XXXIITHE START UPWARDS
EN ROUTE from Calcutta, many villages were situated amid luxuriant bamboos, palms and grasses, where the Bengali cultivators of the soil worked hard for a portion of the year, and then during the heated term put in their time loafing, bathing in puddles, and raising children; some of the children looked as if so raised—in puddles. Life was known to ebb and flow spasmodically in that region, at times receding to the very verge of famine, only to return and overflow the country with abundance. Life was like a candle burning at both ends in days of plenty, to be followed by total darkness, where skeletons groped, wailing and gnashing their teeth.
The foliage was luxuriant, and of rapid growth; but not calculated to endure much strife with wind and storm. Very beautiful, however, were some of the compensations in nature: when the graceful banana leaves were blighted by the adverse forces, and fell limp, black, and apparently useless; in the very act of dying they fell over the clusters of fruit below, thus protecting their offspring after they themselves had returned to dust, in some cases cremated by the sun, ashes to ashes. Many human beings had no doubt sacrificed themselves in the same way, involving physical and nervous prostration, since Vishnu was the real preserver, and they were Vishnubs. A mysterious parallel. Altruism, to a certain degree, exists between plant life and humanity; and one often hears the natives speak of the transmigration of souls. Numerous birds of brilliant plumage flitted about, and rows of paroquets sat on the telegraph wires; as the natives said, reading andreporting the messages. Did not the monkeys show great wisdom and skill in constructing bridges of their own bodies for Krishna to escape by passing over? Surely birds must know something if monkeys were so wise. So also reasoned the natives, with variations, each man after his own kind.
Miss Winchester in time took down a number of the native ejaculations apropos of these things; and Mrs. Cultus, of course, reported all such facts to her special committee of the “Pet-Monkey Section” of the “Kindness to Animal League.”
“I did not know that Asia was so kind to animals,” said she. The Doctor laughed: “I fear it is a sort of ‘touch-me-not, taste-me-not’ kindness.” “More absurd proceedings,” thought the Professor. Adele did not laugh; on the contrary she was as usual much interested in children, and these people seemed to her to be in the childhood period of the human race. “They believe it all,” said Adele, “and so did I when I was in the nursery; my dolly always talked, and monkeys scared us both.”
The river Ganges was crossed at Damookdea, in the darkness, on the steamer “Vampire.” Torchlights upon the distant shore showed the river to be nearly a mile wide, the further sides rising to form low bluffs. A huge sand-bar lay opposite the primitive wharf, and had to be circumnavigated; which was made difficult by the strong current and the tortuous eddies whirling in many directions. They saw fishing-smacks etched against the sky, with their lights bobbing up and down; the nets were carried on enormous bamboo frames which shone against the lights like spider webs. The prows and sterns of the boats were pointed and rose high in peculiar curves. The same boats, seen afterwards in daylight, propelled by a single boatman, whose form showed against the blue waves, were quite as picturesque as the gondolas at Venice.
Then all night on the train, crossing the plains, and in the morning Silliguri, the station at the track’s end, apparently.
Paul proceeded to reconnoitre among the crowds who gathered about and under the railway sheds. There were officials, indigo planters, race-course frequenters, Anglo-Saxons and Germans, among the much more numerous dark-skinned natives.
The preponderance of white garments showed the district to be yet on the comparatively low-level, but a glance northward told a different story; woodlands rising in billows of foliage.
Paul beckoned to the party to hasten; his expression an amused interrogation point.
“The railway has shrunk; prepare to shrink, or you will not be comfortable in your new quarters;” and he escorted them to the miniature Himalaya train which stood at the end of the shed ready to ascend skyward.
Miss Winchester at once dubbed it “The Fly Express.”
Mrs. Cultus, looking over the top of one of the cars and then bending down to see inside, exclaimed: “Are we really to go up in—that thing? It’s a big toy, for little children.”
Miss Winchester at once crawled in; then peeping out like a bird in a cage: “I have already shrunk—it feels quite cozy.”
Adele did not much relish such close quarters, and asked: “Can’t we ride on top?”
