls. Among them are a considerable number of pensioned Sepoys of the Madras army, who, finding it to be a cheap place, have s 274 AN INDIAN OLIO. settled down with their families, and many of them eke out a living by keeping a bullock-cart in which to bring grass and wood into Kamptee. Some of them pursue a calling which, to a sportsman's eye, is very objectionable. Men of the lowest caste, usually pensioned Lascars, own a gun, and make a great deal of money by loafing about the country shooting wild- fowl, and even snipe when they can get a sitting shot at them ; also stalking and shooting antelope, does, and fawns, as well as black buck, in season and out of season ; and, worst of all a crime not to be forgiven any more than the shooting a fox in England they likewise shoot hog whenever they get a chance of doing so ! Natives are very fond of pork, tame or wild ; and a hog, when smuggled into the station, often under a load of straw or wood to obviate the scandal of its appearance in public, is soon cut up in the bazaar, and sold to an eager crowd of applicants, while Moslem passers-by look askance and twirl their mustaches, with muttered curses upon the unclean meat and its devourers ! In my expeditions for sport into the Pench jungles near Kamptee I made acquaintance with Dhoondee Potail, the head of a village and a great sportsman in native fashion. He often came and called upon me in Kamptee, usually receiving a gift of powder and shot. To my horror, one morning he brought the carcass of a wild hog which he had shot the night before in his grain- fields, and which he evidently considered an appro- priate present to me. There would have been a fine SPORT AT KAMPTEE. 275 row if the " Tent Club," which is maintained for hog- hunting purposes, had got wind of my native friend's present ; so I had to get the Paddy-bird, who was in great glee at the prospect of pork chops, to hustle the Potail and his very objectionable present of game out of my premises, carefully explaining to the crestfallen sportsman that he might as well have shot a man as this animal, sacred to the spear, but rigorously tabooed to the gun. So Dhoondee had to make the best of his way back, hog and all, no doubt in great astonishment at the ill reception with which his attention had met. Kamptee is the headquarters of all kinds of delight- ful sport. Every description of game, large and small, is to be had within a reasonable distance. In the hot season, from March to June, tigers and panthers afford the best of sport ; not in such numbers as they were thirty or forty years ago, but still sufficient to reward those who, like myself, care not for sun and heat, but make every hot season an occasion for three or four weeks' leave into the district. I commonly commenced my " outing " at Soorgaum, a delightful camp fourteen miles east of Kamptee, where small corries full of thick jungle and tall grass ran down at intervals of a few hundred yards from the flat- topped hills. Yery few of these ravines were ever beaten blank ; something was sure to turn up. Panther, sambur, bairkee, hog (only to be looked at, not shot), neilghye, and hosts of gorgeous pea-fowl, running before the beaters, and rising with clashing wings only when 276 AN INDIAN OLIO. they reach the end of the cover and can hide them- selves no longer. In the plains below these hills are numerous antelope ; also painted and grey partridge and quail innumerable. The stately bustard likewise frequents these plains and the grassy stone-strewn tops of the flat hills. Very wary birds they are. Standing nearly four feet high, the white head and neck of the male bird is seen from a great distance; but as he commands an equally good view of all around, it is most difficult to approach him within even' rifle range. My long-legged shikarry, to whom I gave license to shoot all feathered game, now and then brought in a bustard in great triumph, and recounted the long and painful stalk which he had needed to circumvent the cunning prey. There is a way which I will note of getting the better of the bustard. When disturbed on ground which they specially frequent they fly away usually in one certain direction ; by observing this, and concealing oneself on their line of flight, and sending a man to rouse up the birds, a shot at them becomes almost a certainty, so long as care be taken that they do not see their enemy take possession of his ambush. Four miles east from Soorgaum is Chandpa, equally good for sport ; and four miles beyond Chandpa are Massool- goontah and Farreedgaum, where neilghye are numerous and tigers and panthers are often met with. About fifteen miles farther east is a fine jungle for large game, bears, sambur, and neilghye; and yet another eight miles TIGER COVERS. 277 the great wooded nullah of Boree Meejra, never without a tiger in the hot season. From Boree Meejra I usually went to Chankee Kopra, formerly a grand tiger cover, but which, when I last saw it in 1875, was entirely ruined. The trees which fringed the little river were cut down, and much of the grass " bheer " ploughed up ; the rail now runs near Chankee Kopra, and, as well as increased cultivation, has done great mischief to the tiger covers. Kotumba, a great bheer, in which dozens of gallant tigers have met their deaths, is still worth a visit; and there is still game to be found in the neighbourhood of Kailzer, Seldoo, and the hills which extend to Ajungaum, Beebee, Sowree, &c. Another pleasant trip from Kamptee is to strike the Pench river at Salamghur, thirty-four miles north of the cantonment, and to make way up- stream, through jungles where sambur, bear, and even bison are met with, via Totha, Chand, and Jilmillee, to Chindwarra. The scenery on the Pench is very pretty ; nothing grand; but the river winds through a valley filled with forest, and its banks (in many places cliffs) overhang what, in the dry season, are shallows paved with pure white marble. Higher up towards Chindwarra the heavy jungle ceases, and the river, still between high banks, and with many wooded islands in its bed, flows through a stony and arid plain. Years ago tigers were common in these islands, especially at Jilmillee ; but they have been exterminated on this river, for the country is 278 AN INDIAN OLIO. easy for the sportsman, and a tiger found ought to be a tiger shot. At Chindwarra, a small civil station a thousand feet higher than Kamptee, and therefore much cooler, there is excellent tiger cover in the rock-strewn bed of the Kolbeira river ; and this river may be followed upwards for twenty miles with good chances of tigers in the hot season, and likewise of bear, sambur, and neilghye. In one of my journals I have thus noted this river : "The river-bed is filled with enormous rocks and boulders of trap, piled in heaps among pools of water, long grass, and evergreen jungle. It is perfect as a tiger haunt, and as we explored one cool and shady retreat after another, we kept fingers on triggers with the idea that a tiger must be lying in such a delightful spot." Twenty-two miles north of Chindwarra, on the road to Moothoor, once proposed as a sanitarium, is Boodwarra, a jungle tract of the wildest character, renowned as the resort of all kinds of wild beasts tigers, panthers, bears, hog, and deer of all kinds ; but it would fill a volume to describe the excellent places for sport within forty or fifty miles of Kamptee, and I will now name some of the tanks and swamps where duck and snipe are to be found. Crossing to the left bank of the river, there are two large tanks, Chakee and Chakooda, about ten miles from cantonments, where good bags may be made ; also at Munsur, the first march on the road to Seeonee and Jubbulpore, is a capital tank for both snipe and duck. KOOHIE AND PALDEE. 279 On the right bank of the Kanhan, twelve miles down the river, is Chapagarree, where snipe are plenti- ful ; and twelve miles farther eastward is Koohie, a delightful place for sport, where all kinds of water- fowl, and snipe also, abound on a chain of large rushy and reedy tanks lying on a fine open plain, with cultiva- tion, both wet and dry, stretching for miles around them. Half-way between Kamptee and Nagpore, and a little east of the high road, at Paldee, is a garden and country-house of the Nagpore rajahs, and a large tank full of immense fish murrel and perrun and also abounding in snipe, which lie on its swampy margin. One of these great fish once snapped up at a gulp a snipe which I shot, and which dropped into the tank. Small fish and frogs are good bait for these monsters ; but the very best, and one which no fish of prey can resist, is a small live mouse, tied securely harnessed, as it were to a set of hooks, and hove out to swim in deep water. The twittering motion of the mouse's feet in the water is an abso- lutely irresistible temptation, and no decent fish within sight of the phenomenon but will rush at it and pouch it at once, hooks and all ! Paldee is famous as the place where a roving tiger was found, more than thirty years ago, in a grain- field, and was attacked by an officer, still living, with the result that the assailant, after wounding the animal and getting down from his elephant to finish it off, was charged by the infuriated creature and frightfully 280 AN INDIAN OLIO, bitten. How he escaped with life is wonderful. Had it not been for the bravery of a native shikarry who was with him he must have been torn to pieces, for the tiger, fortunately too much wounded to be able to kill him outright, was worrying him like an angry dog, but the native rushed at it, and actually drove it off with a spear which he carried. A subscription was raised, and a handsome reward given to this native for his brave conduct. The officer was wrapped up tightly in long cotton cloths, which served to partly stanch the blood which poured from his many wounds, and was carried to Seetabuldee, where he long lingered between life and death, but eventually recovered. The tiger got away, if I recollect rightly, and probably crept off through the tall grain which at that season waved over the whole plain, and so gained some distant jungle, to live or die as its fate might order. When, from 1858 to 1865, I was a staff officer at Kamptee, I always contrived to get the use of Govern- ment elephants for my shooting excursions in the hot weather. I usually took out two, one for my howdah and one for baggage, and thus managed very comfort- ably. I had to pay the commissariat bills for pay of mahouts and cawadys or forage-cutters, and for the animals' food, which was no trifle ; also, the Govern- ment held me responsible for the value of the animals if injured or dying in my service, which was an un- pleasant thing to contemplate. Twice did an elephant AILMENTS OF ELEPHANTS. 