On the Indian Hills; or, Coffee-planting in Southern India

Preface

. I commend these sketches of adventurous life in a little-known corner of India with more confidence because they bring out in a simple but picturesque fashion the natural variety and woodland features of a great region, whose immense resources for forestry, plantations, and hunting are even now hardly comprehended by Indian authorities. My son, who has put these pages together from long-ago collected material of notes made in all the novelty and rough experiences of pioneering in the southern jungles of Hindostan, has, happily I think for his book, nothing to say of the beaten tracks of Indian travel; and it is for this reason, because he breaks fresh ground, and because he describes with the pleasant simplicity of letters written for home read ing strange and curious phases of jungle-life in these vast and half-explored woodlands of the Madras peninsula, that I am emboldened to express my own pleasure in reperusing his book, and glad to commend it to all who love the East and enjoy plain tales of the Asiatic hills excellently told.

EDWIN ARNOLD. CONTENTS. CHAI>TKK PAGE I. Outward Bound ... ... 1 II. The Threshold of the East ... 7 III. On Sinbad's Sea ... 26 IV. Ceylon and its People ... ... ... 55 V. A Mountain City ... ... ... 71 VI. Up the Coast ... ... ... gg VII. On the Road to the Junglk ... ... ... 103 VIII. At Work ul IX. Jungle Days ... ... ... IgO X. "Under the Sun" ... ... ... 179 XI. A Feeble Folk ... ... ... igg XII. Building Tabernacles ... ... ... 202 XIII. The Trackless Woods ... ... ... 216 XIV. Jungle Society ... ... ... ... 231 XV. Hard at Work ... ... ... 244 XVI. Birds, Beasts, and Savages ... ... 252 XVII. The Fever-fiend ... ... 266 XVIII. Jungle Festivities... ... ... ... 278 XIX. Death and Bright Life ... ... 291 XX. liOAD-MAKING ... ... ... 3qj XXI. Through Water and Fire ... ... 321 XXII. Vanquished by Fever ... ... ... 327 XXIII.

Homeward Bound ... ... ... ... LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. PAGE A Coffee Estate ... ... ... ... Frontispiece "He wears the Liveuy of Sin without a Blush" ... 59 A Moonlight Ford ... ... ... ... ... 115 The Samee Tree ... ... ... ... ... igg The Sunday Rendezvous ... ... ... ... 274 An Anxious Moment ... ... ... ... ... ON THE INDIAN HILLS.

Chapter I. Outward Bound

There is so much strange and curious in these chapters which I have put together, albeit they deal with districts under ægis of the British flag, and within less than two weeks' direct steaming of the English shores, that I shall no doubt be excused for passing lightly over the familiar preliminaries. Every one knows of an outward bound passage down the Thames, of the last sight of one's native shores — that moment dedicated in silence to an infinitely delicate sorrow, — of the rugged coast of Portugal, — and then * DO O ' the Straits. It is only when well into the Mediterranean that you get the first breath of the East in the sea-wind, and a sight of things which tell you you have at last stepped out of the old new world into a sphere more full of novelty and wonder than any conceived by the wildest dreams of ancient geographers.

The morning of the 25th of August found us off the coast of Africa, steaming along against a fresh head wind. When we first came up after breakfast the land was a misty purple line on the horizon, but as time went on our course took us nearer and nearer, and the mountains and hollows unfolded before £ ON TEE INDIAN BILLS. us a rich and varied panorama, which we watched as it rolled slowly along. We looked hard for a glimpse of Algeria, that " diamond set in an emerald frame," as the poetic Arabs call their steep town of white houses and green woods, but when the ship's bearings were taken about mid-day we were sorry to find that we lay a long way to the eastward, and must have passed the town soon after daybreak. However, the coast was beautiful — a long, serrated range of dark mountains sloping right down into the sea, and broken up and crossed in all directions by deep forest-covered ravines and gullies.

Here and there we passed open clearings, where the bright green of waving corn crops could be seen amongst the olive trees and quiet little homesteads, more Dutch than Algerian in appearance, peeping out from the terraces on the steep mountain sides. A few land birds fluttered to the ship during the day, mostly grey wagtails and shore larks ; but they seemed to come from the northward, and were all tired when they first reached us, perching on the rigging or shrouds, whence they could hardly be frightened off. After a time they rapidly recovered their strength, and ran about the deck, searching for insects amongst the ropes and lumber, with very few signs of fear. Fresh water seemed to be what they needed most, some of them even venturing into the hen-coops in order to obtain a drop of the precious liquid.

