"After winding up "A wild romantic chasm that slanted Down the steep hill, athwart a cedar cover, A savage place, as holy and enchanted we arrived at the gorge of the pass, in an indent between the two principal summits of Mount Gaughur, near 8600 feet above the sea. And now the snowy mountains, which had been so long eclipsed, opened on us in full magnificence. "Nandidevi was immediately opposite; Kedarnath was not visible from our present situation, and Meru only seen as a very distant single peak. The eastern mountains, however, for which I have obtained no name, rose into great consequence, and were very glorious objects as we wound down the hill on the other side. The guides could only tell me that they were a great way off, and bordered on the Chinese empire.'" "27th November. "The Chinese frontier is strictly guarded by the jealous care of that government. Mr. Moorcroft did, indeed, pass it some years ago, and was kindly received by one of the provincial governors; but the poor man was thrown into prison, and died there, as a punishment for his hospitality, and, since, nobody has been allowed to go beyond the frontier village. . . To the north, however, the small independent Tartar kingdom of Ladak has shown itself exceedingly hospitable and friendly. Mr. Moorcroft, when he was there, was treated with unbounded kindness and confidence, and their khân has since sent a formal offer, which I am sorry was declined, of his allegiance to the British Government. "... Kumaon is extremely subject to earthquakes; scarcely a year passes without a shake or two, and though all have been slight since the English came, it would not be wise to build upperroomed houses, unless, like the natives, they made the superstructure of timber. In the best of these bungalows I found Mr. Adam, who received me most hospitably. He introduced me to Sir Robert Colquhoun, the commandant of the local troops of Kumaon, who invited me to accompany Mr. Adam and himself on Monday to his house at Havelbagh, where the native lines are, and where Mr. Adam is residing at present, as being a milder climate than that of Almora. Mr. Adam had a party to dine in the evening, and I found that almost all the civil and military officers here were Scotch." "Sunday, 28th November. "This day I enjoyed the gratification of being the first Protestant minister who had preached and administered the Sacraments in so remote, yet so celebrated a region. I had a very respectable congregation of, I believe, all the Christian inhabitants of Almora and Havelbagh. Mr. Adam allowed me to make use of the two principal rooms in his house, which, by the help of the foldingdoors between them, accommodated thirty or thirty-five persons with ease. I was, after service, introduced to Lady Colquhoun, who is celebrated in the province as a bold rider along the mountain paths. I was also introduced to Captain Herbert, who has the situation of geologist in this province, and who seems a very wellinformed, as he is a very pleasing and unassuming man. He and Sir Robert Colquhoun were just returned from a scientific expedition to the eastern frontier, and gave an interesting account of the Goorkha troops there, whom they described, as they have been generally represented, as among the smartest and most Europeanlike soldiery of India. We had family prayers." 29th November. My second visitant was the pundit of the criminal court of Kumaon, a learned Brahmin, and a great astrologer. He had professed to Mr. Traill a desire to see me, and asked if I were as well informed in the Vedas, Puranas, and other sacred books of the Hindoos, as another European pundit whom he had heard preach some years before at the great fair of Hurdwar? He evidently meant the Baptist missionary Mr. Chamberlain; and it pleased me to find that this good and able, though bigoted man, had left a favourable impression behind him among his auditors." Wherever he travelled, in India as in Russia, Heber had an eye to the economic resources of the country. He records the prevalence of the wild tea-plant all through Kumaon; "but it cannot be made use of, from an emetic quality which it possesses. This might, perhaps, be removed by cultivation, for which the soil, hilly surface, and climate-in all of which it resembles the tea provinces of China-are extremely favourable." Since that time the China plant has covered the slopes of the Himalayas from Dehra Doon to Kangra, and the tea is exported chiefly into Central Asia. The Hon. Sir Henry Ramsay, K.C.S.I.,1 realised more than even Heber dreamed of, alike in the physical well-being of the people and the extension of Christian missions among them, during his forty years' administration of Kumaon, beginning with the year of the great Mutiny. Even that unexpected rebellion his shrewd observation and sagacity led him to anticipate, as in this letter to J. Phillimore, Esq., LL.D. :— ALMORA, 29th November 1824. ". . . I have only time to say that all is, at present, quiet in the Upper Provinces of India, and I think likely to continue so, unless any remarkable reverses occur on the side of Ava. A general revolt was, a little time since, thought not unlikely, but the period seems now gone by; and the alarming mutiny at Barrackpoor was apparently made in concert with no other regiment. But there certainly is, in all the Doab, in Oudh, and Rohilkhund, an immense mass of armed, idle, and disaffected population, and I am inclined to doubt whether the Honourable Company's tenure of their possessions is worth many years' purchase, unless they place their army on a more numerous establishment than it now is, and do something more for the internal improvement of the country, and the contentment of the higher ranks of natives than they have hitherto seemed inclined to do. I am quite well, and am now on a very interesting journey through a part of Kumaon, enjoying frosty mornings, cool breezes, and the view of the noblest mountains under Heaven." The mutiny of the 47th Native Infantry had been pronounced by the Court of Inquiry to be "an ebullition of despair at being compelled to march (to Burma) without the means of doing so," and had been mismanaged by the military authorities. But the Burman war, and, it must be admitted, the weak personnel of the Government of India since the departure of Lord Hastings, had created much disquietude.2 This is reflected in another letter written to Lord Amherst two months later : "JEYPOOR, 24th January 1825. "... The report, indeed, that our government was about to evacuate this part of India, had, as I understand, been gradually 1 See Good Words for May 1894. 