CHAPTER VI.DELHI.
BY TRAIN TO DELHI—THE RAILWAY STATION IN 1866—BRIDGE OF BOATS—PALACE OF DELHI—THE JUMNA—MUSJID—REMINISCENCES OF DELHI—VALUABLE COPY OF THE KORAN—AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF SULTAN BABER—MAUSOLEUM OF SUFTER JUNG—MARCH IN COLD WEATHER—LUXURIOUS TENTS—SOLDIERS’ WIVES IN INDIA—KURNAL—GOVERNMENT STUD—CHRISTMAS IN INDIA—UMBALLAH—TREMENDOUS STORM—UMRITSUR—MARCH INTO RAWUL PINDEE.
BY TRAIN TO DELHI—THE RAILWAY STATION IN 1866—BRIDGE OF BOATS—PALACE OF DELHI—THE JUMNA—MUSJID—REMINISCENCES OF DELHI—VALUABLE COPY OF THE KORAN—AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF SULTAN BABER—MAUSOLEUM OF SUFTER JUNG—MARCH IN COLD WEATHER—LUXURIOUS TENTS—SOLDIERS’ WIVES IN INDIA—KURNAL—GOVERNMENT STUD—CHRISTMAS IN INDIA—UMBALLAH—TREMENDOUS STORM—UMRITSUR—MARCH INTO RAWUL PINDEE.
CHAPTER VI.
Owing to the fell presence of the grim visitor, cholera, the durbar broke up sooner than was intended, and my regiment received orders to proceed by train to Delhi,en routeto Rawul Pindee. My wife not being very well, I decided to go on at night by passenger train. The left wing of the regiment was to follow by special train, but the station-master was not certain when he could despatch them, leaving a wide margin, between 6 p.m. or 1 a.m. 3 a.m. saw us, tired and miserable, at our journey’s end, standing on the railway platform, without a coolie to help us with our luggage, or any more light than the glimmer our own lantern afforded. Such was the Delhi railway-station in 1866.
A gharry was at last procured, and wearied and worn we started for the hotel (which hadbeen our mess-house when the Rangers were stationed here in 1859). The railway did not cross the river Jumna, which was spanned by a bridge of boats. This entailed further delay, as the pair of ponies had to be taken out and changed for bullocks before we ventured on the swaying structure. But the longest and most tedious journey ends at last, and so did ours as we stopped at Hamilton’s hotel. It was bitterly cold, and as in India the traveller carries his own bedding, and our luggage was still at the station, we had not a very comfortable night’s rest. As the morning advanced everything looked brighter. The weather was perfect, reminding one of a breezy autumn day at home. We drove out to the camp, which we found pitched in the old cantonments outside Delhi, where our army was encamped so long during the memorable siege in 1857.
As we left Delhi we passed through the Cashmere Gate, a monument now of gallant daring. My tents were pitched under a tope of trees, and the breeze sighing among the branches sounded like the wind up aloft at sea. We met a great many regiments at Delhi, as it was the reliefseason, and they were all on their way to new quarters. It made the difficulty greater than usual of getting carriage conveyance.
Being delayed several days, we spent our time visiting the sights in and near Delhi, specially the palace in whose vast hall, with its many pillars of marble, once stood the peacock throne, which was carried away by Nadir Shah in 1739. Along the cornice on each side of the chamber there is written in Arabic the inscription, ‘If there be a paradise on earth, it is this, it is this, it is this!’ The dilapidated state the whole of the palace was in when I first saw it in 1859 might have saddened anyone, but on this last visit what a change! Everything had been cared for, and the poetical beauty of the place was brought out with great success. In Delhi stands the Jumna-Musjid,i.e., the Friday mosque, Friday being the Mohammedan Sabbath. At the siege in 1857 our soldiers forced their way into this temple. A very great friend of mine, Coghill, who was then adjutant of the 2nd Fusiliers, was cheering the men on in his gallant, hearty way, and he came to what was called the holy of holies, a structure made in imitation of the prophet’stomb at Mecca. Coghill seized hold of the koran, a large and heavy book kept in this place, and carried it off with several other wonders, such as a hair of the prophet’s moustache, and similar trustworthy valuables. As the koran was rather heavy, he handed it over to some one to take to one of the civilian officers.