Only the first-class coaches were inclosed; the second-class had low partitions; the third-class had seats in rows, open on all sides, covered overhead not unlike American trolleys in summer. The width of the train accommodated only three abreast, without any aisle; the car wheels were about eighteen inches high; the car floor, into which the wheels were set, was only a little over a foot above the ground. Sitting within, one could easily touch the ground with an umbrella. The engine appeared like a toy in dimensions, but it was very powerful; like a strong healthy boy who could successfully pull or push, but not very effective for sprinting.
“I like that engine,” said Paul, “he’s chunky, but tough; I guess we’ll get there all right.”
The luggage was carried on platform trucks, covered with tarpaulins; and this whole remarkable cortége was capable of advancing at the reckless speed of eight miles an hour.
Some French tourists at once took places in “the first,” hereby assuming the usual American prerogative to pay more and receive less than was due. Mrs. Cultus entered the same apartment, as she required protection on account of her health and some one constantly in attendance. Thus cooped up, Mrs. Cultus, Miss Winchester, and the Frenchmen, made a coterie of their own; Mrs. Cultus somewhat uneasy lest the movement of the train might deposit a Frenchman in her lap at any moment. The ladies, intensely curious, thrust their heads through the little windows, like children on an excursion; the Professor called, “Look out!”
Mrs. Cultus quickly drew in her head.
A Frenchman instantly asked, most politely in manner:
“What have you, Madame? Monsieur said, ‘Look out!’”
“But he meant just the opposite,” quoth Mrs. Cultus.
“Hein! what a diabolical language!”
Miss Winchester here made a double addition to her collection. Adele, since her mother was comfortably settled, began looking around to locate herself; she espied a place just suited to her ideas, at the rear of the train, on the last trolley truck. She and Paul perched themselves on a good square trunk, and were not visible to those in front when the Flyer showed symptoms of flying. This resulted in the Professor and Doctor Wise being greatly puzzled to know “what had become of those children.”
The whistle gave a Himalaya shriek, and the foremost coaches commenced to joggle before the “children” were discovered. In the hurry there was nothing for the dignified elders to do but to scramble on, as best they could, the same truck with Adele and Paul.
Thus this inquisitive-exploration party commenced their ascent of the famous Himalayas with a detachment of inquisitives at each end of the train. Hilarious? who could help being so on the Fly Express, rushing through the exhilarating air direct from the Himalayas, at eight miles an hour? when none would wish a moment curtailed; there was so much to be seen, sitting there on a trunk and looking in the direction of Kunchingunga!
Adele adjusted some robes taken from her strapped luggage, in an effort to make her father more comfortable. It was fortunate she had done so, for the joggle-train began a frightful series of alternate jerks and bumps. Doctor Wise described its construction as “articulated,” especially adapted to requirements of the line. When on a level each car took its own gait, the equipment loosely hung together to facilitate running around sharp curves; a comical rattling arrangement more ludicrous than agreeable, until it was stretched out in making the ascent. Adele seized Paul and her father alternately in convulsive efforts to hold on.
“I think I’d better get inside the trunk,” she gasped, when a tremendous lurch threatened to tilt over the whole combination.
It was the last lurch, however, for the train had now struck the high grade of one foot in twenty-eight, and at certain points one in twenty-two. It drew itself out to full length, the strong-boy engine sturdily dragging the apparatus after him.
From the start the lift was perceptible.
Silliguri lies at an elevation of less than five hundred feet above the sea. Ghoom Station, the summit of the line, is only thirty-six miles distant, at an elevation approximating seven thousand feet higher. That this difference should be surmounted in one short stretch of road was, in its day, a marvel of engineering skill. The Himalaya spur-hills upon the southern side are often thus abrupt, hence the topographicaldifficulties to be overcome by the miniature railway. The line followed the old cart-road built by the English Government some eighty years previous, crossing and recrossing, oscillating from one side to the other to gain distance. Doctor Wise could not help expressing admiration for those early engineers who had originally penetrated this region, and had located the cart-road where the native trails were little better than the trails of wild animals; and for their later brothers in the same profession whose skill had adapted rails and motive power to such peculiar conditions.