Curiously enough, they would not leave the ship, although the land was plainly in sight about a league away to the southward. Several times I frightened them up, in the hope of starting them for the shore while it was still near ; but they preferred to cling to the vessel as a harbour of refuge, and only flew round and round, with their musical call-notes, settling again in some other part of the riggino-. Besides the land birds, there were here a good many OUTWARD ROUND. large brown sea-gulls flying over the steamer — dull, heavy-winged birds of sombre hue, always sailing mournfully about, rising above the crests of the waves and skimming down the hollows, every now and then plunging after a fish, and once more following in our wake to pick up the refuse thrown overboard by the cook. After Cape Bougiarone we lost sight of land for a time, but enjoyed a beautiful starlight night in passing across the mouth of the deep Gulf of Stora, on which the harbour of Constantine is situated.

I believe the only streams in Algeria where trout are to be found flow into the bay close to the town of Collo. Here, too, the most lovely and valuable kinds of red coral are dredged, the rights of fishing for which have caused much bloodshed. Beyond Tunis the coast loses a great deal of its rugged grandeur, and the hills become more undulat ing, with larger surfaces of cultivated ground ; the cork and olive woods that clothe the uplands about Algeria growing scarcer. I noticed some palm-trees on the sky line at one time, which interested me considerably as the first sign of approaching the veritable East. Then for the next three days we had to amuse ourselves as best we could in the usual indolent fashion of steamboat travelling, as we were out of sight of land the whole time, with nothing to be seen but the blue arch of the sky overhead and the darker blue of the sea below.

It is a strange feeling to be in the centre of a great waste of waters for a long time. It seems as though the ship were the whole world, and the merest trifles in the way of novelty are eagerly welcomed. The ladies appeared to get on better than the men: they are more accustomed to laborious idleness, and their nimble fingers were always suitably employed in working crewels of extraordinary ON TBE INDIAN HILLS. flowers for their Indian homes, or on that mysterious open-work embroidery which they manufacture by the yard, but which always vanishes directly it is ready to be worn. As for our less ready hands, we employed them for a greater part of the time in writing voluminous diaries and letters for posting on the first opportunity from Port Said or Suez to friends and relations in England, or by taking part in an occasional game of tennis or quoits.

Amongst the incidents which our solitude magnified into excitements were the passing birds that came to the ship. One of these was a hoopoe. It was dis covered circling round and round with a short jerky flight, every now and then giving a plaintive whistle bearing some resemblance to its English name, but pronounced in a very low, musical tone. Being considered an authority on birds and their names, I was called up to identify it, in which I had no trouble, as it would not be easy to mistake the lovely orange crest of gracefully curved feathers, the delicate banded plumage of soft black and white, and the long slender bill of glossy black. We tried to persuade the strange visitor to settle, so that we might observe him more closely, but though tired he was wonderfully shy, flying round the vessel with nervous wings ; at one minute hovering with drooping feet over the bulwarks, and almost making up his mind to perch, but never quite screwing his courage to the sticking point — our least movement causing the bird to utter his plaintive whistle and sail away for a couple of hundred yards, whence, however, he soon came back to hover over us.

He followed us for twenty or thirty miles without once venturing to rest, and then disappeared as suddenly as he had arrived. About 6 p.m. on August SO we were delighted to notice the deep blue-black of the sea giving way to water of the most beautifully delicate pale green tint. OUTWARD BOUND. with the crests of the small waves, raised by a gentle south-west wind, looking golden in the low sunlight. The greenness of the water is a sure sign of being in soundings, and so shallow is it all along this Egyptian coast that large ships often cannot approach within twelve miles. The bottom is gradually but surely rising, probably by deposits of mud and sand brought down by the mighty Nile from the interior of the continent of Africa, and some day it may be possible to annex it from the kingdom of Neptune and turn it into fresh fields for the Fellaheen of Egypt.

We had seen, for a long time before getting into shallow water, a far-extending low bank of white clouds stretching along the southern horizon, flat and •straight beneath, and broken and rough on the upper surface. These were the invariable signals of land, never to be noticed anywhere but over a coast; so we " unbuttoned " our eyes to the utmost, and shortly before the sun went down clearly made out some tall palm trees, and then the long low line of the sandy Egyptian coast. In one place we perceived against the brilliant evening sky what seemed to be a large clump of bamboos, but on passing nearer we made them out to be a fleet of feluccas, with their black hulls hidden under the dark bank. Just as we were going down to dinner, somebody who had been looking in the right direction exclaimed that he made out Port Said lighthouse.