After Delhi had fallen, I was anxious to get a remembrance of the great siege, and I became possessor of the koran. For a long time it reposed in one of my portmanteaus, but a native came to see me one day and said that it was known by certain Mohammedans that a copy of the koran was in my possession, and that it was very valuable, being one of the three original copies, one of which was at Mecca, another at Delhi, and the last I forget where. So I packed it up very carefully and sent it home to Scotland. Thinking that the Bodleian library would value such an acquisition, I offered it through a friend, but was informed that the koran was incomplete; so it still belongs to me.
Among many interesting accounts of Delhi, there is none more curious than that contained in the autobiography of Sultan Baber, who livedA.D.1526. He was the ancestor of the old king of Delhi, who lost his throne by the mutiny of 1857. Baber was born to the throne of Ferghana, or Transosian, now the Russian province of Khokan. Sherbany Khan, the leader of the Usbegs, took all from him, but Baber (which means tiger) conquered all his overwhelming difficulties by his energy and courage. He gained the throne of Kabul, and was ruler of that country inA.D.1525. As he had many adherents, he determined to invade India. Sultan Baber wrote his own autobiography in a dialect of the Turkish language; it was translated into Persian, and also into English fifty years ago by Dr. Leyden. The civilization of India is Turkish to this day. Until the year 1857 Baber’s descendants continued to reign in Delhi. ‘There are four roads,’ writes Baber, ‘that lead from Kabul to India; in all these there are passes more or less difficult, Lamghanat and Kheiber, Bangash, Naghz, and Fernul.’ The Lamghanat road is the present route from Kabul to Peshawur, and it was by it that Baber and his horsemen marched, and his baggage and cannon were conveyed; it was the scene of the Kabul massacre in 1842, when aBritish army was cut to pieces; it witnessed the triumphal march of a British army in 1879.
‘A.D. 1526, April 12th—The Turks, under Baber, arrived within two marches of Panipat—which lies fifty miles from Delhi—and on the 21st of April the battle was fought that gave India foreign masters for many centuries, and a form of government that it still retains.’
‘The same night, April 21st,A.D.1526, Prince Humayon and Kurajeh Khan were despatched to take Agra, seventy miles away. Baber marched to Delhi. Delhi for three thousand years had been a great city. It was contemporaneous with Nineveh and Babylon. The city of Delhi of that day was called Firozabad. On a rocky hill, which extends on one side of the city, was a citadel, built by King Feroze a hundred years before the Turkish invasion. On another side of the city was King Feroze’s other palace, in which stood a trophy of war, a large monolith of stone, surmounted by the Moslem emblem of the crescent shining in brass. On it were inscriptions in the Pali tongue, which recalled a long-forgotten king, Asoka, the King Alfred of Hindoo history.’
All this information I copied at the time of reading it—the most interesting account of Sultan Baber’s journal. When I was quartered in Delhi, in 1859, I have often ridden over to these ancient ruins, and examined the inscriptions on the stone pillar, which had then lost the Moslem emblem mentioned above. The courtyard was then used for the commissariat bullocks, and the dust, flying about everywhere, was almost blinding. Delhi, in ancient times, was the largest city in Hindostan, covering a space of twenty square miles. It has now dwindled down to a circumference of seven miles; but the ruins of its former grandeur still exist, and a vast tract is covered with remains of palaces and mausoleums. We drove out to the Kootub-minar, that wonderful monument of a by-gone age. We passed on our way the once famous observatory, now much dilapidated, and no longer used for astronomical observation. In the eleven miles’ drive we saw a succession of tombs, generally solid, square edifices, with domed tops. We stopped at the mausoleum of Sufter Jung, which stands in a garden, and is a graceful reminiscence of a prince of Oude. After a dusty drive acrossa sandy plain, we thought the patch of green on which the Kootub stands, with its shady trees, a most refreshing sight.
Passing through Aladdin’s Gate, a very fine arch, we saw before us the splendid column of the ‘Minar.’ It rises in a succession of marvellous sculptured fluted columns, two hundred and forty feet high, very wide at the base, and diminishing in circumference at each series of joints till the summit is reached. Like the campaniles attached to churches abroad, whence the bells ring out their summons to prayer, so from the height of the Kootub the faithful were called to their devotions in the adjacent mosque. Sultan Baber, in his journal, mentions the Kootub as ‘that strange, tall, unrivalled pillar, which was raised to call the faithful to prayer in the splendid mosque open to the blue heavens below.’ We were informed that the Kootub had been erected by a prince, to enable his daughter to ascend every day and look upon the holy river Jumna, a feat which, if performed by her, must have kept her in first-rate condition, for the Kootub is, I think, higher than the Monument of London, and the winding stair is very steep.