Adele said she felt herself ascending the mountain “squirrel fashion, by zigzags, and the longest way round was the shortest way up.”
The train, after a short run through the thick woods, crept out upon a knoll, and before them opened upwards a superb vista; seen through a ravine it expanded heavenward; and they caught sight of a mountain-spur jutting out against the sky, far above them in the cloud region. It was indented; they could plainly see the dent with their glasses—it looked as if a roadway might pass through. The point stood boldly out in space, with clouds beyond; the main range hidden from view, the impression conveyed was that this promontory might be near their destination.
“Can that be the summit?” exclaimed Adele; and an answer came to her in rather an interesting fashion.
While they had been joggling along, a party of civil engineers connected with the railway, waiting to take the train, had noticed a pretty girl sitting upon the rear truck, evidently in for a frolic, and at once concluded it was a good location for themselves also. They had boarded the truck, and were sitting upon the lower part quite ready for any innocents abroad, reportorial or globe trotting, when Adele noticed the railway cut far up on the mountain-side; of course they volunteered the necessary information:
“Oh, that’s only chilly Kurseong, where passengers begin to sneeze,” answered the civil engineer.
Adele, also responsive, gave an appreciative mock sneeze at once, adding she “needed a little practice after being so long down on the plains.”
“Others take tea for colds,” responded the civil engineer. “Kurseong tea is, you know, tip-top.”
“Then it is the summit?” quizzed Paul.
“No, only halfway up, when you reach that point; the real summit will appear as far aloft as that does now.”
“Oh!” said the Doctor, “then, as the Florida ‘crackers’ would say, we are just ‘two sights’ from the real summit.”
“They measure by sights there, do they?” remarked the Professor. “In Switzerland they measure by hours; and down in Calcutta I noticed Hindoos who measured time by the numbers of pipes they could smoke.”
Adele gazed in amazement. It seemed hardly credible that this lofty point, over one thousand feet higher than the famous view-point on the Gemmi Pass in the Alps, should be only halfway up, that the foot-hills of the Himalayas covered with verdure were as lofty as Mont Blanc covered with snow fields and glaciers. All the party began to realize the grand scale upon which the Himalayas are built.
“So much for low latitude and high snow-line,” remarked the Professor. “Now look out for changes in vegetation, races and costumes;” all of which soon became apparent.
These southern slopes being protected by the high range beyond, and the low latitude in which they are situated, make it possible to reproduce the vegetation of all the zones within an incredibly short distance. The Doctor remarked: “It is as if we were traveling, in the short distance of about forty miles, from Cuba to Canada.” The effect as if the earth’s surface had been tilted upwards, so that to ascend the mountain spurs was really to travel towards the Frigid Zone; and that the north-pole must be up above them instead of beingin its supposed proper place, the middle of the north. This state of things, so unusual to Adele, made a vivid impression upon her as they advanced upwards.
The marshy lands and thatched houses of the type to be found on the plains, enclosed by fences of matting hung upon bamboo poles, with mud-puddles for public bathing—all these began to disappear. There were fewer clumps of tall grasses twenty feet in height with tufted heads, and of plume like pampas; the mighty bamboo, and the giant cactus ever grotesque, always on the defensive, even while bearing down vegetation mightier than itself—these were left below. Soon there were less fruits, wild mulberries, pomegranates, dates, figs, lady-finger bananas of delicious strawberry flavor. These became less and less frequent, although there were still to be seen some of the five varieties of figs and twelve varieties of bamboos. These continued with them to an elevation of one thousand feet. What they now began to admire was the profusion of roses and the luxuriant boughanvillia with rich dark-red blossoms, much richer and darker even than in Florida, more akin to that in the Bermudas, or at Hong Kong. But even these souvenirs of the South passed from view as the panorama continued to move; semi-tropical luxuriance constantly giving place to stronger growths. Wild orange, also peaches and lemons, were seen among the bananas. Banyans with pendant branch roots spreading the parent growth through the forest; cotton-wood trees built with buttress-roots, as the Doctor remembered seeing them at Nassau; and wormwood twelve feet high. Ferns in profusion, graceful as ever, some of them old friends of the Alleghanies; for the ferns are the most inveterate gad-abouts, constantly visiting poor relations in almost every zone and climate.
