The abode of snow

Front matter

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Preface

TO THE ENGLISH EDITION.

In the twenty-ninth chapter of this work, I have fully explained how the phrase " Abode of Snow " is a literal translation of the Sanscrit compound " Himalaya," and therefore forms an appropriate title for a work treating of those giant mountains. The Abode of Sno'wpar excellence is not in the Himalaya, or even in the Arctic region, but (setting Saturn aside) in the Antarctic region. Owing to the greater preponderance of ocean in the southern hemisphere, the greatest accumulation of ice is round the South Pole ; and hence the not improbable theory that, when the accumulation has reached a certain point, the balance of the earth must be suddenly destroyed, and this orb shall almost instantaneously turn transversely to its axis, moving the great oceans, and so producing one of those cyclical catastrophes which, there is some reason to believe, have before now interfered with the development and the civilisation of the human race.

How near such a catastrophe may be, and whether, when it occurs, a few just men (and, it is to be hoped, women also) will certainly be left in the upper valleys of the Himalaya, I am unable to say; but it is well to

PREFACE.

know that there is an elevated and habitable region of the earth which is likely to be left undepopulated even by such an event as that just alluded to. Whether humanity will lose or gain by having to begin again from the simple starting-point of- " Om mani padme haun " {vide Chapter XXXV.) is also a subject on which I feel a little uncertain ; but we may at least hope that the jewel in the lotus will not be lost ; that what has accrued to it from the efforts and the agony of so many thousand years, of so many hundreds of human generations, may pass over to the inhabitants of a newly-formed earth. And when we come to consider what the grand valuable results of this our awful striving, our dread history, have been, most of what we are given to boast of will have to be relinquished as worthless, and we may, even as Christians, be glad to take refuge in the comprehensive Lama prayer, " O God, consider the jewel in the lotus. Thy will be done." For, however appalling may have been the amount of human crime and woe, however pitiable our mistakes and ineffectual our struggles, there has ever been a jewel in the rank lotus of human life — something beautiful in it which is not of it, yet is mysteriously connected with, and hidden within, it. Viewed in this light the Lama prayer has a touching significance, and is not without a great lesson for us all.

But the Himalaya may have many visitors before that other Abode of Snow turns things topsy-turvy, if it ever do so ; and these, I hope, may find my book of some service. It was not for them, however, that this volume was written, but for those who have never seen and may never see the Himalaya. I have sought, in however imperfect a manner, to enable such readers

PREFACE. vii

in some degree to realise what these great mountains are — what scenes of beauty and grandeur they present — what is the character of the simple people who dwell among them — and what are the incidents the traveller meets with, his means of conveyance, and his mode of life. In attempting this I have had to struggle with what a kindly critic has called " the utterly unknown," and have been compelled, as a necessary part of the enterprise, to make my pages bristle with names and other words which are quite unfamiliar, and indeed for the most part entirely new, to the ordinary English reader — the very individual whose interest I want to engage. It has also been necessary to introduce some details of physical science, ethnology, archaeology, and history ; but these have been subordinated to the general aim of producing an intelligible idea of the region described. Perhaps I may be excused for suggesting that some little effort on the reader's part is also called for, if indeed my labours are of any value, — which I am by no means sure of.

If there were any merit at all in my journey it lay only in the condition of body in which I commenced it and carried it through, and in the determination with which, despite serious discouragement, I pursued what appeared to be a desperate remedy. My original intention was only to visit Masuri and Simla, and have a distant view of the Himalaya ; but the first glimpse of the Jumnotri and Gangotri peaks excited longings which there was no need to restrain, and I soon perceived that the air of the hill-stations could be of no use to me. So I set off from Simla, determined above all things to keep as high up as I could, and to have a snowy range between me and the Indian monsoon, viii PREFACE.

and then, so far as consonant with that, to visit as many places of interest as possible. It probably would have been better had I been able to take more notes on the way ; but the great fatigue of the journey, and the strain arising from my being alone, were rather too much for me ; and sometimes, for several days at a time, I could do no more than note down the name of the village where we camped, and the temperature at day-break.

