Modern India by William Eleroy Curtis

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In 1884 his daughter, a very brilliant and beautiful woman, married
the Maharaja of Cutch-Behar, who was converted, joined the movement
and became an active member of the society. Like many others of
the princely families of India, he lays claim to divine origin,
the founder of his dynasty having been a god. In 1772, the ruling
rajah, having been attacked by more powerful neighbors, applied
for protection to Warren Hastings, then governor of Bengal, and
acknowledged subjection to the East Indian Company. The province
of Cutch-Behar was thus one of the first to be absorbed by the
British Empire, but it has ever since been governed by the native
prince, who nominally owns all of the land in his territory and
receives taxes in lieu of rent from his tenants, who are his
subjects. His territory has a population of 650,000, of whom
427,000 are Hindus and 174,539 are Mohammedans. He is assisted
in his government by a resident English adviser, appointed by
the viceroy, and really has very little to do. He has a personal
allowance of $150,000 for the support of himself and family, and
inherited from his ancestors one of the most rare and valuable
collections of jewels in India.

The present maharaja was born in 1863, educated in England, attained
his majority in 1883, and has two sons, one of whom is a member
of the Viceroy's Corps of Imperial Cadets, and the other acts as
his father's secretary. The maharaja is considered one of the
handsomest men in India, as he is one of the most accomplished
and progressive, and his wife is as famous for her intellectual
as for her physical attractions.

The late Jamsetjee Nusserwanji Tata of Bombay, a typical Parsee,
amassed an enormous fortune as a merchant and manufacturer, won an
enviable reputation for integrity, enterprise and public spirit,
and for several years before his lamented death in 1904, was
permitted to enjoy the gratification that men of his kind deserve
after a long career of activity and usefulness. Having provided
in a most ample manner for his own future wants, and intrusting
his enormous business responsibilities to his sons, he devoted
the rest of his life to travel and other pleasures, and a large
portion of his fortune to benevolence. I have been frequently
told that Mr. Tata in his time was the most enterprising man in
India. He spent enormous sums in experiments for the development
of the resources and industries of his country; some of which
failed, but others have been eminently successful. He developed
the cotton industry, perhaps more than any other man, and improved
the staple by importing plants and seeds from Egypt. He was largely
engaged in growing, preserving and exporting the fruits of India
in order to furnish another occupation for the country people,
and in a thorough exploration of its iron deposits, building
furnaces, smelters, and mills with the hope of being able to
supply the local markets with home made steel and iron. There
is plenty of ore, plenty of coal and labor, and Mr. Tata was
willing to pay the expense and do the work of a pioneer in order
that his fellow countrymen may enjoy the wealth that lies dormant
in their mountains.

He had cotton mills and other manufactories in various parts
of India, but the greater part of his fortune was invested in
the industries and real estate of his own province of Bombay.
His residence was one of the largest and most beautiful palaces
in that city, filled with works of art and trophies of travel. He
was the owner of several of the finest business blocks, introduced
modern apartment houses into Bombay, and built the modern hotel to
which I have several times alluded. He supported several young
Parsees in the technical schools and colleges of England, Germany
and the United States. For years no less than six such students
were selected annually to be educated at his expense, not only
because he took a personal interest in the welfare of his
co-religionists, but because he believed that young engineers,
chemists, electricians and other practical scientists were needed
to develop the resources of India.

Mr. Tata's latest act of benevolence, shortly before his death,
was to place in the hands of a board of trustees, of whom the
chancellor of the University of Bombay is chairman, real estate
and securities valued at more than 3,500,000 of rupees, which is
equivalent to about $1,250,000, the income from which, amounting
to 120,000 rupees, or about $40,000 in our money, a year, is
to be used for the establishment and perpetual maintenance of
the Indian Research University, a name selected by a conference
called together by the viceroy. This conference was composed of
four directors of public instruction for the different provinces
of India, the home secretary of the imperial government, the
surgeon general of the army and several other gentlemen eminent
in educational and public affairs. After a careful examination
of all conditions they decided to locate the institution at the
city of Bangalore, in the province of Mysore, in southern India,
where the local government, as an inducement, donated 300 acres of
land upon an eminence in a very favorable situation, and offered
a contribution of 18,000 rupees a year toward the payment of the
expenses, provided the money is used in such a way as to benefit
the people of that province. It has also offered to defray a
considerable part of the cost of erecting the necessary buildings.