Here and there were now to be seen terrestrial orchids, vigorous specimens, holding their own amid the foliage of their adopted parents, pines, oaks and other hardwood trees—a curious combination. Persistent bamboos of hardier varietiesstill obtained; they flourished along the water courses at the foot-hills, and swept their graceful curves over adjacent knolls. Such slender growths, although tough and strong, became too attenuated to support themselves in an upright position; their immense copious fountains of foliage took not only curves of ascent like the cocoanut, palmetto, and superb talipot, but also the return curves of leafy spray ruffling the surface of the little streams.
Then there were glens and shady hollows decorated with lichens and pendulous mosses; trailing growths of verdure of countless kinds, carpets of tiny ferns—some mysterious growths of sombre reds with vitreous lustre, as well as greens so delicate that they hid themselves from the direct rays of the sun; not to mention horrible nettles and poison vines; terrors to thin-skinned visitors, but as little regarded by the natives as were the leeches in the swamps, and the pestiferous insects in the jungles. Bad plants, which the natives said had been bad people in some previous incarnation; hence had been incarnated backwards and downwards, not forwards and upwards.
Adele much appreciated these flights of fancy among the natives; they seemed so much like nursery stories when she was in the nursery herself. She was on the lookout to kodak each new scene, and at times almost in despair.
“I might as well acknowledge that the Himalayas, like Niagara, cannot be crowded into a small picture, but some of those crazy cacti I really must catch; there now is something already posing to be taken—let me catch him;” and she balanced herself on the top of the trunk to photograph a large tree festooned with vines suggesting the doleful tree decorations in some of the cemeteries at home, only more luxuriant.
“How artistically tearful! How festive-funereal!” exclaimed Miss Winchester, now with them, having changed places with the Professor who had gone to Mrs. Cultus.
“That’s where you’re a little off,” said the civil engineer quizzer. “The botanists would probably call it ‘leguminosa’—have some?”
“Thanks, awfully,” said Miss Winchester with English style and intonation. “Himalaya vegetables may prove more inviting than that one looks, but please don’t risk your precious neck to pick them off the vines.”
The English engineer said that he did not propose to die before reaching the Sanitarium, which remark seemed to strike the Doctor as “not bad, for a colonial living in a warm climate.” So Adele settled the matter by kodaking the whole party overshadowed by the artistically-tearful funereal-festive vegetable-vine.
Near this locality the track indulged in numerous twists and turns, squirming like a huge snake encircling the mountain spur. The train slid out to the verge of a precipice, and then backed off, just before the crash came.
“What a narrow escape!” exclaimed Mrs. Cultus, “I felt as if well shaken, and was about to be taken. I hope to goodness they won’t do it again”—but they did.
They were now rounding a projecting knoll, before passing through a short cut; they then crept under a bridge which, curious to relate, they crossed over hardly a minute later. These engineering gymnastics were utterly preposterous to our explorers.
“Has the train lost its way?” laughed Adele. “Where are we? What next?”
“If I don’t fly off like a bird,” said Miss Winchester, “I expect to enter the bowels of the earth and be a gnome; that will surely be my next incarnation.”
“I prefer the bird,” remarked Adele.
“Which? parrot or peacock? India’s choice. Considering altitude and climate, I think a gnome will suit me. What will you be, Paul?”
“Oh, leave things as they are.”
“But you’ve got to be something if in India,” persisted Miss Winchester.
“Rats!” exclaimed Paul, “as lief as anything else—what nonsense you are talking!”
“There’s method in this railway madness,” suggested the civil engineer; and he showed them some rough sketches he had hurriedly made illustrating the series of loops and zigzags the line had followed between Tindharia and Gumti. “How is that for horseshoe curves, mule-shoes, and other adaptations to the requirements of the road—‘feats of engineering’ we call them.” The Englishman was trying to be facetious.