281 get ill while with me, and as there is no more tender animal, it was a very risky matter. At Secunderabad, from 1866 to 1871, I kept an elephant of my own for the whole five years. It was often a cause of great anxiety from its numerous ail- ments, which required the most careful watching and most skilful treatment also. Several times I quite thought I should have lost her. Elephants are very subject to both fever and rheumatism and to stomach ail- ments, and mahouts have their own recipes for boluses made up with spices, opium, aloes, &c., with which they are very successful in restoring the animal to health. Dropsy is a very dangerous and often fatal disease. A " mussaul," i.e., bolus of aloes and croton-seed, is given, and other mussauls of hot drugs, spices, pepper, &c. Inflammation of the brain and apoplexy, occasioned usually by exposure to the sun, are almost always fatal. No treatment is of any avail beyond keeping the elephant in the shade and applying wetted cloths to its head. " Surdhee," or catarrh, is treated with hot mussauls, and blankets and tarpaulins as body coverings. Inflammation of the lungs is very fatal. The sign of this disease is, that the elephant keeps its mouth open and jaw hanging; and the treatment is calomel, sulphur, and assafoatida. The above are the principal diseases with which ele- phants are afflicted. There are others of less importance, for all of which mahouts have their particular mussauls. One great sign of an elephant being ill is its ceasing to 282 AN INDIAN OLIO. move its ears and tail, which when it is in good health are in constant motion. I have often seen a mahout when watching his sick charge, jump up with a devout " Alhumdullillah " (God be praised), " it moves its ears ! It will get well ! Inshallah ! " (God will !). Between 1858 and 1860 over twenty Government elephants, mostly brought from Burmah, died at Kamptee of dropsy and apoplexy. The change from the damp climate of Burmah to the dry heat of the Central Pro- vinces was no doubt the cause of this mortality. I often took out a very fine male elephant, a " muckna," i.e., one which had no tusks, and though not provided with these natural weapons he was perfect as a shikar elephant. Brave, but good-tempered and steady as a rock, he would march up to a tiger at bay without the slightest hesitation. I shot many tigers off him, and only once did the repeated fierce charges of a wounded tigress put him out of temper. Then did Mooteeprasad charge once in turn, but was immediately pulled up by his mahout, and lectured and cuffed for his improper conduct. An elephant which loses temper and charges whenever it sees a tiger or other fierce animal is almost as dangerous to its rider, and quite as great a bar to successful shooting, as one that turns tail and runs away. To beat out and shoot a tiger from the howdah requires good management. The first indispensable step is to ascertain as near as possible where the tiger lies. An experienced sportsman can almost always fix upon the right spot, even if the native shikarries have not ascer- TIGER SHOOTING. 283 tained where its lair is. The thickest and most shady part of the cover, near the water, if there is any, is sure to hold the game. The next point, and which requires most careful con- sideration, is to judge what direction the tiger will take when roused. If the cover be one of great extent puss will not leave it at once, but will creep along the thickest part until she or he meets with some ravine or some belt of heavy jungle leading away from the cover which is being beaten up. The same if it is, as often hap- pens, a thickly wooded ravine or a network of nullahs among the hills. It must be recollected that no wild animal will submit, however good may be the cover, to be driven any great distance in a straight line; it is continually on the look-out to get away to one side wherever it finds a branch ravine or a strip of thick brushwood or tall grass by which it can get out of the original cover, and so escape from what it well knows is a place of danger; and, failing this, will even charge back through the beaters rather than be compelled to keep straight before them. If the guns cannot command all the likely places, a good plan is to borrow some of the beaters' cotton cloths or turbans and to place them half-hidden in bushes at such points as it may be desired that the tiger shall not go. This device may keep puss straight sufficiently to enable the sportsmen, who will have taken up positions in advance, to have a fair shot at their quarry. Another thing should never be neglected, which is 284 AN INDIAN OLIO. to place scouts (not with white clothing) at tops of trees or great rocks, as the case may be, where they can have a bird's-eye view of the whole scene of opera- tions, and can signal, by pointing with hands or sticks, the whereabouts and movements of the tiger when it is on foot. These men must be enjoined on no account to speak, much less to shout. The utmost they may do is to cough once or twice in a very subdued manner if a tiger, when near their perch, seems inclined to break off from his proper course. A judicious low cough, or even a bit of dry stick thrown down, will probably prevent the suspicious animal from persisting in a wrong path, but it requires judgment on part of the occupant of the tree or rock, or he will do much more harm than good. Perfect silence on part of mahouts, gunbearers, and beaters must be insisted on. The least noise in front will turn the wary tiger, and he is always much more suspicious of anything he may see or hear in front than of affairs in the rear. The clamour of the beat rather guides him, as it were, in his plans for escape. He well knows that danger lies in front, and when once he finds reason for violent suspicion there he will charge back with noise and fury through the thick of the beaters, and so escape altogether. No shot should ever be fired from tree or rock without the moral certainty of being able to kill. From elephant- back coarser shooting is allowable, for when once the hunt is up after a wounded tiger he can be followed up at once and bombarded till he falls. PROCEDURE IN TIGER-SHOOTING. 285 A most careful and deliberate aim should be taken when firing from a tree or rock. A tiger never looks up until the shot is fired, so that there is no sense in being in a hurry. A height of ten feet from the ground is considered to be safe, and with straight shoot- ing it ought to be quite enough ; but tigers in full use of their limbs can jump up much higher, and have done so. As a rule, a tiger will spring much more readily and confidently at a rock than it will at a tree; but, after all, one cannot choose always, and if the rifle be held straight the jump ought to be taken out of the tiger at the first shot. Beaters and shikarries should on no account be per- mitted to follow up a wounded or even a runaway tiger. The elephant must alone be used for this purpose, and all men on foot must be kept back behind it, other- wise a frightful accident will most likely occur. Beaters often are extremely rash, especially if they have liquor on board ; and any attempt at rushing on or examining bushes, &c., before the elephant comes up to do it for them must be sternly repressed. Tiger-shooting in Nagpore is now not by any means what it used to be. Forty years ago a two months' excursion from Kamptee would have been considered somewhat of a failure if a party of three or four guns had not brought down at least their twenty tigers. Now, in 1888, such a party with similar time at disposal may consider themselves uncommonly lucky in getting one-third of that number. Everything is 286 AN INDIAN OLIO. against the poor tiger. The great increase of cultiva- tion, especially for cotton, causing many of the finest covers to be cut down and ploughed; the extension of railways, and consequent denudation of wooded tracts for fuel for the engines ; the granting of gun licenses indiscriminately to all kinds of natives, and the in- creased rewards paid by Government have occasioned a lamentable diminution in the numbers of wild animals, of tigers especially, in the populated districts of the Central Provinces. But, with all this, there are still tigers and panthers to be had, though with greater expenditure of time, and of rupees also, than formerly; for, owing to the large rewards now given, village shikarries are usually desirous to keep their tigers for their own shooting, and rather obstruct than assist the amateur tiger-slayer who invokes their aid. The wholesale destruction of tigers is by no means an unmixed blessing to the ryots. The man-eater should, of course, be followed up to the death, and any reasonable reward should be offered for the extermina- tion of such a scourge ; but the ordinary tiger, if kept down to a moderate number, does more good than harm. No doubt he lifts many cattle, but he also kills an enormous number of deer and hog, which would other- wise overrun and destroy the crops ; indeed, I have known land surrendered and villages abandoned on this very account. It certainly was a somewhat exceptional case; the civil officer would not grant gun licenses for ENTIRE DESTRUCTION NOT DESIRABLE. 