XXVI

THE HIMALAYAS AND THE INVASION OF THIBET

Darjeeling is one of the most favored spots on earth, the loveliest
place in India, and the favorite resort and sanitarium of the citizen
element as distinguished from military and official circles. It
is a hard journey, both going and coming, and a traveler gets
impatient when he finds that it takes him from four o'clock in
the afternoon of one day until nearly two o'clock of the next to
make a journey of 246 miles. He leaves Calcutta with the thinnest
clothing he can buy, but when he arrives there he is glad that
he brought his overcoat and gloves, and pulls a second blanket
over himself at night. At the same time it is not so cold in
Darjeeling as one would expect from the altitude of 7,400 feet
above the sea, and the latitude, which is about 27 degrees 50
minutes. You travel from four o'clock till seven upon a railway
of ordinary gauge, cross the Ganges on a steamboat for an hour,
taking your dinner while afloat; change into a three-foot gauge
train until half-past four in the morning, when you are routed
out, given a cup of coffee and a roll, and transferred to a baby
carriage on wheels which crawls up the foothills of the Himalayas
at the rate of six miles an hour.

The track is only two feet gauge, with forty-pound rails, which
have been laid upon the ancient highway over which the caravans
between China and India have passed for thirty centuries. It
winds in and out of gorges and defiles and at several points
the engineers have had to cut a foothold for it on the edges of
tremendous precipices. It doubles on itself repeatedly, describes
the letter S and the letter Z and the figure 8, and zigzags about
so recklessly that the engineer puts his locomotive first at one
end of the train and then at the other. Englishmen who write
books on India assert that it is the grandest railway journey in
the world, but we can show them several quite as picturesque and
attractive in our own beloved Rocky Mountains. The only advantage
they have over us there is the superior height of the mountains
and the superior size of the trees. But you must remember that
our country is young yet, and India is one of the oldest nations
in the world.

The first few miles of track lie in a dense jungle, with vegetation
of truly tropical luxuriance. Cane stalks grow fifty and sixty feet
high, the grass is fifteen feet deep, beautiful bamboo trees, whose
foliage is as fine as feathers, and palms which have plumage like
a peacock and a bird of paradise, lift their proud and haughty
heads above an impenetrable growth which, the guides tell us, is
the home of tigers, rhinoceroses, panthers, bears, wild hogs,
buffaloes, deer and all sorts of beasts, and snakes as big around
as a barrel. Fern trees are lovely, and are found here in their
greatest glory, but nevertheless we have foliage at home, and
they are no more beautiful than our elms, oaks, and other trees
that I might mention.

This is a great tea country, and the mountain sides have been
cleared in many places for plantations. A tea planter in India
is a heavy swell. He may be no more brilliant or intellectual
or virtuous or handsome, but the fact that he grows tea instead
of potatoes or wheat or sugar gives him a higher standing in the
social scale. I was asking an explanation of this phenomenon
from a very wise man the other day, and, although he insisted
that his attention had never been called to it before, he was
willing to admit that it was so, and he explained it on the theory
that so many sons of dukes and earls and lords and the swagger
set in England had come to India to engage in tea growing that
they had created a caste of their own; so that whenever a man
said he was a tea planter the public immediately assumed that
his father belonged to the nobility and treated him accordingly.
The tea planters usually live in good style. They have beautiful
bungalows, gardens, lawns and groves, and although they complain
of the depression of the industry, there is no evidence that they
suffer for want of the necessities of life. In the Darjeeling
district are about two hundred large plantations, employing from
one to two thousand laborers each, and producing about 12,000,000
pounds a year. Most of the product is shipped to England.

They carry you up the mountains in tiny little cars seating six
persons and open all around so that the passengers can take in all
there is to see, and they have plenty of scenery. The trains are
not allowed to run faster than six miles an hour as a precaution
against accidents, which allows plenty of time to look about,
and they twist around so that you can see things from various
points of view. And if a passenger gets impatient or is in a
hurry he can jump out of the car and walk ahead.