There are many subjects, especially relating to the latter part of my journey, on which I wished to write at length, but found it inexpedient to do so in order not longer to delay the publication of this volume. As it is, I feel deeply indebted for its having been written at all to the encouragement, consideration, and advice of Mr. Blackwood, the Editor of the famous Magazine which bears his name, and in which a great part, but not the whole, of this narrative originally appeared. From the outset he sympathised warmly with my plan, and throughout he never failed to cheer my flagging spirits with generous praise, not to speak of other encouragement. Then he gave me a great deal of admirable advice. There is nothing that is commoner in this world than advice— nothing that is showered down upon one with more liberal profusion ; but there is nothing rarer than judicious, useful advice, the first condition of which is sympathetic appreciation of what one would be at ; and it was this invaluable kind of advice which Mr. Blackwood freely tendered, pointing out where the treatment of my Subject required expansion, or aiding me by his knowledge of the world and profoundly appreciative literary taste. I am charmed to find that the lotus of

PREFACE. vs.

literature contains such a jewel ; and I must say, also, that both the Messrs. Blackwood did me essential, service by the consideration they displayed when I sent in my manuscript at unreasonable times, or altered proofs unmercifully at the last moment. Prince Bismarck said to Count Arnim that the business of the Prussian Foreign Office could not be carried on if every Embassy were to conduct itself in the way that of Paris did ; and I am sure the business of Maga could not be carried on at all if all its contributors were to try its patience as I did.

I was much indebted also to an old friend — a genius loci and yet a man of European celebrity — who at the commencement of the appearance of my articles wrote to me in terms of the warmest encouragement. It may be that the favour with which the original articles appear to have been received may stand in the way of success now that they are reproduced in book-form ; so I may mention that, though long passages have not been added to this reprint, yet very many short ones have ; the interstices, so to speak, have been filled up ; greater accuracy has been attained ; and the whole work has been recast, and that into a form which, I venture to believe, will make it more acceptable to all readers; and I am led to hope that this may be so, among other reasons, by the fact that an American publishing house, G. P. Putman's Sons, New York, has already prepared stereotyped plates of my book, with a view to republication across the Atlantic.

I feel some regret at not having been able either to repress my outbreaks on the difficult subject of the policy which ought to be pursued in governing India,

X Preface, or to enter into the question in a fuller and more satisfactory manner than I have done ; but while that subject la)f beyond the proper scope of this work, it was one which the incidents of my journey naturally led me incidentally to refer to. I shall now only express my profound conviction, that if India were more directly governed with an enlightened view to our own national interests than it is at present, it wouid be far better for the people of India ; that it is the English in India, far more than the Bengal ryot, the educated native, or the Indian Prince, who have reason to complain of the British Raj ; and that, under a superficial appearance of contentment and progress, there are gathering forces, mostly powerless for good, which may at any moment break forth with destructive fury, and are certain to do so whenever the energies of this country are more fully occupied elsewhere.

It may be fancied that some of my descriptions of what I encountered among the Himalaya are somewhat exaggerated, and especially, I understand, the achievements of the little pony which carried me over the great Shigri glacier. A lady writing to me on this subject remarks: "Had I not known you to be scrupulously .truthful — in fact, fastidiously careful in the use of language, lest it might convey a shade of meaning beyond the thought, opinion, or fact, you wished to express — I might have regarded some of your descriptions as exaggerated ; but I consider accuracy, both verbal (that is, in the use of words) and in the statement of facts, to be one of your strong points — barring and excepting in the making of promises with respect to letter- writing." So I have carefully

PREFACE. xi

reconsidered everything which might appear to bear the marks of exaggeration, and, while finding almost nothing to alter on that ground, have thought it best to say nothing about one or two incidents which might really appear incredible. I have only to add on this subject, that the state of Himalayan paths differs somewhat from year to year, according to the amount of labour expended upon them, and the landslips which occur.