287 fear that the villagers would shoot the tigers, which he wanted for himself, and as he did shoot all the tigers (such greediness was a great mistake), the other and peaceful animals destroyed the cultivation at their leisure. Anyhow, it is certain that tigers should not be entirely done away with. Fair and moderate shoot- ing is all that is wanted, not poisoning and otherwise " improving them off the face of the earth." The same remarks apply with almost equal force in the case of panthers and leopards. Eewards are likewise given for destruction of bears, though why seems not very intelligible, for Bruin does no particular harm to anybody or anything, though his crusty temper now and then leads him into regrettable extravagances in the way of scalping people who intrude suddenly upon his privacy or otherwise offend him; but he is a quiet creature in the main, and the keeping of his numbers within proper bounds might very well be left to the rifle, and match- lock also, without exposing him to the outrage of having a Government reward set upon him. Neither does it seem reasonable to put a price upon the head of that useful scavenger, the hyasna. It is different with wolves, which are an unmitigated nuisance, and a danger to human beings, as well as to flocks and herds where they are numerous, as is the case in some parts of Upper India especially. I have once or twice shot a hyaena at the end of an otherwise unsuccessful day's beating ; but they ought not to be meddled with, being, with jackals and vultures, 288 AN INDIAN OLIO. the great scavengers of India. The jackal is hunted on the Neilgherries with imported foxhounds, and gives very good runs. On the plains it is coursed witli greyhounds, as is also the little Indian fox when found at sufficient distance from his earth to give the " long dogs" a chance. While on the subject of jackals, I may mention that a mad jackal is not a very uncommon thing, and is fully as dangerous as a dog 'in the same predicament. I have known several instances. A havildar of my first regiment, the I3th Native Infantry, was bitten at Samulcottah, and died of hydrophobia. The jackal at- tacked him while he was sitting outside a guard-room, and it was pursued and killed by the men of the guard. At Kamptee a mad jackal bit several people, of whom some died and some recovered. It bit an orderly-boy who was on duty at my office. The boy was sleeping in the verandah, wrapped up in a sheet. This probably saved his life, for he was bitten through the sheet, and no further ill came of the bite. I have seen in Indian papers several notices of rabid jackals. Of the deaths caused by wild animals in the North-west Provinces and Oudh in 1886, no less than seventy are set down to jackals. In most cases (I should think in all) hydrophobia is said to have been the cause of death. This is a heavy indictment against the jackal, and a serious set-off against his great services as a scavenger ; but he cannot be exterminated, and the bad must be THE TENT CLUB. 289 taken with the good in his case. Mad dogs also are not very uncommon in India, and I have known some sad deaths from their bites. Before quitting the subject of sport at Kamptee, I must mention the , " Tent Club," an institution which has for many years flourished at that station. It is maintained by subscription for the noble sport of hog- hunting, and is furnished with tents and all requisite camp and table equipments for expeditions into the country in the cold season. There are many famous covers round Kamptee and Nagpore ; and now that there are railways, the hunt can travel a long distance, with horses and equipage, with much greater facility than in the old days, when, however, hogs were much more numerous in covers nearer at hand. As every day's sport and all the good covers are duly recorded in the " Hunt Book," which has been carefully kept up for many years, it is scarcely needful even to name the various " bheers " (grass covers) and " send bunds " (date-palm thickets) which abound in the vicinity of Kamptee and Nagpore. Of grass covers, Mahadoolah, Warree, Columbee, Sone- gaum, and Kalasna are notable ; also Sindee and Nagree, which are further off, but on the line of rail, or very near it. At most of these places there are date thickets also. Sometimes a tiger is turned out ; but this is not desirable, for the hog say, " The tiger and me, we don't agree ; " and the appearance of puss in a beat is a sure sign that no hog will be found in the same place. T CHAPTER XIV. Nagpore Battle of Seetabuldee City of Nagpore Population Character of the Mahrattas Cheap litigation Story of a bar- rister and a Mahratta client Nagpore villages The Gonds A Moslem Gond Rajah Village life in the grain-fields Seetabuldee The Residency Ambajirree and fishing The Paddy-bird and his fishing Roads and railways Wurroorah and Mohpanee collieries Frost at Nagpore A veteran of seventy years' residence at Nagpore Nagpore jungles My shikarry and the blue bull ! The new Indian police Dislike of the Sepoys and inhabitants of India generally to the police Untrust- worthiness and oppression by the police Cases of police torture Opinion of Public Service Commission Savage tribes of Central India Human sacrifices " Johur" Superstition and credulity Ridiculous scares. TEN miles south of Kamptee is Nagpore, the capital and civil headquarters of the Central Provinces, though why it should continue to be so is not easy to under- stand. The proper capital of these provinces would appear to be Jubbulpore, and this for a variety of reasons. It has a better climate, is more centrally situated, and lies on the direct line of railway communication between Calcutta and Bombay. In former years, i.e., up to the middle of this cen- tury, Nagpore was doubtless a place of far more im- portance, being the capital of a powerful Mahratta BATTLE OF SEETABULDEE. 291 State, and as such requiring strong and vigilant British superintendence, both on its own account, and also as regarded the dangerous and turbulent elements with which it was surrounded. In the beginning of the century, the Eajahs of Nag- pore (or Berar, as they were then designated) were members of the great Mahratta confederacy, and their hostility towards the British Government, sometimes open, at other times secret, culminated in 1817 in an attack on the troops which guarded the Eesidency and cantonment, then, as afterwards, known as Seetabuldee. After a fierce struggle, in which the valour of both British and native troops was eminently displayed, the contest ended in the defeat of the Nagpore hordes ; and since that time the Berar family became first tributary to the British power, and afterwards, on failure of the direct male line, reduced to the condition of pensioners, and the whole territory was annexed and incorporated with the British dominions. After the battle of Seetabuldee, a large force was there cantoned ; but the place was so unhealthy that after a short trial of it the troops were moved ten miles north to the right bank of the Kanhan, where the camp was pitched on the ground, or part of it, now known as Kamptee. The city of Nagpore is a collection of mean huts, with a few wide streets, also isolated better houses, accentuating rather than redeeming the general squa- lidity of its appearance. The Rajah's palace, which was 292 AN INDIAN OLIO. remarkable for nothing but some fine well-carved timber, was burnt down nearly thirty years ago; and there are really no buildings worthy of notice in the city, except one or two temples, and a few houses built of solid masonry belonging to people of wealth and consideration. The population amounts to about eighty thousand, of whom three-fourths are Mahrattas ; the remainder being composed of Mahomedans, Gonds, Teloogo or Telingas, Marwarries, &c. The Nagpore Mahrattas are a remarkably mean-looking people; neither in dress nor carriage do they bear themselves worthy of their former reputation as a ruling race. The old Pindarree fire seems to be entirely quenched, and there is not a quieter, more law-abiding people in the peninsula of India than the Nagpore and Berar Mahrattas. They seem to care nothing for outward appearance : the richest and the highest born among them are no better in dress and equipment than the most ordinary citizen or the humblest ryot. Plain white cotton cloth, and that none of the cleanest, is all that is worn in hot weather. The cold season brings out perhaps a wadded coat, or a woollen tunic, and an English red blanket for those who can afford such a luxury : for those who cannot, the " cumbley " or ordinary black goat's hair blanket of the country must suffice. The women are, for the most part, much better looking than the men, and have a better idea of the value of dress and ornaments for enhancement of their CHARACTER OF THE MAHRATTAS. 