There is little doubt that the views from Darjeeling include the
most majestic assemblage of mountains on the earth's surface.
For a distance of 200 miles east and west there arise a succession
of peaks not less than 22,000 feet high, and several of them
more than 25,000. In the immediate vicinity and within sight
are the highest mountains in the world. Everest, the king of
mountains, which measures 29,200 feet, is only eighty miles distant;
Kinchinjunga, which is forty-five miles distant, is 28,156 feet
high, and also, in the immediate vicinity, are the following:

Janu 25,304 Kabru 24,015
Chumalari 23,943 Pauhanri 23,186
Donkia 23,176 Baudim 22,017
Narsingh 22,146 Kanhenjhan 22,500
Chomaino 23,300

Between these mountain peaks is an almost continuous succession
of snow fields and glaciers beyond all comparison. The snow line
is 17,000 feet in midsummer, and in winter comes down to 12,000 and
15,000 feet, and when that altitude is reached snow is continuous
and impassable. This is the highest and the most extensive of
all mountain ranges. Along the northern frontier of India for
2,000 miles it stands like a vast hedge, the most formidable
natural boundary in the world, nowhere lower than 17,000 feet,
and impassable for armies the entire distance, with the exception
of two gateways: Jeylup Pass here and at the Khyber Pass of which
I told you in a previous chapter. There are passes over the snow,
but their elevation is seldom less than 16,000 feet; the average
elevation of the watershed exceeds 18,000 feet, and the great
plateau of Thibet, which lies upon the other side, is between
15,000 and 16,000 feet above the sea.

This plateau, which is sometimes called the "Roof of the World,"
is 700 miles long and 500 miles wide, and could not be crossed
by an army not only because of the winds and the cold, but also
because there is very little water, no fuel and no supplies. No
invading force could possibly enter India from the north if these
passes were defended, because the inhospitable climate of Thibet
would not sustain an army, and the enormous distance and altitude
would make the transportation of supplies for any considerable
force practically impossible. During the summer the plateau is
covered with flocks and herds, but when the cold weather comes
on the shepherds drive them into the foothills, where they find
shelter. The width of the main range of the Himalayas will average
about 500 miles between its northern and southern foot-hills; it
embraces every possible kind of climate, vegetation and natural
products, and is a vast reservoir from which four of the greatest
rivers of the world flow across the plains of India, carrying
the drainage from the melting snows, and without this reservoir
northern India would be a hopeless and dreary desert.

There is a lively dispute among geographers, topographers and other
learned pundits of the scientific bureaus of the Indian government
as to whether Everest is really the king of the mountains. Other
peaks in the group have their advocates, and over in Cashmere
are several which lift their heads nearly as high as 30,000 feet,
but few of them have been accurately measured, and the height of
none can be determined with exactness. Mount Godwin, in Cashmere,
is very near the height of Everest, and many claim that Kinchinjunga
is even higher.

Darjeeling is a sanitarium of the greatest benefit to the people
of India. The town is made up chiefly of hotels, hospitals and
summer bungalows belonging to the mercantile class of Calcutta.
Few officials except military officers ever go there. The official
society follows the viceroy to Simla, where the summer is always
gay, but those who seek health and rest only and are fond of
nature prefer Darjeeling. The hotels are good, there are plenty of
boarding houses, there are hospitals for all sorts of infirmities,
and perhaps there is no other place in the world with such an
ideal climate within a day's travel of the tropics. The hotels,
villas, boarding houses, hospitals and asylums are scattered all
over the hillside without regularity of arrangement. Wherever a
level spot has been found some kind of a house has been erected,
usually without any architectural taste, and the common use of
corrugated iron for building material has almost spoiled the
looks of the place. There is plenty of timber, and the great
mountains are built of stone, so that there is no excuse for the
atrocious structures that have been erected there.