The map which accompanies this volume has been based on a section of a large school-map of India by the Rev. J. Barton, published under the direction of Committees of the Society for promoting Christian Knowledge and of the National Society. Mr. Trelawney Saunders, the Geographer to the East India Office, has given this school-map his valuable aid in bringing out clearly the various mountain ranges to the north of India ; and I found, after examining many maps, that no other which I could avail myself of would serve so well as the basis of a small map which would present at a glance the relative positions of the Panjab plain, the Western Himalaya, the Hindu Kilsh, and the Karakorum Mountains. It seemed to me of much more importance to convey a general idea of that vast and little-known district of mountainous country than to present a detailed plan of my own route ; for only those who are in, or are about to enter, the districts I traversed, will have any object in following me from stage to stage ; and they can do so much better in Major Montgomerie's route-map and the five mile to the inch sheets of the Trigonometrical Survey, than in any map which it would be advisable for me to prepare. At the same time, I have marked my route xii PREFACE.

carefully in the map which I present ; I have added to it a large number of places which I visited, and have altered the spelling in accordance with that of my book.

That matter of spelling has caused no little trouble. It may not be generally known in this country that some years ago the Indian Government determined that Indian names should be spelt, at least in all official documents and publications, on one system. The system is based on the Jonesian-Wilsonian system of transliteration, as modified by the, oriental societies, and has further been modified for practical purposes by Dr. W. W. Hunter, the head of the Indian Statistical Department. It partakes of the nature of a compromise, for accents are only used when specially necessary, and not as marking intonation, but only as indicating different vowel-sounds ; and in the lists drawn up by Dr. Hunter they are used very sparingly, and are omitted in some cases where they might; have been added with advantage. I have followed these official lists in most instances, and the simple rules to be borne in mind in order to render their system of spelling intelligible are that, —

1. The long d sounds broadly, as in almond.

2. The short a without an accent, has usually somewhat of a u sound, as the a in rural.

3. The % with an accent is like ee, or the i in ravine.

4. The u with an accent is like 00, or the u in bull.

5. The e has a broad sound, as the a in dare.

6. The sounds openly, as in note.

7. The at sounds as in- aisle, or the / in high.

8. The ail sounds like oit in cloud.

The most striking peculiarities of this system are

PREFACE. xiii

the substitution of u for oo, of % for ee, and the expression of broad a by a. It totally ignores the genius of the English language, and may be considered as another instance of that subjection of England to India which has been going on of late years. Another objection to it is, that it is not thoroughgoing, and is apt to land the a and the u sounds in hopeless confusion ; while a third is, that it is liable to mislead from its employment of accents in a different sense from that which they have, except incidentally, in European languages. But I doubt not these objections have been duly considered by the promoters of the system, and that they have followed the plan which seemed to them best fitted to procure uniformity in the spelling of Indian names, which is an end of so great importance that I have deemed it right to follow the Government system of spelling, but not as a very advanced or always strictly accurate disciple. I am afraid an accent here and there has got on the wrong letter, and I have sometimes continued the use of double letters; but, in truth, to carry out this system with perfect accuracy one would require not only to have the names before one written in an Indo-Aryan language, but also to be in the habit of dealing with them in such a language. Suffice that I have sacrificed my own comfort, if not also that of my readers, on the Indian Government's linguistic altar. As one of the first to do so in this country, I trust I may be excused if my steps have occasionally tripped. When publishing in the Magazine I used the word " Himaliya," but that was only in order to break the usual custom of pronouncing it " Himmalaya," and now. return to what is the more strictly accurate form.

xiv PREFACE.