All eyes were soon turned to the point indicated, and there we could just discern a fine slender needle rising from the sea about fifteen miles ahead. An officer assured us we should be at anchor very shortly after dinner, and we went below with the delightful prospect of getting a run on shore and stretching our cramped legs. Lycurgus told the Spartans there was nothing like hunger and fatigue for seasoning their black broth, and, to adapt the stern lawmaker's words, there is nothingthat makes ON THE INDIAN BILLS. land so pleasant as a couple of weeks on the sea ; for, though charming enough for a time, one comes to know every plank and nail of the ship much too well, and a promenade of a couple of hundred times up and down the deck becomes monotonous beyond a limited number of days. About eight o'clock we were off the twinkling lamps of Port Said, with the magnificent electric beam in the lighthouse shining in the darkness like a huge firefly ; and after our patience had been sorely tried while waiting for a pilot to take us into the harbour, we entered, to drop anchor into the mud of Egypt.

A long avenue of red and green lanterns, fixed to floating buoys on the right and left, marked out the deep channel leading up to the anchorage, but it was so narrow that we could almost touch each lantern in turn, and we had to proceed with the utmost care. Above us the light threw out its brilliant rays, and quite entered into rivalry with the moon, which was shining in the opposite quarter of the heavens. Ahead of us lay the flat sandy Egyptian shore, with a few scattered palms and then a crowded town of miscel laneous buildings, with innumerable lights burning, dimly visible minarets, and the masts of fifty great merchant ships all crowded together. The night was very quiet, and as we stole softly on, almost the most sound was the water lapping against the pilot's boat, which we were dragging along; but occa sionally a scrap of a sailor-song in some foreign language, or the barking of wandering clogs, reached us, and the voices grew louder as we neared the town.

We passed a silent Turkish ironclad, looking very grim in the moonlight, moored so as to sweep the approaches to the canal with its heavy guns, and then about eleven o'clock we reached our anchorage, and came to rest within twenty yards of the long landing-place in front of the esplanade. Soon thirteen of us, all embryo coffee planters, were stowed somehow in a single fragile native boat, which had besides two remarkably dirty Italian rowers. Luckily, the basin was as calm as a mill pond ; for our gunwale dipped within a couple of inches of the water, and a slight tip to either side would have swamped us and made some vacancies in the various companies we had the honour to represent. As it was, we arrived safely at the landing-place, and after some fourteen days afloat were once more on dry land.

Chapter II. The Threshold Of The East

The first thing I noticed was the sand. We plunged in ankle-deep before we had made half a dozen steps. Toiling through it anyhow, we gained a long well lit boulevard with innumerable cafe's and taverns all about. We visited one where some French women on a stage were singing and playing — both very badly — and tried some lager beer, which tasted much like the rinsing of old ale barrels, and for which we paid something like a shilling a glass. After listening to two or three songs, we went out and up the principal street in the town to make some purchases, for which purpose we accepted the services of a very diminutive Arab boy with a very large reed basket, who offered to carry our things. Port Said is strong in shops where tobacco, cigars, jewellery, and photographs of the neighbourhood are sold.

These are generally kept by Frenchmen, who did not appear to be overflowing with super abundant respectability. The tobacco sold is usually Turkish and fairly good, though much better can be got in London ; it is, however, cheaper, as there is no duty or very little. The photographs of the Canal with which every shop is stored being very novel and interesting, nearly every one buys some to send back to England. But much cannot be said for the sham Turkish jewellery; it is, first of all, remarkably ugly in design, never made of the material it lays claim to be, and more expensive than that which can be bought any day in Regent Street. Two of us, myself and a huge Scotchman from the very far north, started off into the native quarters in search of Arab curiosities. Luckily the moon was shining brightly and bath ing the upper parts of the whitewashed houses in silvery light, though it made the narrow streets below even more dark by comparison.

As we went along through the deserted roads ankle-deep in sand, we disturbed innumerable dogs — disgusting animals, employing themselves in eating all the day's refuse and garbage of the town. They seemed to have a particular hatred of " pale faces," and snarled or howled as we went by in an unpleasant manner. One gaunt mangy animal came slouching after us for a long way, slinking along in the shadows behind, and barking when we stopped. The houses in the poorer parts seemed very nondescript, partly French, partly Italian, with Turkish arabesques in places ; their open raised courts and circling balconies remind ing one a little of Moorish villas. They were neai'ly all two storied, painted grey or drab to the top of the door, and the rest whitewashed. We found a few native shops, but, as we might have guessed, they were chiefly food stores for the poorer classes, who seemed to have little superfluous cash, or inclination to spend it on ornaments or fine raiment.