Everybody who comes is expected to get up at half-past 3 in the
morning in order to see the sun rise. Everything is arranged
by the managers of the hotel. They have fixed the sunrise at
that hour in order to compel their guests to make the greatest
possible effort to see it because they will thus remember the
incident, and the experience will remain longer in their memory.
They give you a cup of coffee and a roll, and, if you insist
upon it, you can get an egg, although the cook is not inclined
to be obliging at that hour in the morning. They put you in a
sort of sedan chair called a "dandy," and you are carried by
four men seven miles up the mountains to a point 12,000 feet
above the sea. From there you can look upon the most impressive
spectacle that human eye has ever witnessed, the rising of the sun
over an amphitheater surrounded by the highest group of peaks on
the globe. Their snow-covered summits are illuminated gradually,
beginning at the top, as if a searchlight were slowly turned upon
them. Mount Everest stands in the center, but is so much farther
away that it does not seem so much higher than the rest.

There is little mountain climbing in India compared with the
Alps, because the distances and the difficulties are so great.
A Boston gentleman and his wife made the ascent of Mount Everest
in 1904, and it is claimed that they went higher than anyone
had ever gone before.

Darjeeling is not a large town, but it is filled with interesting
people, and on Sunday a market is held in the principal bazaar
which is declared to be the most picturesque and fascinating
in all India. Throngs of natives in quaint costumes come from
all parts of the country around, representatives of tribes which
do not often stray so far away from their homes. They come from
Nepaul, Thibet, Sikkim and the surrounding countries, and bring
articles of home manufacture to exchange for "store goods." The
features of the people are unmistakable testimony of their Mongolian
origin. They are short of stature, with broad, flat faces, high
cheek bones and bright, smiling eyes wide apart. The men grow no
beards, but have long pigtails of coarse coal-black hair. The
women are sturdy, good-natured and unembarrassed; they are adorned
with a great quantity of jewelry, chiefly of silver, but often
of gold. They wear circlets around their heads made of coral,
turquoise, amber, agate, jade or other precious stones, with five
or six necklaces and enormous girdles of the same material. Huge
ear rings, four or five inches long, pull down the lobes of their
ears. Their wrists are heavy with bracelets, their limbs with
anklets, and their fingers are half hidden with rings. The entire
fortune of a family is usually invested in personal adornments
for the women members. They find this much safer than savings
banks.

The attention of the world has recently been attracted in that
direction because of an unusual and very significant movement
of the Indian government, which, in the winter of 1904, took
advantage of the embarrassments of Russia in the farther East,
and sent a military expedition over the northern border on the
pretext of escorting a diplomatic mission. Colonel Younghusband
was sent as an envoy extraordinary--very extraordinary--for,
with 2,500 British soldiers, he was instructed to make a treaty
of commerce and good will with the Grand Lama of Thibet, and his
orders were to stay at Lhassa until the treaty was negotiated
and as much longer as was necessary to compel the Thibetans to
respect its terms and carry out its stipulations. That means the
permanent occupation of Lhassa by a British army and the opening
of an unknown and mysterious region to trade.

Thibet is the unknown, mysterious country of the world, a land
of desert and mountains inhabited by a primitive and bigoted
people, who have for many years been under the protection of
China, and paid tribute to the emperor until the late war with
Japan in 1895. After the result of that conflict became known
they seemed to lose their respect for and confidence in their
protectors and have sent no envoys or money to Peking since.
We know very little about Thibet. Foreigners are not permitted
to enter the country, and only a few venturesome explorers have
endured the hardships and faced the dangers of a visit to that
forbidden land. Indeed, it is so perilous an undertaking that
a skeptical public frequently takes the liberty to doubt the
statements of the men who have gone there. But all agree that it
is the hermit of nations, and its people are under the control of
cruel and ignorant Buddhist priests, who endeavor to prevent them
from acquiring any modern customs or ideas. One of the objects of
Colonel Younghusband's expedition is to change this situation
and persuade the ignorant and bigoted ecclesiastics who govern
Thibet to open their gates and admit foreign merchants and foreign
merchandise into that benighted country. There is considerable
commerce, however. Parties of Thibetan traders are continually
coming across the frontier into Darjeeling with all sorts of
native products and may be seen in the market that is held every
Sunday morning and during the weekdays in the bazaars of the city.
After selling their goods they buy cottons, drugs, groceries,
hardware and other European goods and take them back into their
own country; but foreigners are not allowed to pass the line,
and practically all of the trade of Thibet is monopolized by
the Chinese, who sell the natives large quantities of cotton
fabrics and other imported merchandise as well as tea, silk and
other Chinese goods. This trade is supposed to be worth many
millions of dollars, and the ability of India to furnish the
tea and of England to furnish the manufactured goods that the
inhabitants of Thibet may need is considered ample reason for
sending the Younghusband expedition into that country. But there
are other reasons quite as important.