293 good looks. They much affect handsome purple and slate coloured cloths, with broad yellow or red borders, which, with a bright red bodice, and, with the better sort, a wide silver girdle, complete a very artistic and becoming costume. The Mahrattas are now an essentially agricultural people. They are frugal in habits, fond of money, and are sharp dealers ; but yet the farmers are, as a rule, in- variably in debt to money-lenders. The reason of this evil state of things is the excessive cost of marriage feasts and ceremonies, which, with them, as with other Indian races, are the occasion of lavish expenditure, entailing poverty and debt for the rest of the revellers' lives. This people are fond of litigation, but do not like to pay highly for the luxury. Some years ago, when. I was quartered at Seetabuldee, a Scotch barrister came, prospecting, as it were, to Nagpore, and made known his intention to practice in the law courts of the city. No sooner did the fame of the " English lawyer " spread abroad than a very wealthy Mahratta called upon him, and propounded an intricate case to be taken up, and asked what his fee would be. The barrister, glancing at the innumerable documents laid before him, said, " Three thousand rupees;" upon which the would-be client exclaimed in a piteous tone, " I am a poor man, I will give three hundred ! " He was of course bowed out ; and the barrister, on a little further acquaintance with the Mahrattas and their nearness in money dealings, " pulled up his stakes " and went elsewhere. 294 A N INDIAN OLIO. The villages do not bear close inspection. Surrounded, as most of them are, with fine trees, among which a tall peepul, or spreading banian, provided with stone or clay " chabootras " (platform seats), affords a grateful shade to the villagers who sit there in daily conclave ; also with well-cultivated gardens, and with luxuriant gourds and other useful creeping plants which mount to the very ridges of the lowly huts ; the clay walls, plastered and coloured in broad vertical stripes of white and red ochre, show pleasantly among the foliage ; but on close approach both sight and smell are violently offended by the iminundicities of the ill-kept roads and streets, and the heaps of filth and garbage which are piled up in every vacant spot. Nothing indeed can be conceived more nasty than the purlieus of a Nagpore village ; and it is not surprising that when cholera or other dirt- fostered disease invades the land, such villages become veritable pest-houses, and the wretched inhabitants are more than decimated by its ravages. The Gonds are a strange people. Like the rest of the world, they have their good as well as bad points. They are dirty, more than dirty, in their persons ; and, as a Nagpore saying goes, can be scented a coss (two miles) off. They are drunkards, utterly illiterate, and savage in customs and appearance ; but are industrious, truthful (rarest of virtues with Orientals !), and have those, at least, who are not corrupted by too much contact with civilisation great aptitude as trackers and knowledge of the habits and nature of wild beasts. VILLAGE LIFE IN THE GRAIN-FIELDS. 295 There is an extraordinary difference in form and feature between the sexes. The men, though strong and wiry, are stunted and monkey-like in face ; but the women are much better looking, tall, straight, and often fair to see. In the city of Nagpore there is a Gond Kajah. Though thus bearing a Hindoo title, he is a Mahome- dan. He possesses a comfortable dwelling, and lives in rude plenty, and in a more civilised condition than do most of his tribe. His ancestors, rulers of Deogurh, a mountain tract north of Nagpore, were many years ago induced to embrace Mahomedanism, and were subse- quently deported to Nagpore, where their descendants now flourish, with a colony of poor relations and de- pendants. When the fields are " white to the harvest," and the fierce heats of March and April near at hand, the vil- lagers joyfully sally out into the stubble, and with jungle sticks and bamboos, and tough withy hurdles, commence to build large enclosures, with ample entrance halls, and long ranges of temporary dwelling-rooms and store-houses for threshed-out grain. As fast as the harvest is reaped, the yellow sheaves are carried by men, women, and children to this enclosure, and piled ready for the threshing-floor, which has been prepared beforehand, stamped down, plastered, and watered until it has been well hardened by the burning sun. Then the cattle, unmuzzled, but prodded with goads whenever they venture to stop, are driven round and 296 AN INDIAN OLIO. round to tread out the corn, snatching hasty mouthfuls as they tramp the circle under guidance of boys armed with long poles. All have their allotted duties : some to reap the corn, some to carry, some to shake out the sheaves beneath the feet of the meek-eyed cattle ; and others to collect the rustling straw when divested of its grain, and to build it up against the woven walls and on the flat roofs of the enclosure or " killah " (literally, fort). And now the whole village, with the exception of a few left to watch the houses and their "plenishings," has migrated to the fields. No living thing is left behind. Cattle, sheep, goats, dogs, cats, fowls, all the denizens of the settlement, join in the long picnic, which continues until the heavy clouds, rolling up from the monsoon quarter, warn the villagers to stack their straw, and to quit their nomadic life in the grain-fields. The corn has already been housed, and it is the work of a day or two only to dismantle the " killah " and to carry the materials to the village, to be in part chopped up for firewood, and in part stored for use at next year's harvesting. I have more than once taken refuge from sudden hot-weather storms in these enclosures, and have noticed the keen enjoyment of this gipsying life by the little community. Seetabuldee is a pretty place, well- wooded, and with a pleasing variety of surface. The low double- topped hill, to which the name properly belongs, lies a mile south of the city, and is fortified with a low encompassing wall THE RESIDENCY. 297 along the summits, and also along the lower saddle of hill which unites them. I have made mention in Chapter II., also in the beginning of the present chapter, of the battle fought here between the British troops and the city hordes of Arabs and Mahrattas, in which our sol- diers and Sepoys gained a complete victory over ten times their number of the enemy. There are some quaint old pictures on the Eesidency walls depicting the charge of the Bengal and Madras light cavalry upon the confused masses of the Nagpore army. Close under the guns of the fort are the arsenal, itself fortified with corner bastions ; and the Eesidency, a plain unpretentious building, but sufficiently commodious, and possessing beautiful gardens, and a large extent of park-like ground, planted with numerous fine trees, and stretching to the " Maharajbagh," a picturesque garden and orchard in one, formerly belonging, as indicated by its name, to the "great Eajah." The graft-mangoes and loose-jacket oranges of this garden are renowned through- out Central India ; and there is a model farm attached, which in my time had a Scotch gardener over it, and which, it may be hoped, is still flourishing. Seetabuldee has grown enormously in size and popu- lation since the headquarters, not only of Nagpore, but of the whole Central Provinces, have been here estab- lished ; and it is a pleasant residence enough, though, like Kamptee, furiously hot in April and May, and until the south-west monsoon springs up in June. There are several other country houses, with large orchards and 298 AN INDIAN OLIO. gardens attached, and with fountains and reservoirs of water, belonging to the Eajah, in the vicinity of Nagpore. Of these the chief are Paldee, Talinkaira, and Sonegaum, all pleasant places for picnics, and kept in very fair order by the Eajah's successors, the British Government. The city of Nagpore is supplied with clear pure water from a large artificial lake about two miles to the southward, whence the water is carried in pipes to standards erected in various parts of both Seetabuldee and Nagpore. This tank, by name Ambajirree, has a high and wide embankment, on which is a small house occupied by a native engineer subordinate, who, among other things, is charged to allow no one without special leave to fish in the tank a prohibition which apparently does not apply to himself or his friends ; for when I went there, as I often did, for a day's picnicing and fishing, we generally found some of them trying their luck from the bank. The tank is four or five miles in circuit, and is full of fish of all sorts and sizes ; but they were very shy of biting, and we did not often succeed in making a good basket. I and a friend equally fond of fishing used to drive out early in the morning, and with our guns by our side on the chance of a stray duck or so, would fish the whole day, getting burnt as red as lobsters in the hot sun and the glare off the water, and returning in time for mess in the evening with our slender spoils. The Paddy-bird accompanied us, and indulged in peculiar fishing of his own. He went to the broad ROADS AND RAILWAYS. 