One word more, and I have done. Like many other men, I have written hundreds — I may say thousands — of more or less insignificant articles in newspapers and periodicals ; but, like the vast majority of my fellow-labourers in that department of literature, I have sought to keep back my name rather than to thrust it obtrusively before the public in connection with productions which, however good or bad of their kind, had no individuality or importance sufficient to warrant their being connected with any particular author. That is the usual feeling of public writers in this country ; but there is always some one insensible to it. A few months ago one of those candid friends who are the gentian and rhubarb of life, remarked to me : " What a stupid article that is on the CUTTLE-FISH

which you have in ! I wonder you put your

name to it." Now the cuttle-fish is a denizen of the ocean with which I am well acquainted, from its toughness as an article of diet, it having been the habit of my Hong-Kong butler to give me a curry of it whenever he was displeased with me, adding, when he saw my frown, the dubious consolation : " Eh ! No likey? I tinkee he makee you likey to-mollow (to-morrow) cully too muchee." But to write articles on the cuttle-fish was, I knew, out of my line; and I was shocked at having my name pointed out to me, printed in full, at the bottom of such an article. At first I cherished the hope that this was the work of some practical humourist ; but found on inquiry, that this alter ego, the cuttle-fish A. W., was a sad reality ; that he had published several articles of the same kind, and had as much title as myself to the name lae byars. I know how vain it is to hope that any

PREFACE. XV

pushing young Scotchman will consent to preach behind a screen if he has any opportunity of doing so in front of it; therefore I address no remonstrance or request to the ichthyologist himself. But, would not some Scotch University — say Aberdeen or Glasgow — have the goodness to make a distinction between us by conferring upon him the degree of D.D., LL.D,, or whatever other high academical distinction his arduous researches, into the character of the cuttle-fish may justify?

London, July, 1875.

Chapter I. To The Heights

I HAVE heard of an American backwoodsman who, on finding some people camping about twenty miles from his log-cabin, rushed back in consternation to his wife and exclaimed, " Pack thee up, Martha — pack thee up ; it's getting altogether too crowded hereabouts." The annoyance which this worthy complained of is very generally felt at present ; and, go almost where he may, the lover of peace and solitude will soon have reason to complain that the country round him is becoming " altogether too crowded." As for the enterprising and exploring traveller, who desires to make a reputation for himself by his explorations, his case is even worse. Kafiristan, Chinese Tibet, and the very centre of Africa, indeed remain for him ; but, wherever he may go, he cannot escape the painful conviction that his task will ere long be trodden ground, and that the special correspondent, the trained reporter, wnll soon try to obliterate his footsteps. It was not so in older times. The man who went out to see a strange country, if he were fortunate enough to return to his friends alive, became an authority on that country to the day of his death,

A

THE ABODE OF SNOW.

and continued so for generations afterwards, if he had only used his wits well. An accurate description of a country usually stood good for a century or two, at least, and for that period there was no one to dispute it ; but the Khiva of 1872 is fundamentally different from the Khiva of 1874; and could we stand to-day where Speke stood sublimely alone a few years ago at Murchison Falls, when he was accomplishing the heroic feat of passing (for the first time in authentic history) from Zanzibar to Cairo, through the ground where the Nile unquestionably takes its rise, we should probably see an English steamboat, with Colonel Gordon on board, moving over the waters of Lake Victoria Nyanza. For the change in the relations of one country with another, which has been effected by steam as a means of propulsion, is of a most radical kind ; and it proceeds so rapidly, that by the time the little girls at our knees are grandmothers, and have been fired with that noble ambition to see the world which possesses the old ladies of our own day, it will be only a question of money and choice with them, as to having a cruise upon the lakes of Central Africa, or going to reason with the Grand Lama of Tibet upon the subject of polyandry. Any one walking along the Strand may notice advertisements of " Gaze's annual tour to Jerusalem, Damascus, Nineveh, Babylon, the Garden of Eden," &c., &c. No doubt that sort of thing will receive a check occasionally ; there has been a refreshing recurrence, within the last two months, of brigandage in Sicily and the Italian peninsula, which may serve to create a vacuum for the meditative traveller ; and if a party of Cook's tourists were to fall into the hands of Persian or Kurdish banditti, the unspeakable consequences would probably put a stop to excursions to the Garden of Pklen for some time to come ; but still the process would go

TO THE HEIGHTS.

on, of bringing- together the ends of the earth, and of making the remotest countries familiar ground.