These shops were nothing more than recesses under the houses, with counters across them ; and upon innumerable shelves, nails, etc., on the walls, were dried fish, tomatoes, melons, and artichokes, stored or hung, in great profusion. In one of these we spied some particularly fine water-melons hanging on a peg — beautiful great fruits with cool pale-green rinds, striped with darker green. Unfortunately, although the shop was quite open, there was no one to be seen in it ; but when we thought of the flaring sands of the Canal to-morrow, and then of a week of roasting in the Red Sea, we determined to have some at any cost ; so we went boldly in, and we were just arranging that W should climb up and get them down, after which we would leave some change on the counter, when we caught sight of something wrapped up in a blue bournous with a faint resemblance to the human form, lying under a table in the corner.

I gave it a poke with my stick, and it promptly started up, showing the black face of a curly-headed Nubian. The fellow had perhaps been dreaming of the bastinado, and thought we were the Khedive's officers come for him ; at all events, he rubbed his eyes and took a long time to wake up and understand what we were there for. When we left the shop with half a dozen melons on a stick, he came out and stood to watch us down the moonlit street, as though he still doubted our purposes. We obtained a good idea of the town, and from the number of doubtful houses and low drinking shops, came to the conclusion that it was just the sort of spot which might be expected from a place grown up in half a dozen years, and populated by a great concourse of French and Italians, backed by the Egyptian and Turkish labourers employed on the construction of the Canal.

Arriving at the outskirts of the town, where the open maidan country commenced, and nothing was to be discerned but sandy wastes in front, dotted with scrubby bushes, we saw a group of dogs gnawing the white bones of a dead buffalo, and I was just telling W how a young Englishman had been stabbed in the back a couple of weeks before, somewhere in this neighbourhood, when three slouching ruffians, armed with sticks, stepped out of the shadow of a tumble-down Moorish house, and came towards us. We walked on, and, luckily perhaps for us, matters did not come to blows ; but we were rather near it, for one of the men had already ranged up alongside of the hot-tempered Scotchman, and said something which was quite unintelligible, but evidently aggres sive. Somebody would have had a broken head in another minute ; but just at the right time a diversion appeared in the persons of two of the ship's officers, who came towards us, and the rascals, seeing the odds against them, disappeared in the shadows.

The officers told us it was rash to go about the town at night, except in considerable parties, and the outskirts were especially to be avoided, as they were infested with ruffians of every nationality who had very small scruples about cutting any one's throat if there was a chance of "swag," and then tucking him away in a hole in the sandy desert. A considerable number of people had mysteriously vanished lately, and nothing was ever heard of them again. When we eventually reached the more civilized localities under the pilotage of the officers, W said that if we had only been going to stay here another night, we might have made up a party to rout out some of the thieves, and have a fight on the maidan. Even tually we fell in with the rest of our friends, who had been shopping busily, their little Egyptian boy with the big basket having nearly as much as he could carry.

This poor little lad nearly fell into the talons of "justice; " for, while we were all in a shop pur chasing various articles, two zaptiehs came along, and seeing him sitting on a doorstep close by, with a basket full of valuables by him, jumped at the con clusion that he had stolen them, and proceeded to " run him in." In vain the frightened lad explained that he was carrying them for " the Franks ; " the policemen, probably with an eye to sharing the spoil between them, wanted to march him off, and if one of us had not happened to come out of the shop and to see the trio vanishing down a by-street, we should have been minus all our purchases. As it was, we quickly rescued Mustapha, and recompensed him liberally for his fright and services. These Egyptian gendarmes are decidedly imposing to look at.

Their uniform is pale sky-blue ; their trousers are white on the first day of the week, but drab for the rest. They wear French military caps with peaks in front, and sword bayonets at their sides. In the daytime they stand expectorating and smoking at the street corners, and at night they collect in the open police stations, where a dozen of them may be seen with their feet on the backs of neighbouring chairs, smoking bad cigarettes and, if they can afford it, drinking absinthe. Occasionally a couple of them sally out and make a tour of the quietest and best-lit streets, but on the whole their conduct is considerably like that of Dogberry and his watch. If they meet a thief they bid him stand, and if he won't stand, they let him go. It was past 2 a.m. when we came to the conclusion that there was nothing more to be seen or bought on shore, and went down to the landing-place, where our boat was waiting for us with the men asleep in the stern sheets.

We were soon on board the Almora, and found that the unwonted exertion of three hours on land after a fortnight of idleness had told on us heavily. We were as sleepy as possible, and our mattresses were quickly on deck, each occupied by its owner in the usual light flannel sleeping-suits of hot countries. Before turning in, I went forward to see the coal for the engines brought on board. It was a most curious and fantastic scene. Close alongside were moored half a dozen large open lighters, each piled with a mountain of fuel. On these boats scores of dusky forms were hard at work filling baskets, which a continuous string of Arabs and Egyptians carried up one sloping board, emptied down into the coal bunkers, and immediately returned by another sloping board for a fresh load. The moon shone brightly on the men at work in the barges, and made them look like gnomes toiling in a mine.