299 stone steps, some of which are under water, on the margin of the embankment, and spread a long linen cloth on the step which was just submerged, and strewed rice on the cloth, which was weighted at the corners with little pebbles. A shoal of small fish were speedily attracted; and as soon as they were busy with the rice, he at one end, and another native at the other end, suddenly whipped the cloth out of the water, never failing to secure a good haul of little fellows about as large as sprats. In the way of communications, things are greatly changed since I first knew the central provinces. Then there were no railways, and until Sir Eichard Temple's reign few roads worthy of the name, but under his energetic rule many good roads were made through and through the provinces ; also the railway, which joins the main line at Bhosawul, was hurried on to com- pletion, thus giving communication with Bombay, and, through Jubbulpore and Allahabad, with Calcutta. Now there is a line also between Nagpore and Kamptee, and eastward to Eaipore, the granary of the provinces. This last railway will probably before long join the "East India " line at Burrakur, thus giving direct communica- tion with Calcutta. Moreover, a branch line has been made from Wurdah, forty miles south of Nagpore, to the valuable colliery at Wurroorah, which supplies excellent coal for locomotives at a low rate. When I saw the mine in 1876, the coal was, I think, sold at five rupees a ton at the pit mouth. There is coal in several other places in 300 AN INDIAN OLIO. the province, notably very good at Mohpanee, on the G.I.P. main line, to which a branch railway nine miles long leads from Gurrawarra. At Mohpanee there is very good snipe shooting, and wild fowl also, on a vast extent of swampy ground in a kind of basin among low hills close to the colliery. The cold season at Nagpore is bracing, and the thermometer falls very low. Sometimes in December there is even frost, and in 1874 many of the standing crops were injured by it, particularly the dholl (a kind of lentil) and castor-oil plants, which were frost-bitten and blackened. A very old English resident at Nagpore how old may be understood when I say that he came there in 1 8 1 8, and has been there ever since (I believe that he is still alive in this year 1888) this old gentleman, I say, told me that when he first knew Nagpore, he had seen loads of ice brought to Seetabuldee from the Telinkaira tank ! This seems barely credible ; but the country was then much more jungly, and the winters may have been in consequence much colder seventy years ago, when this fine old soldier, then a gunner of Madras artillery, now Lieutenant George Duncan on the invalid establishment, commenced his extraordinary long residence at Nagpore. There surely can hardly have ever been another instance of a British soldier taking root, like a prodigious cabbage, in this way in one of the hottest stations in India, and remaining in it from youth to extreme old age without a change. Seetabuldee is, in some ways, better situated for MY SIIIKAKRY AND THE BLUE BULL. 301 sport than Kamptee. It is as near to Chappagaree and Koohie for snipe and duck shooting, and ten miles nearer to most of the places which are good for hog-hunting. For large game shooting also Nagpore is better situated than Kamptee, for the northern jungles, named, in very old times, " Gujlibun," or " ele- phant jungle," do not hold so much game at all events, are not so easy to hunt in as the grassy plains and bheers and low jungle of the southern districts. Antelope and neilghye are plentiful a few miles south of Seetabuldee, but from the number of poach- ing natives who come from the Kamptee bazaars, are getting not only much wilder, but also more scarce. I shot a good many neilghye and antelope also in the hills about eight or ten miles from Nagpore, which join those of Soorgaum and Panchgaum. It was at Jiree, a grass bheer near the hills, that I shot a very fine blue bull, and the Paddy-bird poked his ribs admiringly and praised his fatness. I knew well enough that Hindoos will not eat neilghye meat; but to take a rise out of the long- legged man, I said, " Yes, he i-s fat ; cut him up and eat him." Venketasawmy stared at me, and began to talk. "Fat or not," said he, "it won't do. I wish I could but just look at him! Look at the beast!" (excitedly) ; " he has the horns of a bull, and the head of a deer, and the neck of a camel, and the mane of a horse, and the tail of a jackass, and the hoof of a goat ! Tooh ! tooh !" exclaimed the orthodox 302 AN INDIAN OLIO. Hindoo, spitting violently on the ground; "I can't eat him ! Who could eat him ! Give him to the Mussul- mans ! Let them eat him if they like ! No decent people would touch him !" And away he went in a huff. When in command of the 8th Eegiment Native Infantry at Seetabuldee in 1875, also of the 4th Native Infantry at Secunderabad in 1870, I had some very unpleasant collisions, regimentally, with the new Indian police. I had more than once to defend the men of my regiment against what proved to be either grossly exaggerated or altogether false charges ; and I had the satisfaction, in most cases, of saving them from the danger they were placed in by the unscrupulous hard-swearing of the native constables. There is much ill-feeling between the native soldiery and this police, but neither indeed has the civil native community any love for the " gonstable" as they call them ; nor is it wonderful that there should be this feeling, for a semi- military police is very foreign to native ideas, and their presence, especially in rural districts, is looked upon with dislike and suspicion. They have too much power, and are too banded together, to be otherwise re- garded. The old village police were much better liked, and in the view of most natives with whom I have con- versed on the subject, were fully as honest, and not so overbearing and tyrannical as their modernised successors. No natives of India are fit to be entrusted with such power as the police now possess, without most careful and active European supervision ; and until CASES OF POLICE TORTURE. 303 this is more freely given, the police force cannot be otherwise than untrustworthy and oppressive. Being left so much to themselves, as, from the paucity of European superior officers, they generally and neces- sarily are, it is not wonderful that the horrors of torture are still very much used to extort confessions. To show that I do not write this without good grounds, I append a few cases, of many, which have cropped up within the last three or four years, 188588. The Bengal Police Eeport for 1885 records many such. A sub-inspector of police at Patna was convicted of torturing a man with blows and kicks to extort con- fession of a theft. The injured man died. A constable at Chittagong tortured a thief, and was convicted. The thief was paralysed, owing to this treatment, when brought to jail. A Calcutta newspaper declared that " in many villages of Bengal the police are a terror and infliction rather than the welcome safeguard and pro- tection that they ought to be." At Piawulpindee, among the prisoners recommended in the Jubilee year for re- lease, are " one Fazil Khan and certain police constables who were convicted of torturing an accused person." In November 1886, a head constable and four con- stables were committed for "extorting confession by torture from six coolies at the Wynaad gold mines." The coolies were " beat with both hands and belts upon bodies, arms, and legs, and on the backs of their hands with buckles." I do not know how this case ended after committal. 304 AN INDIAN OLIO. At Barsee, in the Bombay Presidency, a police native officer and three constables received respectively seven and five years' imprisonment for torturing a man almost to death. This also was in order to extort confession of theft. It is well known that torture is a very old institution (for so it may be called) in India ; and I do not say that the new Indian police are worse in this particular than the also too little controlled village police whom they have supplanted. I may on this head quote Mr. Halliday, Bengal Civil Service, who, in a minute on the police of Bengal, in, I think, 1858, says: "Throughout the length and breadth of the land the strong prey almost universally on the weak ; and the general native opinion is certainly that the administration of criminal justice is little better than a lottery, in which, however, the best chances are with the criminal." All this, of course, goes to discredit the Government, and rightly,, for until more European supervision be given to the native police tyranny and oppression and bitter injustice will prevail, and the ryots have good cause to inveigh against the rulers who will not protect them from oppressors of their own race and colour. It cannot be too strongly stated that in the police department the higher offices should be filled, in increased numbers, by men of pure English blood and English breeding. A good suggestion, well worth the consideration of the Home Government, has been made, in evidence before the Public Service Commission, by the head of the police department at Madras, i.e., that a certain OPINION OF PUBLIC SEKVICE COMMISSION. 