2 See Marshman's History of India, chap. xxix. It had, dying away ever since the conclusion of the rainy season. no doubt, been industriously propagated from mischievous motives, but its origin may be easy to account for. The people of Hindoostan had already once seen the English government, after extensive conquests, give up vast tracts of country and retire within their ancient limits; and the incessant march of troops to the eastward which they witnessed a few months back, joined to the vague reports which reached them of a war with Ava, and their knowledge that a new Governor-General was lately arrived, may not unnaturally have led them to believe that, from necessity or otherwise, an entire change had taken place in British policy, and that your Lordship was about to evacuate the conquests of Lord Hastings, in the same manner as Lord Cornwallis gave up the new provinces acquired by his predecessor. From whatever cause, the suspicion was, certainly, very widely spread, and had the effect of encouraging the enemies, and alarming the friends of government. "In Rohilkhund my servants told me that even so trifling a circumstance as my going through the country, with a numerous escort and a certain degree of official rank, in an opposite course from the supposed tide of European emigration, produced a good deal of surprise among the people of the villages, and led them to think more favourably of the continuance of English rule than they had previously done. And, in my late journey through Bhurtpoor, the Raja of which showed me great hospitality and attention, I could not help observing that a repair of his fortresses had been begun, but, apparently, again discontinued during the last five or six months. It is possible, indeed, that the ill-humour then displayed by the Rani of Jeypoor may have led him to think some warlike preparations necessary. The Rani herself, who, as a princess of the house of Oodeypoor, has an almost hereditary title to be ambitious and intriguing, is now described by her subjects as in high spirits, and exceedingly fond of the English; and I passed, yesterday, a golden image set with precious stones, which she is sending, under a strong escort, to the temple of Bindrabun, in consequence, as is believed, of a vow, and as a thanksgiving for the favourable termination of her discussions with your Lordship's agents. "Kumaon is a very interesting country; some of its views exceed in sublimity anything which I have seen in Norway, and more than equal all which I have heard or read of Switzerland. The people, too, are very interesting; they are wretchedly poor, but they are kind-hearted, hospitable, and honest to a degree Q which I have not witnessed in any other part of India; and from all which I observed myself, or heard from others, this is one of the parts of India where the British are really loved, and their government acknowledged as a blessing. I was forcibly struck in passing through this province with the persuasion that it is here that the plan, which I heard your Lordship suggest in conversation, of cultivating tea within the limits of the Empire, might be most successfully carried into execution. "... I was greatly pleased with the church, chaplain, and congregation of Meerut, all of which are more English than anything of the kind which I have seen in India. In Mr. Fisher, the chaplain, I had, I confess, been led to expect some share of fanaticism and intemperate zeal, of both which I am bound to acquit him. The sermon which I heard him preach was extremely plain and sensible; and with regard to his native converts, who are numerous, he has solemnly assured me, and I have not the smallest reason to disbelieve him, that he has sought after none of them, and given instruction to none who did not voluntarily come to request it of him. Two such came while I was in Meerut, and a third, during the same time, received baptism. Mr. Fisher asked me to perform this ceremony myself, but, in consequence of the rule which I have laid down not to become needlessly conspicuous in the pursuit of objects which are not my immediate concern, I declined. For the same reason I have abstained from distributing tracts, or acting in any way which might excite the jealousy of those whom it is, on all accounts, desirable to conciliate. The work of conversion is, I think, silently going on, but those who wish it best will be most ready to say festina lente." Six years before, on 10th October 1819, the Sepoy Prabhu Deen, who had first heard of Christ when stationed in Mauritius, was baptized by the chaplain, Rev. R. Fisher. His fellows had tried to prevent the step, and had finally falsely accused him of acts of which the regimental Court of Inquiry honourably acquitted him. Thereupon their opposition ceased, but a special court was summoned, which, admitting his exemplary conduct as a soldier, decided that he should leave the regiment. He declined. On this, Sir Edward Paget, the Commander-in-Chief, offered him higher rank in another corps, but in vain. He remained a Christian at Meerut, and when his old comrades next visited the station, some of them told him they would have stood by him as |