Such a process, however, will always leave room for books of travel by the i&w who are specially qualified either to understand nature or describe mankind; and there are regions of the world, the natural conformation of which will continue to exclude ordinary travellers, until we have overcome the difficulty of flying through the air. Especially are such regions to be found in the Himaliya — which, according to the Sanscrit, literally means " The Abode of Snow " — and indeed in the whole of that enormous mass of mountains which really stretches across Asia and Europe, from the China Sea to the Atlantic, and to which Arab geographers have given the expressive title of " The Stony Girdle of the Earth." It is to thQ loftiest valleys, and almost the highest peaks of that range that, in this and two or three succeeding chapters, I would conduct my readers from the burning plains of India, in the hope of finding themes of interest, if not many matters of absolute novelty. I have had the privilege of discoursing from and on many mountains — mountains in Switzerland and Beloochistan, China and Japan — and would now speak

" Of vales more wild and mountains more sublime."

Often, of late years, when thinking of again writing and describing new scenes, the lines have recurrred to me with painful force, which the dying Magician of the North wrote in pencil by Tweedside —

*' How shall the wai-ped and broken board Endure to bear the painter's dye?

The harp -with strained and tuneless chord, How to the minstrel's skill reply?"

But the grandest mountains of the world, which have

THE ABODE OF SNOW.

restored something of former strength, may perhaps suggest thoughts of interest, despite the past deathin-hfe of an invalid in the tropics. There is a Hly {F. cordatd) which rarely blossoms in India, unless watered with ice-water, which restores its vigour, and makes it flower. So the Englishman, whose frame withers and strength departs in the golden sunlight but oppressive air of India, finds new vigour and fresh thought and feeling among the snows and glaciers of the Himaliya. If the reader will come with me there, and rest under the lofty deodar-tree, I promise him he will find no enemy but winter and rough weather, and perhaps we may discourse not altogether unprofitably under the shadow of those lofty snowy peaks, which still continue

"By the flight Of sad mortahty's earth-suUymg wing, Unswept, unstained."

The change in modern travel has brought the most interesting, and even the wildest, parts of India within easy reach for our countrymen. Bishop Heber mentions in his Journal that he knew of only two Englishmen — Lord Valencia and Mr Hyde — who had visited India from motives of science or curiosity since the country "came into our possession. Even thirty years ago such visits were unknown ; and the present Lord Derby was about the first young Englishman who made our Indian Em.pire a part of the grand tour. Nowadays, old ladies of seventy, who had scarcely ever left Britain before, are to he met with on the spurs of the Himaliya ; and we are conveyed rapidly and easily over vast stretches of burning land, which, a {t.v^ years ago, presented formidable obstacles to even the most eager traveller. On the great routes over the vast plains of Hindusthan there is no necessity now for riding twenty miles a day from bungalow to bungalow, or rolling tediously in a

"palki gharri" over the interminable Grand Trunk Road. Even in a well-cushioned comfortable railway apartment it is somewhat trying to shoot through the blinding sunlight and golden dust of an Indian plain ; and knowing ones are to be seen in such circumstances expending their ice and soda-water upon the towels which they have wrapped round their heads. But we are compelled to have recourse to such measures only in the trying transition periods between the hot and cold seasons ; because, when the heat is at its greatest, artificiallycooled carriages are provided for first-class passengers. Three days from Bombay and twenty pounds conveyance expenses will land the traveller at Masuri (Mussooree),* on the outer range of the Himaliya ; and yet, if he chooses to halt at various places by the way, a single step almost will take him into some of the wildest jungle and mountain scenery of India, 'among