305 number of appointments to the Indian police should be offered for competition at the military examinations for Sandhurst. This "plan would insure the acquisition of a -fine body of scholarly , well-educated young men of military proclivities, which are esteemed valuable in aspi- rants for the police, without depleting the staff corps by appointment of young officers already in military service. The consensus of opinions given by many experienced civilians before the same Commission is strongly against the advancement of natives to the higher grades of police service, at all events in ordinary cases, though some were not averse to the power of advancing very exceptionally good men in special cases and on special recommendation of the Inspector-General of Police. Besides the ordinary run of crime and disorder which come under cognisance of the police in India, as in other countries, there are some peculiar to the country, as the abode of Hindoos, as well as also of the aboriginal tribes whom the Hindoos have ousted from their former im- portance in most parts of the continent. Some of these tribes yet linger, especially in Central India not only the Gonds, of whom I have made mention, but also various other sub-tribal savages of probably similar origin. Among these are the Khonds, Coles, Saurias, and other yet more savage tribes in Bustar, Jeypore, and the un- explored almost trackless wilds which stretch from Nagpore to the confines of Orissa. Some of these tribes are in such a state of savagery that they wear absolutely no garments at all. They wear, I, suppose on State u 306 AN INDIAN OLIO. occasions, petticoats, if I may call them so, of green leaves ; and the only manufactured stuff which they use is a strip of scarlet broadcloth round their heads. At the weekly markets, on the outskirts of these barbarous districts, these narrow strips of cloth and blocks of the coarsest salt are the money with which the jungle pro- ducts honey, wax, oranges, &c. are bought from these wild people by Hindoo traders. For ages past these savage tribes have been addicted to the custom of making human sacrifices to their deities, especially to " Kali," the goddess of destruction. The tribes in the Orissa hill tracts, and indeed the whole range of Eastern Ghauts, have made similar sacrifices, mostly to the " earth god," from time immemorial. For nearly fifty years the British Government has exerted itself to abolish this horrid custom, and has so far succeeded that human sacrifices are no longer made openly and as a matter of right and usage ; but still it is known that victims are now and again sacrificed, and the police have to keep a strict watch over these barbarous and superstitious people. About 1884 the head-man of a village in the native state of Patna, Sumbulpore district, sacrificed a human being at a temple dedicated to Kali. He was tried and hanged. In 1886 a similar sacrifice was made in the Bustar state. The High Priest of the temple pleaded the orders of his chief for the sacrifice, or, as we call it, the murder. The priest was committed for trial, but I do not know how the case ended. HUMAN SACRIFICES. 307 Leaving these wild and remote districts, let us see what goes on, as regards such lamentable superstitions, in the civilised and (supposed to be) enlightened ranks of our Indian subjects. In 1886, according to the Times of India, a Brahmin village near Neemuch was, in course of some boundary arrangement, transferred from the native state of Oodey- pore to that of Tonk. The Brahmins had for generations paid a quit rent of twelve rupees to Oodeypore, but their new masters assessed them at five hundred rupees ! So a "Johur," i.e., a human burnt-sacrifice, was deter- mined on, and two women voluntarily ascended the pyre. While they were burning they called to their sons to come and cut their hands off as ghastly proofs of their self-sacrifice ; and this was done, the Brahmins meanwhile slashing themselves with knives and scatter- ing the blood upon the fire. The charred hands were taken in to Oodeypore, " where an inquiry into the tragic affair is now being held." About the same time a similar story appeared in a Madras newspaper. A woman was supposed to be possessed with a devil, and an exorcist was consulted, who declared that a human sacrifice was necessary. A victim was selected, was made very drunk, then his head was cut off, and the blood, mixod with rice, was offered to an idol ; the body was then hacked, " so as to deceive the police," and thrown into a tank. " The murderers were arrested, and have made full confession." This horrible affair occurred at Poolangoody, in the Tiri- 3o8 AN INDIAN OLIO. vadani district. Nearly a dozen persons were concerned in it. A wonderful substratum of savage superstition and credulity underlies the mass of the native population. I have, in " Sport in India," mentioned two instances in which the civilised people of Kamptee and of Jubbulpore, respectively, believed that the British Government would perpetrate the most horrible atrocities. They judged of the Government by themselves. I will now relate a few more instances which have cropped up within the last two or three years 188587. The Sind Gazette says: " There is a ludicrous report among the domestic servants in Kurrachee that all persons found out of their houses after 8 P.M. will be liable to be killed, and buried, as a sacrifice, in the new market, of which the foundations are now being laid ! " Another report, in Bengal, was, that a number of heads were required to be buried in the foundations of the new Benares bridge ! In 1887 a similar ridiculous scare is reported from Kulee, on the Himalayan border of the Punjaub, that there was a Government order that nobody was to stir out of doors after eight o'clock at night, as some mys- terious being is about after that hour, laying hold of all natives it can find fat ones by preference with a view to boil them down into oil ! Again, in the beginning of 1887, at Calcutta (the metropolis this time !), a rumour got abroad that Govern- ment had issued a mysterious order forbidding natives to appear in the streets after nine o'clock at night, on pain SUPERSTITION AND CREDULITY. 309 of death ; and several stories were in circulation of the infliction of the penalty under horrible circumstances. The Calcutta newspaper, in reporting this scare, may well say that it " serves to show how small has been the effect of Western civilisation on the lower orders." I Wjill not entirely subscribe to the common saying, that if we were to leave India we should leave no traces of our occupation except our broken bottles; but I do believe that if the " Indians " were left to themselves all the old objectionable habits and superstitions would again rear their heads ; that " suttee " and " thuggee," which have really been suppressed, would again become favoured institutions of the land, and that infanticide and human sacrifice, and other amiable practices which have been " scotched but not killed," would again appear in open day, and flourish as well as they did in the old days before the English came to India and invented the new police. Ceylon is just as bad. It was, in 1886, reported all over Columbo that human sacrifices of boys under twelve years of age were being offered up for completion of the Maligakanda reservoir (under construction by Govern- ment) ; then, that a Buddhist priest had heard of an enormous hidden treasure, and was to sacrifice three hundred and fifty young boys in order to get at it. The consequence was, that many of the schools in Columbo were half emptied, the parents refusing to let their children go out of doors. These absurd rumours were greedily taken in and fully believed by all the natives in Columbo. CHAPTEK XV. * The Northern Circars Samulcottah Small game on racecourse Godavery anicut Sepoy regiment in the olden time Strange head-dress Turband as a travelling bag The knapsack Mus- ketry course in former days Misapplied rewards for good shooting The colonel and the square The facetious orderly-boy The Sepoy's foot-gear Evils of boots without socks The Afghan sandals A general's inspection Cheap living at Samulcottah A shower of fish Fires in lines Pykarow hanged Chicacole Bear-shooting Antelope, duck, and snipe Plover Native ideas of conservancy Dirty villages Waltair Decay of Veteran Company Funeral of pauper native Vizagapatam harbour project Snakes at Waltair Cobras and Hamadryads Black ants. TEE " Northern Circars," on the east coast of the peninsula, are not very fresh in my mind, for, except two months passed at Waltair in 1878, my stay of six years or thereabout in those districts dates back to the " forties." I have a pleasant recollection of my first northern station, Samulcottah, its climate tempered by cool sea- breezes, and its abundance of small game-shooting, which I and other youngsters of my regiment thoroughly en- joyed. The racecourse plain, being covered with low brushwood jungle and long grass, held many hares, besides much feathered game, partridge, quail, rock pigeon, and in the cold season a few floriken; here SEPOY REGIMENTS IN THE OLDEN TIME. 311 was also heard the sharp bark of the fox, and wolves were occasionally seen, but never within our reach. Antelope were not common on the course, for, it being used as a morning and evening drive every day in the year, there was not the quiet and solitude which these shy animals so much enjoy. The herds kept off the course, and frequented uncultivated open ground east of the station, towards the sea-shore. Between Samulcottah and the seaside town of Coca- nada is a great expanse of flat swampy ground, where, in the proper season, we found very fair snipe-shooting, and likewise duck and teal. This was more than forty years ago ; what may be the present aspect of these low levels I cannot say, but they must be greatly changed. A vast dam or " anicut " has been thrown across the Godavery, from which irrigation channels, some even navigable by small craft, have been carried in every possible direction ; and the barren wastes which lay along the sea-shore so many years ago are now green with cultivation and shady groves of water-loving trees and shrubs, waving in the constant sea-breeze. At the time I served with the I 3th Native Infantry, in the Northern Division, the dress and equipment of the native army was in a most antiquated style. The muskets were flint and steel ; the men wore bobtail coatees, barred in front with white tape, and on their heads a marvellous structure called a turband. This turband, of which I sent a specimen to the Nagpore Museum in 1875, was a kind of shako, spreading out 312 AN INDIAN OLIO. at top, built of bamboo basket-work, perfectly stiff and hard (it must have been, in Eastern phrase, a very " grandfather of headaches ! "), covered with blue cloth, and with a- narrow brass rim, over all which was an outer removable cover of black varnished linen for undress. At the apex was a brass affair as big as and shaped like the half of a small orange, on which projected two ribs, very like two little boats keel upwards, also of brass. It was a tradition that the use of this arrangement was as a musket-rest when lying down to fire, the turband being then placed on the ground in front of the fighting-man ! However this may be, it had its other uses, seeing that it served as a kind of extra pocket or travelling bag for its wearer. When a tur- band has fallen off no uncommon occurrence in the midst of some more than ordinarily rapid work on parade- I have seen the owner pick it up, and care- fully replace in it, first, a brass chain and ditto hook, fastened to it for the purpose of hanging the head-dress up indoors ; secondly, the turnscrew and worm, which ought to have been in his pouch-pocket ; item, a " pawn sooparee " box ; item, a piece of rag for cleaning his musket ; item, a pocket-handkerchief; item, a screw of tobacco. I must not forget that in full dress a broad pipeclayed tape band, with an equally well-pipeclayed rosette, some- thing like a double dahlia, was carried diagonally along the right side of the fabric, on the top edge of which the rosette was perched as a finish to the whole concern. The knapsack, weighing, when filled, about fourteen THE KNAPSACK. 