At length we were enabled to leave Delhi. There is no more agreeable duty than a long march in India during the cold weather. After all the necessary preparations have been made; after the means of transport have been collected, and various other arrangements, trying to the temper and patience of commanding-officer, adjutant, and quarter-master, have been got over, the regimental order-book contains the following announcement, that ‘The regiment will parade at 3 a.m.,’ the next day. On the same evening that these orders are read to the companies, a detachment has marched away, with the camp color-men and the married people; the former to lay out the lines of the camp, the latter to be out of the way of the regiment.
I always sent on a tent to be pitched by my own native servants, and, when we arrived at the camping ground in the morning, we found everything ready. What luxurious tents these were! Each one consisted of a drawing-room, bed-room, and dressing-room, with a broad verandah, formed by an outer covering. Indian servants have a wonderful knack of arranging a room. As the tent we slept in was denudedof all furniture, excepting beds and a chair or two, when we arrived in the morning, we entered apparently the same sitting-room we had occupied the previous day. Not a book was in a different place—everything was the same. On some marches we rode in advance of the regiment, on others we drove in my wife’s carriage; but, whichever way we travelled, we enjoyed ourselves much. The Grand Trunk road of India, along which we were journeying, was the finest made road in the world, smooth, and level as a billiard-table. Ten to twelve miles was the average length of a day’s march.
The men throve wonderfully. It was splendid to see them quickening their swinging steps as they came in sight of the new camping ground, marching in, every man in his ranks, to the lively sound of the band, playing ‘Patrick’s Day in the Morning.’ As each company came to its camping ground, it was halted, and piled arms by command of its captain, and then the men proceeded to pitch the tents. It was a fine sight to behold. When the bugle sounded a long, melancholy note, as if by magic a white canvas town rose up on the dusty plain.
Then a sudden lull would fall on the busy scene. The men were preparing for breakfast. The camels, eased of their loads, were driven off to find their food in the neighbourhood; the patient bullocks lay by their carts, and munched chopped straw, or ruminated on the hardships of their life, while the married women of the regiment, having arrived the night before, were the only visible people, and they were occupied scolding their servants; for in India all Europeans are waited on, and the wives of privates have their cooks and their washer-men. The married soldiers’ families on a long march travelled in large bamboo cages, covered with carpeting to keep out the sun as much as possible, and these cages were put on the common country carts, drawn by bullocks. We had a long line of fifty or sixty carts of married people, and, as they started in advance at about two in the afternoon on the same day as the regiment marched in, a great hush always seemed to fall on the camp as they creaked and groaned off on their way. The fresh early morning is very exhilarating, and the days are never too hot in the cold weather.
One morning was very cold, so my wife and I rode quickly on in front of the battalion. We passed the camels, which were moving steadily along on each side of the well-made Indian highway. We arrived too soon at the camping ground, and our tents were not quite ready, as the servants had not expected us so early; so we got chairs, and sat enjoying the fresh morning air. At length our camels, told off to carry the khansama’s property, arrived. On one of these ‘ships of the desert’ was fastened a hencoop containing some turkeys and fowls. My wife insisted that the poultry should be released at once, which was done, and a huge white turkey rushed madly about, and finally jumped on to my wife’s lap. She received the great bird with kindness, but in a short time exclaimed, in accents of the greatest consternation:—‘Oh, Edward, the turkey has laid an egg in my lap!’ And so it had. How we laughed! That turkey was ever after a great pet, was named Lady Alicia, and travelled with us for many a day, but at length was devoured by a jackal in the hills of Murree.
At Kurnal we found our tents pitched in apretty spot, under large trees, just outside the walls of the town. But we were carried off by an old friend, Colonel Trench, superintendent of the government stud at Kurnal, to his bungalow. Tent life is very pleasant, but after a long time of it one appreciates the solid comforts of four walls and a roof. The stud was a very interesting sight, everything being in the most perfect order. There were about eight hundred horses altogether, three hundred of them colts. We saw them turned out for exercise in a large field. How they tore about, with manes and tails streaming! Then they formed up, with distended nostrils, to have a look at us, and were off again. Kurnal used to be one of the largest and most favourite stations in India; but it became, from some unknown reason, dreadfully unhealthy. Hundreds of Europeans died there, and it was abandoned as a military station.