Lying between Thibet and India is the independent state of Nepal,
or Nepaul, the home of the Gurkhas, one of the finest fighting
races in the world, and there are eighteen full regiments of
them in the Indian army. The Gurkhas are a mountain people,
industrious, temperate, hardy, brave, loyal, honest, and without
sense of fear. They are the main dependence of the Indian government
among the native troops. Nepal has its own government and the
people are proud of their independence. While they are entirely
friendly to Great Britain and have treaties with India under
which the latter extends a protectorate over the province and
enters into an offensive and defensive alliance, the Maharaja
permits no British adviser to take part in his government and
receives a representative of the viceroy only in the capacity of
envoy or minister plenipotentiary. The latter dare not interfere
with the administration of the government and never presumes
to tender his advice to the native rulers unless it is asked.
His duties are chiefly to keep the viceroy at Calcutta informed
as to what is going on in the Nepal province and to cultivate
the good will of the officials and the people.

There has never been a census of Nepal and the population has been
variously estimated from 2,000,000 to 5,000,000. It is probably
near the latter figure. The people are mostly engaged in raising
cattle, sheep and goats and growing wheat, barley and other grains
in the valleys. The principal exports, which amount to about
$8,000,000 a year, are wool, hides and grain, and the imports,
which amount to about $5,000,000, are cotton goods and other
wearing apparel, iron and steel, cutlery and other manufactured
merchandise.

The people of Nepal profess the Hindu faith and have close relations
with the Brahmins at Benares, which is the Rome, or the Mecca, of
Brahminism. They sometimes in the past have beep bold enough to
defy British authority, and, for example, protected Nana Sahib,
the leader of the mutiny of 1857, and gave him an asylum when he
fled from British vengeance. However amicable the relations between
Nepal and the British government, the latter is scrupulously careful
not to furnish any excuse for complaint or controversy, because
a collision with this powerful people would not only result in
the loss of the finest corps in the Indian army, but would make
it extremely unpleasant for the people of Assam, Bengal, Oudh
and the Punjab, which provinces lie next on the south.

One hundred years ago an army from Nepal invaded Thibet and sacked
an important town. The Thibetans appealed to China, which had not
yet lost its military vigor, and sent an army to invade Nepal.
It came within eighteen miles of Gurkha, the capital, when the
Nepals proposed a parley, paid a heavy indemnity and entered into
a treaty of permanent peace, promising never to invade Thibet
again. That was the last heroic act of the Chinese government,
and then, in compliance with the terms of the treaty, all the
passes through the Himalaya Mountains between the two countries
were permanently closed by common consent, and in many cases
were walled up with masonry, adding an artificial barrier to
the natural wall. It was also agreed that there should be no
communication across the border and that the inhabitants of both
provinces would remain upon their own sides. This prohibition
has been enforced until to-day, and has not been violated except
by Buddhist priests and monks and a few venturesome explorers.
No Englishman may even now enter Nepal or pass from Nepal into
Thibet without permission from the authorities of both governments.

Mindful of the aggressive policy of Russia, which controls Turkestan,
the country north of Thibet, the British government some years ago
sent an envoy named McCauley to Lhassa, with the permission of
the Chinese government, to open commercial relations with Thibet
and find another market for the tea of Assam and the manufactured
merchandise of India. But he was unable to do anything. He could
not induce the priests, or lamas, who control the government,
to negotiate with him. They would not respond to his advances
and gave him plainly to understand that they did not care to
improve their relations with India. Immediately after his departure
the Thibetans began to fortify the passes over the mountains,
and invaded the little province of Sikkim, which also adjoins
Thibet. The British sent up troops and forbade the continuance
of the work. The Thibetans withdrew to the interior and agreed to
make a commercial treaty and open their market to Indian goods,
promising to send a plenipotentiary to Calcutta for that purpose
within six months; but he has never appeared, and frequent reminders
from the British have passed without notice.

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