313 or fifteen pounds (to the best of my recollection), was also a wonderful equipment. The great point was, that it should be perfectly square in itself, and should sit perfectly square, also, on the Sepoy's back. After an "inspection of necessaries" parade the knapsacks were repacked (and the process timed with watches !), on parade, and the sound of fists driving the articles into their proper place and space was like the beating of innumerable carpets ! The pack was suspended from the shoulders by two leathern straps, which came under the armpits, and had a connecting strap across the chest ; the whole contrivance being admirably adapted to cut the man under the arms, to constrict his chest-play, and to impede his breathing. When I think of this pack, and the torture it must have inflicted, and of the number of men who " fell out " (and fell down, too, as if they were shot), on a " heavy marching order" parade, I am astonished that we viewed it with complacency for so many years, and did not set our wits to work to invent (what has since been invented) a better and less painful way of carrying it. There were many other grave faults and absurdities connected with the Sepoy's dress and equipments ; but to mention them all would fill a chapter, and I willingly leave them alone. The musketry course, or " ball firing," as it was then called, was a simple affair. Neither officers nor men were bothered with theoretical instruction or tall talk about trajectories, &c., and position drill, &c., which now make life a burden. The recruit was taught to 3H AN INDIAN OLIO. hold his musket straight, to aim over a sand-bag tripod, and then to burn priming and blank cartridge, as a pre- paration for his firing with ball at from fifty to a hundred and fifty yards. The squad of recruits, on returning from their first day's ball firing, came in triumph with their muskets decorated with flowers, and after the whole course was finished, were formally sworn in under the colours, and were brought on the roster for duty. The ball practice was, altogether, a terrible farce. The targets were coarse cotton cloth, stretched on an iron frame and whitewashed, and with circles for " centre" and " bull's-eye" painted in black. An orderly-boy was placed in a pit in front of each target to mark the hits ; the signal for bull's-eye being a waving of the flag instead of showing it perpendicularly. In my zeal as a young officer I proclaimed a re- ward of a rupee for every bull's-eye in my company (the light), and this reward bore fruit in an unpleasant way. A certain havildar, by no means renowned for good shooting, made a bull's-eye at every practice ; and on mentioning my surprise at this to the native officers, they screwed up their faces in a way which showed that there was something to be explained. It turned out that the orderly-boy in the pit was a son of the havildar, and that a peculiar cry was given by a confederate boy on the wing of the butt when the father came to fire. The consequence, if a hit at all, was an inevitable bull's-eye. Our old colonel, a man of forty years' service, but THE COLONEL AND THE SQUARE. 315 as active and zealous on parade as if he were a young captain, always wound up the course with a grand field day of manoeuvres with ball cartridge. All sorts of movements were made with loaded muskets, and volleys of lines and companies, &c., were delivered with the most crashing effect. Among other things, the colonel, having duly loaded with ball, formed a square with one face menacingly opposed to the line of targets. Then the old gentleman, who remained outside, in a loud bellow ordered, " Prepare for cavalry," and immediately after- wards, " Standing ranks, ready ! " The Sepoys, like well- drilled men, at once obeyed, and not only the face op- posed to the targets, but the others, one of which was necessarily opposed to the colonel, made ready also. The next word ought to have been "P-sent;" and if that word had been given there is no saying what might have happened, for well-drilled habit is very strong, and I fully believe that the square would have fired its volley all round ; but when the glittering line of muskets and bayonets came down with a crash and a click-clack of locks in the colonel's face he became at once alive to the situation, and first of all scuttled to a corner of the square, and then ordered " As you were." There was a moment of hesitation, for this was not exactly the proper thing to order ; but the Sepoys too were begin- ning to see the danger, and while a subdued buzz ran round the square, they hurriedly half-cocked arms and shouldered. It was fine fun for us subalterns, but it might have ended badly for the colonel. 3i6 AN INDIAN OLIO. The colonels of former days were, many of them, very queer old fellows. He of whom I am now writing was a terrible "drill," and despite the awkward hobble whicli I have just related, knew his work very thoroughly. I think I see him now a short, thick-set, powerful, but corpulent man, with a round red face and a nearly bald head, with a ring of bristly grey hair standing up round the bald part, and sharp grey eyes surmounted by bushy eyebrows. When on a foot parade he waddled in his gait, and it was whispered that the Sepoys, when dis- cussing him privately, called him " maindook" (Hindustani for frog). One morning the colonel, having dismounted at the place of arms, was waddling leisurely homewards, and a small orderly-boy was walking behind him, carrying his "Field Exercise" book, or what not. The mischievous urchin, being struck with the frog-like ensemble of the colonel, could not resist temptation, but commenced a capital imitation for the delectation of other boys who were standing some way off. Unhappily for the wag, he did not notice that the sun, not long risen, was exactly at the backs of the colonel and himself, and he did not see (though the colonel did) that the long shadows, well projected in front, showed faithfully both the colonel's progress and his own imitation of it ! The upshot was, that the facetious youngster got a very sufficient caning, administered, according to regulation, in front of the whole company of orderly-boys, paraded for the purpose. The gallant commander was a tremendous gin-drinker, THE SEPOY'S FOOT-GEAK. 317 and nothing pleased him more than to get some subal- tern to sit up with him in his verandah till the small hours of the morning, while he drank gin and talked "shop" all the time. It was a marvel how and when he got his sleep, for he was usually left, still sitting, at one or two in the morning ; and when the regiment assembled at early dawn the colonel was there, eager for the fray and " burra muzboot " (very powerful), as the Sepoys termed it, at a tremendous long parade. I have mentioned the old turband, now superseded by a variety of lighter head-dresses ; I may as well also note the way in which the men, in those old days, were shod. The whole native army wore sandals of a very unserviceable pattern, kept on the foot by only a broad strap over the instep, and a thin toe-ring, a cord, as it were, of leather, passing round the big toe. Not only did this toe-ring cause terrible galls so much so that many men were usually excused wearing sandals on account of sores thus occasioned, and many others wore bits of rag wrapped round their toes but likewise it was most difficult to keep the sandals on when the men had to run, as at light drill, &c. After a company had pelted in at the double from covering the front of the regiment at extended order, the parade-ground would be dotted with the black sandals, very much as if a flight of crows had settled down on it. About 1850 boots became popular that is, in the eyes of the British officers, for the men, being good conservatives, disliked all change, and had rather have 318 AN INDIAN OLIO. kept to the old sandals. Nor, indeed, was the boot a blessing, for, as the Sepoy could not afford to wear socks, it so befell that his feet were more damaged with the boot than they had been with the sandal. It was not an uncommon thing to find five or six men in a company with bare feet on parade, having been " excused boots " by the doctor. On the line of march it was far worse, and half the regiment went bootless and barefoot during one part or other of a march between one station and another. In 1871 I had command of the 4th Native Infantry at Secunderabad, and the route having been received for Bellary, one wing was marched under my second in com- mand, and wore the regulation boots when they started. Before they had made three marches the number of men "excused boots" by the surgeon amounted to thirty daily, out of about three hundred and fifty men, and increased to nearly double that number before they arrived at Bellary. Two-thirds, perhaps, of the boots were furnished by native contractors at Secunderabad ; the remainder were "ammunition" boots, always to be bought in the bazaars of a large station where there is a strong British force. I had obtained from a friend who had been in Afghan- istan a pair of Afghan sandals, which have no toe-ring, but a strap coming from the hind part of the sandal and fastened over the ankle with a small buckle ; also, instead of the hard piece of leather over the instep, an arrange- ment of soft plaited leathern straps. The front part of THE AFGHAN SANDALS. 