As they came on deck the yellower light of the lanterns glittered on their naked bodies ; none of them wore more than a waist-cloth, and the perspiration streaming down them cut channels in the glittering coal dust, with which their skins were thickly covered. Everything was densely sprinkled with this dust ; ropes, coops, deck, were all alike jetty black, but the afterpart of the ship was protected by canvas screens, which kept the passengers from the general griminess. The coolies seemed to be working hard, though no task-masters were visible ; so probably they were doing piece-work, i.e. getting paid by the job — always the best arrange ment with Asiatics when possible, as they exert themselves to get through their allotted share, which tells both in favour of themselves and of their masters.

I stood at a respectful distance, watching these streaming black figures toiling up and down the ship's sides with their heavy burdens, until at last, like Lot's wife, I was turning into a solid pillar, not of salt, but of Welsh coal, becoming in fact rapidly jet black from the crown of my fez to the soles of my boots ; so I beat a retreat, and soon afterwards was stretched on my mattress on the saloon skylight, sleepily listening to the howling of the jackals and dogs, who kept up rival choruses until the moon went down, and the sky began to grow grey in the east with the first touch of dawn. It seemed I had hardly fallen asleep, when my arm was lightly touched by a white-turbaned " boy " with a cup of coffee and some biscuits. " Chota hazri, sahib," he said, and added he had woke me by order of some of the other sahibs, who were going ashore again before the ship started.

It was a lovely, cool, fresh morning, with the sun just coming up over the far-stretching sand wastes on the Arabian shore. To the northward lay the limitless blue-grey sea we had so lately crossed, with a few white sails dotted about. Nearer to us was the picturesque but untidy Port Said on the one side, and a miniature forest of tall masts in its harbour ; while bej^ond spread the tawny, monotonous desert, where nothing grows but stunted thorn bushes, and nothing breaks the level expanse but the white bones of camels or buffaloes that have been turned out and left to die. From amongst these shelters now and then village dogs crawled. They seemed to have been sleeping after their disgusting meals, and the increasing light disturbed them, for they came slowly forth, and, sniffing the air once or twice, slunk away with a sidelong trot, keeping by instinct in the hollows and shadows.

In the town animation returned rapidly. First, a tall Arab, in a long flowing blue bournous, came down to a strip of sand close to our moorings, and proceeded to make careful ablutions, regardless of foreign eyes. Then, having washed and dressed, he spread a small bit of gaily coloured carpet, ancl kneeling clown on it, proceeded to say his morning prayer. He was careful to turn his face towards the spot where he supposed Mecca and the shrine of his prophet to be, but if he faced two or three points too much to the northward, let us hope it did not mar the effectiveness of his worship. Squatting on his heels, with his hands clasped in front of him, he seemed for a moment buried in thought; then, placing his hands on the sand in front of him, he bent down and touched the ground three times with his forehead.

Then came a few more minutes of what appeared to be profound meditation, though doubtless the votary was repeating prayers to himself, after which he slowly turned his head to the right and to the left; a little more meditation, another deep bow to the sand, and he had finished, and jumping up, shook the dust from his carpet, and strode away over the maidan to his hut and breakfast of maize or water-melon. Soon afterwards came a long string of camels, starting for some distant journey. Emerging from the outskirts of the town with their turtle-like heads high in the air, and their elastic step, they crossed the plain and disappeared among the sandhills. Then, as the sun rose higher in the sky, the brown children came out of the houses to play and squabble, waking up with their noise the mongrel clogs curled up in out-of-the-way corners, ancl the Egyptian soldiers who had been on duty all night ; while women in blue gowns and men of all nationalities poured down to the harbour, or filled the narrow streets with a strangely mixed Eastern crowd; for the day's work had fairly begun.

Finishing my coffee and biscuits, I joined a small party of passengers bound for fresh adventure, with whom I soon reached the landing-place, and we became the cynosure of a score of natives, who wanted to do anything or everything for me — and backshish. Selecting a little Egyptian girl in a blue chemise but nothing else, with a pretty face and bright eyes, I made her show me the way to the post office. Of all things at Port Said, these little Egyptian girls are the nicest and prettiest. They wear simple blue gowns like the older women, but no face-covering. They have gentle, quiet manners, to strangers at least, and never make rude remarks about " foreign devils," as their brothers do, but are, nevertheless, fully alive to the value of money, and always ask for four or five times as much as they expect to get.