The lines he had drawn were curious. Paul said they reminded him of the marks left upon the surface of ice by an expert-fancy skater. Miss Winchester said she could use them for an embroidery pattern, the art of embroidery being one of her favorite occupations. The Doctor said they reminded him of a fly travelling over an orange to find out what it was like. Adele said they reminded her of exactly what they represented, only now she had a bird’s-eye view looking down on the whole thing. “I understand it now, but until I saw this drawing I did feel all twisted up.” Curious, indeed, was the association of ideas, each traveller finding suggested by the engineer’s drawing his own tastes, or the memory of some previous experience.
Still higher up, say between four and six thousand feet, the Americans felt really quite at home in the woods; no matter what part of the Middle or Northern States they might have come from there were glimpses to remind them of home; not unlike the loftier parts of the Alleghany range as seen from Blowing Rock, or Cloudland in the Land of the Sky (North and South Carolina), also glimpses suggesting the magnificent distant scenery of Colorado, and even of the Northwest Rockies; but in every case with much greater luxuriance of foliage, and a realizing sense that they were only on the foot-hills,the first steps leading to the Celestial region, still away up and beyond.
Adele searched in her pocket and brought forth her little Stars-and-Stripes badge, and pinned it on her left shoulder. It took very little to make Adele show her colors, and just here where the woods were full of oaks, hemlocks, maples and many other trees which reminded her of home, she concluded this was the proper time to bring out the pocket edition of Old Glory.
The Englishman wondered why she selected that particular time to do such a thing; it seemed such a superfluous proceeding. He would have scorned the idea if he had known that she associated oaks with America in particular. As it was he could not suppress his curiosity.
“May I ask why you show your colors?”
“Because here I feel quite at home.”
“Oh, you Americans think the States take in all creation, don’t you?”
“Well, pretty much; but this is the Queen’s Empire—we admire the Queen immensely, she’s a home-body; and personally I quite envy her.”
“No doubt she would appreciate your appreciation,” remarked the Englishman, again touching the facetious. “May I ask why you envy her?”
“We are going into the expansion business ourselves: the Queen knows all about it.”
“Once you are in, you’ll wish you were out.”
“You made a success; why shouldn’t we? Of course we’ll add some improvements.”
The Englishman laughed heartily. “What do you call success?”
“Making people feel at home,” said Adele.
“And the improvements—some new ’ism or religion, I suppose?”
“Every man to his own religion,” said Adele; “it’s thesame as with one’s own home. Religion ought to suit one’s nature as your home suits your life.”
“These people have a great variety of religion,” remarked the Englishman.
“There seems to be no lack,” said Adele, “but really I don’t know yet. I can’t say that I have really worshiped with them, according to their ritual here in their own homes.”
“Well, I wish you joy, but really I don’t understand fully yet as to your idea of home here. I don’t feel at home; we all go back to our homes—Merry England.”
“That’s not what I mean,” said Adele; “this region is the most extraordinary home-country I ever saw, even more so than our own mixed-up country, and that’s saying a great deal.”
“I don’t understand yet,” said the Briton.
“Why, it’s this way, I feel perfectly at home in these woods; the Hindoos were just as much at home a few miles back; the place seems to suit all sorts and conditions of different civilizations, not one civilization only; and the Queen lets them live at home here in peace.”
“They fight like cats and dogs,” said the engineer promptly. “We have the devil’s own time to keep the home, as you call it, quiet.”
“It must be the children that cut up so,” laughed Adele. “Every home is supposed to have its nursery—the world no doubt has; people often call Asia the cradle of the human race. This seems to me to be like God’s nursery.”
“And England’s the nurse!” shouted the Briton.
“Yes, that’s about it.”
“Well, here comes another baby, fresh from the woods, to be taken into the nursery. What do you think of this precious babe? I hand her over to you.”
What Adele saw for the first time was a large, stout Mongolian woman, broad-visaged with slanting eyes, very dirty and unkempt, accompanied by two men of similar mien,neither of whom appeared so masculine as the precious babe herself. These had wandered down from the upper regions—the first glimpse to Adele of the next race they were to encounter.
“Babes in the woods,” remarked the Englishman.
Adele concluded not to call this one a cherub.