* The spelling of Indian names is at present in a transition state, though so much has been done to reduce it to one common standard that it is expedient to follow that standard now, which is the official system of spelling adopted by the Indian Government, and usually followed by Dr Keith Johnston in his valuable maps. That system partakes of the nature of a compromise, for accents are only used when specially necessary ; and in the lists drawn up by Dr W. W. Hunter they are used very sparingly, and are omitted in some cases where they miglit have been added with advantage. I have followed these official lists in almost every instance, except in using the word " Himaliya ; " and the simple rules to be borne in mind in order to render their system of spelling intelligible are that —

1. The long a sounds broadl)^, as in almond.

2. The short a without an accent, has usually somewhat of a « sound, as the a in rural.

3. The / with an accent is like ee, or the i in ravine.

4. The ?/ with an accent is like 00, or the it in bull.

5. The e has a broad sound, as the a in dare.

6. The o sounds openly as in note.

7. The ai sounds as in aisle,^r the i in high.

8. The au sounds like ou in cloud.

the most primitive tribes, and to the haunts of wild animals of the most unamiable kind. Had the Bishoppoet lived now, he might have sung, with much more truth than he did fifty years ago —

" Thy towers, they say, gleam fair, Bombay, Across the dark-blue sea ;"

for the schemes of Sir Bartle Frere, energetically carried oat by his successor, Sir Seymour Fitzgerald, have given that city the most imposing public buildings to be found in the East — if we except some of the Mohammedan mosques, with the palaces and tombs (for these, too, are public buildings) of the Mogul Emperors — and in other ways, also, have made it worthy of its natural situation, and a splendid gate of entrance to our Indian Empire. But half-Europeanised as the capital of Western India is, within ten miles of it, in the island of Salsette, at the little-visited Buddhist caves of Kanhari, the traveller will find not only a long series of ancient richlysculptured cave-temples and monastic retreats, but also the most savage specimens of animal and vegetable life, in a thick jungle which often seems alive with monkeys, and where, if he only remains over night, he would have a very good chance of attracting the attention of the most ferocious denizen of the Indian forest. Though the locomotive bears him swiftly and smoothly up the inclines of the Thull Ghaut, instead of his having to cross the Sahyadri range by a bridle-path, or be dragged painfully by tortured bullocks at the rate of half a mile an hour, as was the case only a few years ago; yet he has only to stop at the picturesquely-situated bungalow at Egutpoora, and wander a little way along the edge of the great bounding wall of the Deccan, in order to look down immense precipices of columnar basalt, and see huge rock-snakes sunning themselves upon the bastions

TO THE HEIGHTS.

of old Mardtha forts, and be startled by the booming cry of the Entelius monkey, or by coming on the footprints of a leopard or a tiger. And it may not be amiss, when writing of the Western Ghauts, to point out the remarkable parallelism, which has not before been noted, between these mountains and the Himaliya, for it may serve to make the contour of both ranges easily intelligible. Both are immense bounding walls ; the one to the elevated plains of the Deccan, and the other to the still more elevated tableland of Central Asia. Carrying out this parallel, the Narbada (Nerbudda) will be found to occupy very much the same position as the Indus, the Sutlej as the Tapti, and the Godaveri as the Brahmaputra. All have their rise high up on their respective tablelands ; some branches of the Godaveri rise close to the sources of the Narbada, just as the Indus and the Brahmaputra have their origin somewhere about Lake Manasarovvar ; and yet the former rivers fall into the sea on opposite sides of the Indian peninsula, just as the two latter do. So, in like manner, the Tapti has its origin near that of the Narbada, as the Sutlej rises close to the Indus ; and if we can trust the Sind tradition, which represents the upper part of the Arabian Sea as having once been dry land, there may have been a time within the human era when the Tapti flowed into the Narbada, as the Sutlej does into the Indus some way above the sea. There is no mountain group in the Highlands of Central India where the three southern rivers rise quite so close together as do the three northern rivers from the lofty and inaccessible Tibetan Kailas, but still there is a great similarity in their relative positions ; and it is only when we think of the Sahyadri and Himaliya as boundary walls that we can understand their relations to the tableland behind them, and their terrific fall to the low-lying land in front.