We spent Christmas here. Christmas is a season of rejoicing in India to the natives as well as to us. Yellow flowers are profusely used as decorations, and it is the custom for all the principal employés to present ‘dollies’ to their masters, or the heads of departments. As colonel commandinga regiment, I received ‘dollies’ from the kotwal of the regimental bazaar, from the commissariat baker, and many others, and now on the march the chief of the camel-men brought a hill ‘dollie.’ They are almost always of the same shape, that of a large, round, flat basket, with the contents tastefully arranged so that everything is seen at once. Oranges, pomegranates, raisins, sugar, spices, and Cabul grapes, packed up in little boxes, each grape in cotton wool, are the usual gifts. To touch the basket with the right hand, in sign of acceptance, is sufficient, and then the servants get the contents, or, if there is any special delicacy, you appropriate it.
Umballa, a very large station, was our next important halt. Its close vicinity to the hills and Simla makes it very popular. The band of the 94th Regiment came out to meet the 88th. None of us thought then that in a few years that gallant corps would be called the 2nd Battalion Connaught Rangers. We changed our carts and camels at Umballa, and were delayed fifteen days before we got others. We met with the greatest hospitality and kindness, and our time passed pleasantly. One night we were fairly washedout of our tents by a most tremendous storm which suddenly burst over us. The thunder roared, the lightning flashed incessantly, and the heavens descended in a flood. Our tents were ankle deep in water. Daylight showed that the camp was standing in a lake. The men, who on a march have no beds, were badly off; but the greatest sufferers were the married women and children. Their cages had been necessarily removed from the carts that had conveyed them from Delhi, and they were on the ground till we got our new supply of carriages. Poor women, every stitch they possessed was floating in water. The sun, fortunately, came out, and tents and clothes dried; but we moved to another ground.
About three hundred miles from Delhi we halted at Umritsur, celebrated for its golden temple; the walls are of pure white marble, and its roof of copper gilt. It stands in a miniature lake, a hundred and fifty paces square, the water of which, when we were there, was green and stagnant, and in it the Sikhs immerse themselves, that they may be purified from their sins. I think that the Temple of Umritsur looks more imposing in a photograph than in reality. Wepassed along the marble causeway, guarded on each side with golden balustrades and lamps, and paused at the solid silver door to have straw shoes put over our boots. The inside is richly gilded and decorated, and the marble floor is inlaid with mosaic; but there is a tawdriness in the silken canopy, under which reposes the sacred ‘Grunth,’ the Sikh’s Bible, and in the yellow flowers hung everywhere.
Umritsur has always been noted for its manufacture of shawls and silks, and owing to its situation between Cabul, Delhi, and Cashmere, has driven a great trade.
There was intense excitement one night in consequence of a robber having been caught close to our tent, stark naked, and greased from head to foot. The servants surrounded him, but could not hold him till the bheestee (water-carrier) poured a mussock of water over him and he was rubbed down. There is a regular caste of thieves. The mess one night lost all their copper pots and pans.
On the 23rd of February, 1867, we marched into Rawul Pindee, after a journey which was most successfully accomplished. We were quitesorry the long march was over. The men were in most splendid condition. The usual amount of difficulty in collecting transport going up country had been encountered, but everything had gone right at last. We all had had pleasant meetings with old friends at the various stations we had passed. At several of them my wife and I had stopped for a night or two at a friend’s bungalow, driving on afterwards, and overtaking the regiment, which had always been moving steadily on. So it was with real regret we watched the departure from camp on the last day’s march. The four bullock-carts started with the servants, the goats dragging behind. The wives of the chief men were in marching trim, with tight blue trousers down to their heavily-bangled ankles, and over their heads was a great white square of linen, reaching to their waists; behind them again was the swaying line of camels.
The Rangers had owned a pack of fox-hounds, which had given many a good day’s run in the plains of the North West, and it was to our great dismay we were told, on being ordered to Rawul Pindee, that our pack would be of no use up there. So they were disposed of before we leftCawnpore, and when we saw the broken country we had got into, we felt we had done wisely to sell them. The hot weather was very near when we reached Pindee. We had just time to get comfortably housed and settled when it was upon us.