319 the sole was well turned up, so as to protect the toes from injury by thorns or stones. This sandal was so pleasant and comfortable in wear that my friend used to put them on when he was out shooting; and having myself tried them and become convinced of. their advantages, I showed them to my regiment, and had them worn by some of the men at different times on parade ; and they were so much liked that, as my headquarters wing was not to march for two months to come, I had a pair made up for each man in the wing. I may add that the cost was about one-third of that of boots a great consideration with the Sepoy. Accordingly my wing marched all provided with these sandals, and there was not one case of sore, or cut feet during the whole march ! Moreover, the men could double, and run at full speed also, without any fear of the sandals coming off. On arrival at Bellary I reported the whole case to the Adjutant-General at Madras, and sent a pair of the sandals, with a request that the regiment might wear these Afghan sandals j I received a curt answer, re- turning the pattern, to the effect, that as the native army now wore boots, the commander-in-chief was not disposed to sanction any other foot-gear; so I gained nothing by my experiment but the satisfaction to feel that one wing of my corps had, for once in their lives, made an exceedingly comfortable march. " Eed tape " had gained the day, and having considerable experience in office matters, I was in no way surprised or disappointed. 320 AN INDIAN OLIO. At Samulcottah I, for the first time, saw an inspec- tion by a general officer. Most inspecting officers have some " fad " which comes prominently to the front on such occasions, and our General was no exception to the rule. We got our " tip " from the regiment which he had last inspected. The General came on parade with faultlessly white gloves on, and went down the ranks as is usual. On arriving at the left of the front rank he opened the left-hand man's pouch, felt the inside of it, and looked at his glove, which came out smeared with grease, a laidly thing to see ! But he was, as we knew he would be, delighted, and said, " Very good, Colonel, very good indeed ! Your men have greased the insides of their pouches very well very proper indeed ! " and the old gentleman chuckled with pleasure. So did we ! In 1841 Samulcottah was one of the cheapest stations in the presidency. The vetch, called "cooltee," used in South India for feeding horses, was sold at ninety seers, that is, one hundred and eighty pounds, for a rupee. It cost me just a rupee a month to feed my pony ! The price of tobacco was likewise astonishingly low. Lunka cheroots, made at Samulcottah, were sold at a rupee and a half per thousand. Now, in 1888, the price is from twelve to twenty rupees per thousand, acccording to size, and I am not sure that they are not even dearer than this ; at all events, I am well within the mark. One day at Samulcottah a very heavy storm came on, with floods of rain. An hour or two afterwards I rode A SHOWER OF FISH. 321 out on the southern road; rain-water was standing in pools, and every rut and hollow was brim-full. There were numbers of little fish, as far as I recollect, the Indian minnow, "koorpee," lying all over the road, but not swimming in the puddles. They were all dead. The question is, How did they get there ? I know of no reservoir from which they could have been, carried with an overflow into the road, and the showers of fish of which we all have read came at once into my mind ; but I did not see the fish fall, so can do no more than hazard the suggestion. The natives declared that the fish had fallen with the rain; but only one thing is certain, that hundreds of them were lying all over the road. Our life at Samulcottah was exceedingly quiet, and there was much similarity between one day and another. We did a good deal of shooting in a quiet way ; that is, antelope and small game of all sorts. We kept a crazy old boat on a large tank near the station ; we kept greyhounds for coursing the foxes and jackals, and our colonel kept us all very usefully employed at drill. Now and then the monotony was broken by a fire in the native lines, which, at one time or other, were com- pletely destroyed, and rebuilt in the same combustible style. These lines, filled with a population of probably over three thousand souls, men, women, and children, were built of the most inflammable materials, and I only wonder that they were not oftener burnt down. The low mud- x 322 AN INDIAN OLIO. walled huts were thatched with dry palmyra leaves, which burn like fireworks. The mud walls of the courtyards belonging to each hut were thatched with these leaves also, to keep the rain from washing them clown ; and many "tatties," frames of bamboo filled in with grass or leaves, were used to divide off portions of court- yards for various conveniences. Add to this, that every woman in the lines did her cooking in one of these yards, very commonly in dangerous proximity to those in- flammable " tatties," very often also with a strong dry wind blowing in and circling round the huts and yards, and it is not wonderful that fires were common occurrences. Two or three times the fires happened while we were at mess. The peculiar screaming notes of the fire-bugle would at once arrest our attention, and out we all went to the lines, to get our faces as black as sweeps and our throats parched in the scorching atmosphere of the roar- ing fire. When the weather was dry and wind boisterous a very few minutes sufficed to carry the fire through a whole wing of the huts ; another half-hour would see us all back again at mess, to wash our blackened hands and faces, to finish our dinners, and to quench our in- ordinate thirst after the exposure to the fierce blaze and blinding smoke and dust. From Samulcottah, after three years' sojourn, I marched a detachment of two companies to a little inland town, Nursapatam, seeing nothing on the way worth noting, ex- cept at the village of Pykarowpett a gallows, with the remains of Pykarow himself, who had been hanged there BEAR SHOOTING. 323 " in chains " for general obstreperousness, murder, and marauding. He was the founder of the village which bore his name, and he was hanged there in terrorem ; but only his skull and two or three bones remained inside the iron cage which did duty for " chains." While I was at the wild and jungly outpost of Nur- sapatam my regiment was relieved at Samulcottah, and marched northwards to Chicacole, where I speedily rejoined it. So far as sport was concerned, we enjoyed our stay at Chicacole very much. The country was full of game, especially of that brisk and bumptious animal absurdly called the "sloth-bear." No one who ever saw him cantering across country to avoid danger, or making for his den by paths which would tax the energy and endur- ance of a first-rate mountaineer, would ever think of connecting his name with sloth ! He is when angry (and it does not take much to put him out of temper) one of the fiercest and most dangerous of wild beasts, especially if his enemy stands in a path or on a rock which Bruin has determined in his own mind to keep for his own sole use. We soon found out a capital hill at Jelmore (errone- ously named " Jeypore " in my book on " Sport in India "), and we made several excursions to it, and killed some half-dozen of the twenty bears which were said to live in its cactus-shaded dens and caves. It was a good twenty miles from Chicacole a pleasant ride over a well-culti- vated plain, dotted with small hills and rocks, which were the abode of both bears and panthers. 324 AN INDIAN OLIO. Iii the dry plains at foot of these hills, where cultiva- tion was sparse and corn-growth thin, great numbers of antelope roamed and fed ; and we were seldom out of sight of the herds which pastured in safety under protec- tion of their alert sentinels, generally old does, shining yellow in the sunlight, as they stood on vantage-ground of knolls and stony ridges, which gave them a good view of all that was going on within danger-range of their grazing friends. Of feathered game there was a multitude. Every tank and marsh, of which there were very many, was filled with geese, duck, and teal. In no part of India have I had better sport with water-fowl and waders. We often bagged ten or twelve couple to each gun in a day's shooting, driving the harassed flocks from one tank to another and back again, until, in despair, they soared higher and higher, and made their way to far-distant waters, where they might hope for some respite from the fusilade to which they had